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Updated: May 9, 2025
In fact, the Babylonian principalities arise from the extension of the city's jurisdiction, just as the later Babylonian empire is naught but the enlargement, on a greater scale, of the city of Babylon. Of these old Babylonian cities the most noteworthy, in the south, are Eridu, Lagash, Ur, Larsa, Uruk, Isin; and in the north, Agade, Sippar, Nippur, Kutha, and Babylon.
De Sarzec, Découvertes en Chaldée, pl. 3. On the stele of vultures, the dead are naked. See p. 512. Such sacrifices are pictured on the stele of vultures. IIIR. 43, col. iv. l. 20; Belser, Beiträge zur Assyriologie, ll. 175, 18; Pinches, Babylonian Texts, p. 18. For this custom see Trumbull, The Threshold Covenant, p. 25; Peters' Nippur, ii. 202, 203.
Not only do both symbolize the same natural phenomenon, but in both, Bel of Nippur was originally the central figure of the pantheon, and in both Marduk replaces Bel. The Zu myth is made to account in a somewhat more respectful, conciliatory manner for the position of Marduk as the head of the pantheon.
In a second form it was Bel to whom the victory was ascribed, and this Bel of the triad, we have seen, was En-lil, the chief god of Nippur; but both Anshar and Bel must give way to the patron deity of the city of Babylon Marduk. Anshar-Ashur, the head of the Assyrian pantheon, could not be tolerated by the Babylonian priests as a power superior to Marduk.
The great political and religious centers of Babylonia, such as Ur, Sippar, Agade, Eridu, Nippur, Uruk, perhaps also Lagash, and later on Babylon, formed the foci of literary activity, as they were the starting-points of commercial enterprise.
The zikkurat, the great court, the shrines, and the smaller structures formed a sacred precinct, and it was this precinct as a whole that constituted the temple in the larger sense, and received some appropriate name. Thus E-Kur at Nippur, E-Sagila at Babylon, E-Zida at Borsippa are used to denote the entire sacred precinct in these cities, and not merely the chief structure.
The excavations at Nippur have afforded us for the first time a general view of a sacred quarter in an ancient Babylonian city. The extent of the quarter was considerable. Dr.
Moreover, we shall later on examine another of the newly published Sumerian compositions from Nippur, which is not only semi-epical in character, but is of precisely the same shape, script, and period as our text, and is very probably a tablet of the same series.
Several attempts are made to reorganize the cult, but it was left for Nabubaliddin in the tenth century to restore E-Babbara to its former prestige. Esarhaddon and Ashurbanabal, who pay homage to the old Bel at Nippur, also devote themselves to Shamash at Sippar. They restore such portions of it as had suffered from the lapse of time and from other causes.
Unfortunately, De Sarzec's excavations at Lagash at the point of the mound in question were interrupted, but he gives reasons for believing that other columns existed near the two large ones found by him. There is, therefore, every reason to conclude that at Lagash, as at Nippur and no doubt elsewhere, the two columns belonged to a great gateway leading into a large court of columns.
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