The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria

by Morris Jastrow

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE TEMPLES AND THE CULT.

The religious architecture of Babylonia and Assyria is of interest chiefly as an expression of the religious earnestness of rulers and people, and only in a minor degree as a manifestation of artistic instincts. The lack of a picturesque building material in the Euphrates Valley was sufficient to check the development of such instincts. Important as the adaptation of the clay soil of Babylonia for simple construction was for the growth of Babylonian culture, the limitations to the employment of bricks as a building material are no less significant. Ihering has endeavored to show[1311] by an argument that is certainly brilliant and almost convincing, that the settlement of Semites in a district, the soil of which could be so readily used to replace the primitive habitations of man by solid structures, made the Semites the teachers of the Aryans in almost everything that pertains to civilization. House-building produced the art of measuring, led to more elaborate furnishings of the habitation, created various trades, introduced social distinctions, necessitated divisions of time, and gave the stimulus to commercial intercourse. But, on the other hand, the artistic possibilities of brick structures were soon exhausted. The house could be indefinitely extended in length and even height, but such an extension only added to the monotonous effect. With clay as a building material, so readily moulded into any desired shape, and that could be baked, if need be, by the action of the sun without the use of fire, it was almost as easy to build a large house as a small one. But the addition of rooms and wings and stories which differentiated the house from the palace and the palace from the temple, served to make hugeness the index of grandeur. The best specimens of the religious architecture of Babylonia and Assyria are characterized by such hugeness. A proportionate increase of external beauty could only be secured by a modification of architectural style; but the conservative instincts of the people discouraged any deviation from the conventional shapes of the temples, which appear indeed to have been firmly established long before the days of Hammurabi. The influence of conventionality finds a striking illustration in the manner in which the temples of Assyria follow Babylonian models. Soft and hard stone suitable for permanent structures was easily procured in the mountainous district adjacent to Assyria. The Assyrians used this material for statues, altars, and for the slabs with which they decorated the exterior and interior walls of their great edifices. Had they also employed it as a building material, we should have had the development of new architectural styles; but the Assyrians, so dependent in everything pertaining to culture upon the south, could not cut themselves loose from ancient traditions, and continued to erect huge piles of brick, as the homage most pleasing in the eyes of their gods. The Book of Genesis characterized the central idea of the Babylonian and Assyrian temples when it represented the people gathered in the valley of Shinar—that is, Babylonia—as saying: 'Come, let us build a city and a tower that shall reach up to heaven.'[1312] The Babylonian and Assyrian kings pride themselves upon the height of their temples. Employing, indeed, almost the very same phrase that we find in the Old Testament, they boast of having made the tops of their sacred edifices as high as 'heaven.'[1313] The temple was to be in the literal sense of the word a 'high place.' But, apart from the factor of natural growth, there was a special reason why the Babylonians aimed to make their sacred edifices high. The oldest temple of Babylonia at the present time known to us, the temple of Bel at Nippur, bears the characteristic name of E-Kur, 'mountain house.' The name is more than a metaphor. The sacred edifices of Babylonia were intended as a matter of fact to be imitations of mountains. It is Jensen's merit to have suggested the explanation for this rather surprising ideal of the Babylonian temple.[1314] According to Babylonian notions, it will be recalled, the earth is pictured as a huge mountain. Among other names, the earth is called E-Kur, 'mountain house.' The popular and early theology conceived the gods as sprung from the earth. They are born in Kharsag-kurkura,[1315] 'the mountain of all lands,' which is again naught but a designation for the earth, though at a later period some particular part of the earth, some mountain peak, may have been pictured as the birthplace of the gods, much as among the Indians, Persians, and Greeks we find a particular mountain singled out as the one on which the gods dwell. The transfer of the gods or of some of them to places in the heavens was, as we saw,[1316] a scholastic theory, and not a popular belief. It was a natural association of ideas, accordingly, that led the Babylonians to give to their temples the form of the dwelling which they ascribed to their gods. The temple, in so far as it was erected to serve as a habitation for the god and an homage to him, was to be the reproduction of the cosmic E-Kur,—'a mountain house' on a small scale, a miniature Kharsag-kurkura. In confirmation of this view, it is sufficient to point out that E-Kur is not merely the name of the temple to Bel at Nippur, but is frequently used as a designation for temple in general; and, moreover, a plural is formed of the word which is used for divinities.[1317] In Assyria we find one of the oldest temples bearing the name E-kharsag-kurkura,[1318] that stamps the edifice as the reproduction of the 'mountain of all lands'; and there are other temples that likewise bear names[1319] in which the idea of a mountain is introduced.

