ZIGGURATU. - Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian name for the temple towers that were built in ancient Mesopotamia from the most remote, prehistoric era down to the entire Babylonian period, in which they had the form of seven-stepped towers with, on the topmost platform, a small temple and with a multi-flight staircase leading up to it.
In the Old Testament, Gen. 11:1-9, the account of the tower, mighdál, and of the confusion of tongues refers to a z., and precisely to that of the temple Esagila of Marduk (v.) in the city of Babel. Herodotus describes the z. of Babel according to the form that the towers had in the Neo-Babylonian period and has in mind probably that of Nebuchadnezzar at Babylon. Benjamin of Tudela and other travelers after him took the z. of 'Aqar Qûf (Dûr-Kurigalzi) or of Barsippu (Birs Nimrûd) for the Old Testament tower of Babel.
In the ruins of the ancient Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian cities, z. have been discovered in great number, since there was no important temple in the country that did not have its tower, many times rebuilt and changed in plan, in height, in the number of steps or terraces and in the form, direction and length of the stairways or ramps that ascended to the top.
Originally, in still prehistoric times, the z. consisted of one high terrace or of a greater number of terraces, superimposed one upon another without a fixed number; in general the forms of the z. varied from city to city and from era to era, though not greatly, and finally the tower with seven steps, like the number of the planets, with a small temple at the top and an access stairway became the typical z. Z. have been discovered both in the prehistoric strata of the sub-Babylonian cities (Urû, Uruk etc.) and in those of the Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian era (Babylon, Barsippu, Aššûr, Kalhu, Dûr-Sarrukêni [Horsâbâd], Nineveh, etc.); the most famous was that of the temple of Marduk at Babylon, which bore the Sumerian name of Etemenanki; its measurements are known because they were handed down in a tablet written in the Neo-Babylonian period by a certain Anubêlsûnu.
It is not known for what purpose the ancient Mesopotamians built z. and what precisely the religious meaning of these was. Some scholars affirm that they are imitations in the Mesopotamian plain of the hills on whose summits the ancient Sumerians venerated their divinities in temples when they still dwelt on the Iranian plateau before descending into Mesopotamia; others see in them places of burial of kings, like the pyramids of Egypt; still others see in them places of descent of the divinities from heaven to earth, and others give still other interpretations of the temple towers.
Bibliography15 works
Giuseppe Furlani