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Updated: May 25, 2025
Ekurrâti; Delitzsch, Assyr. Handwörterbuch, p. 718b. IR. 35, no. 3, 22. See below. Hebrew Bamôth. Through the opposition of the Hebrew prophets, the term acquires distasteful associations that were originally foreign to it. See Peters' Nippur, ii. 124 seq. IIR. 50, obverse. Perhaps, however, these several names all designate a single zikkurat. Peters' Nippur, i. 246; ii. 120.
In Gudea's days the symbol is already known, and it continues in use to the end of the Babylonian empire. The zikkurat itself being, as we saw, an attempt to reproduce the shape of the earth, the representation of the 'apsu' would suggest itself as a natural accessory to the temple. The zikkurat and the basin together would thus become living symbols of the current cosmological conceptions.
A temple to Gula in Sippar was called E-ulla; that is, 'the beautiful house. The old temple to Sin at Harran bore the significant name E-khulkhul, 'house of joys, while the pious wish of the worshipper is again expressed in the name 'threshold of long life, given to the zikkurat in Sippar.
These kings, especially the latter, devote much time and energy in rebuilding the zikkurat and in erecting various buildings connected with the temple administration. Under the new Babylonian dynasty, however, E-Kur was again destroyed, and this time by the ruthless hands of southern rulers.
We may assume, likewise, that at Sippar, Uruk, Ur, and Larsa the zikkurat was the center of a considerable group of buildings, while at Babylon in the days of her greatest power, the temple area of E-Sagila must have presented the appearance of a little city by itself, shut off from the rest of the town by a wall which invariably enclosed the sacred quarter.
Meanwhile, it is something to have reached general results. The zikkurat was surrounded by a varying number of shrines that were used as places of assembly for worshippers. The latter gathered also in the large court in front of the zikkurat, where the chief altar probably stood. In the large halls of the shrines, there were in all probabilities likewise altars.
The ideographic designation of the zikkurat as a 'conspicuous house, which accords admirably with the motive ascribed in the eleventh chapter of Genesis to the builders of a zikkurat to erect an edifice that "could be seen," supports the view here taken of the more decorative position which the staged tower came to occupy, an homage to the gods rather than a place where they were to be worshipped, something that suggested the dwelling-place of a god, to be visited only occasionally by the worshipper in short, a monument forming part of a religious sanctuary, but not coextensive with the sanctuary.
That the staged tower when once evolved was regarded as the most satisfactory expression of the religious ideas follows from the fact that all the large centers of Babylonia had a zikkurat of some kind dedicated to the patron deity, and probably many of the smaller places likewise.
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