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Updated: May 25, 2025
Peters informs me that from his observations at Telloh, he questions whether the building in question represents a zikkurat at all, though, as we know from other sources, a zikkurat existed there in the days of Gudea. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, xviii. Of Sargon's zikkurat at Khorsabad, also, only four stories have been found. E.g. Perrot and Chiplez, ib. p. 128.
This council chamber was situated at the eastern end of the great mountain, and was known as Du-azagga, that is, 'brilliant chamber. The chamber itself constituted the innermost recess of the eastern limit of the mountain, and the special part of the mountain in which it lay was known as Ubshu-kenna, written with the ideographic equivalents to 'assembly room. It will be apparent that such a view of the papakhu is the result of theological speculation, and is not due, as is the conception of the zikkurat, to popular beliefs.
One of these is the zikkurat to Nin-girsu at Lagash, which Gudea describes as 'the house of seven divisions of the world'; the other, the tower at Uruk, which bore the name 'house of seven zones. The reference in both cases is, as Jensen has shown, to the seven concentric zones into which the earth was divided by the Babylonians.
Ur-Bau, we have seen, about 2700 B.C., erected a zikkurat in the temple area. Some centuries later we find Bur-Sin repairing the zikkurat and adding a shrine near the main structure. As the political fortunes of Nippur varied, so E-Kur had its ups and downs.
To each of these gods one story was supposed to be dedicated, and the tower thus became a cosmological symbol, elaborating in theological fashion the fundamental idea of the zikkurat as a reproduction of the dwelling-place of the gods. The identification of the five gods with the planets is a proof of the scholastic character of the interpretation, and hence of its comparatively late origin.
The height of the zikkurats varied. Those at Nippur and Ur appear to have been about 90 feet high, while the tower at Borsippa which Sir Henry Rawlinson carefully examined attained a height of 140 feet. The base of this zikkurat, which may be regarded as a specimen of the tower in its most elaborate form, was a quadrangular mass 272 feet square and 26 feet high.
To judge from the fact that in this list several names of zikkurat are connected with one and the same place, more than one zikkurat, indeed, could be found in a large religious center. The Construction and Character of the Zikkurats. The zikkurat was quadrangular in shape. The orientation of the four corners towards the four cardinal points was only approximate.
Gudea already regards the zikkurat as a symbol. To make the ascent is a virtuous deed. The thought of adding a symbol of the apsu belongs, accordingly, to the period when this view of the zikkurat was generally recognized. The shape of the 'sea' was oblong or round. It was cut of large blocks of stone and was elaborately decorated.
There is a reference to a zikkurat in the inscriptions of Gudea that may be several centuries older; but since beneath the zikkurat at Nippur remains of an earlier building were found, it is a question whether the staged tower represents the oldest type of a Babylonian temple.
The terrace, in a certain sense, is the original zikkurat the real 'high place' and the temple of one story naturally precedes the staged tower, and may have remained the type for some time before the more elaborate structure was evolved.
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