To produce the mountain effect, a mound of earth was piled up and on this mound a terrace was formed that served as the foundation plane for the temple proper, but it was perfectly natural also that instead of making the edifice consist of one story, a second was superimposed on the first so as to heighten the resemblance to a mountain. The outcome of this ideal was the so-called staged tower, known as the zikkurat. The name signifies simply a 'high' edifice, and embodies the same idea that led the Canaanites and Hebrews to call their temples 'high places.'[1320]

The oldest zikkurat as yet found is the one excavated by Drs. Peters and Haynes at Nippur,[1321] the age of which can be traced back to the second dynasty of Ur—about 2700 B.C. This appears to have consisted of three stages, one superimposed on the other. 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. At no time does any special stress appear to have been laid upon the number of stories of which the zikkurat was to consist. It is not until a comparatively late period that rivalry among the rulers and natural ambition led to the increase of the superimposed stages until the number seven was reached. The older zikkurats were imposing chiefly because of the elevation of the terrace on which they were erected, and inasmuch as the ideal of the temple is realized to all practical purposes by the erection of a high edifice on an elevated mound, the chief stress was laid upon the height of the terrace. 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. However this may be, we are justified in associating the mountain motif with the beginnings of religious architecture in the Euphrates Valley, precisely as the underlying cosmic notions belong to the earliest period of which we have any knowledge. 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. A list of zikkurats[1322] furnishes the names of no less than twenty; and while all of the important places are included, there are others which do not appear to have played an important part in either the religious or political history of the country, and which nevertheless had their zikkurat. 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.[1323]

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.[1324] Inasmuch as the rulers of Babylonia from a very early period call themselves 'king of the four regions,'[1325] it has been supposed that the quadrangular shape was chosen designedly; but there is no proof that any stress was laid upon symbolism of this kind, or upon the orientation of the corners of the sacred edifices. More attention was bestowed upon making the brick structure huge and massive.

The height of the zikkurats varied. Those at Nippur and Ur[1326] appear to have been about 90 feet high, while the tower at Borsippa which Sir Henry Rawlinson carefully examined[1327] 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. The second and third stories were of equal height, but the square mass diminished with each story by 42 feet. The height of the four upper stories was 15 feet each. At the same time, the mass diminished steadily at the rate of 42 feet, so that the seventh story consisted of a mass of only 20 feet square. Sargon's zikkurat at Khorsabad (the suburb of Nineveh) was about the same height.

The average number of stages of the zikkurat appears to have been three, as at Nippur and Ur, or four, as at Larsa.[1328] In the pictorial representations of the towers,[1329] we similarly find either three or four. In these smaller zikkurats, the height of each tower, as in the first three stories of the tower at Borsippa, appears to have been alike; but the mass diminished in proportion in order to secure a space for a staircase leading from one story to the other. This method of ascent was older than the winding balustrade, which was better adapted to the more elaborate structures of later times. No doubt, as the towers increased in height, other variations were introduced—as, e.g., in the proportions of the stories—without interfering with the essential principle of the zikkurat.

The ungainly appearance presented by the huge towers was somewhat relieved by decorations of the friezes and by the judicious use of color. Enameled bricks of bright hues, such as yellow and blue,[1330] became common, and in the case of some of the towers it would appear that a different color was chosen for each story. Whether all the bricks in each story were colored or only those at the edge, or, perhaps, some rows, it is impossible to say. From Herodotus' description of the seven concentric walls of Ecbatana,[1331] in which each wall was distinguished by a certain color, the conclusion has been drawn that the same colors—white, black, scarlet, blue, orange, silver, and gold—were employed by the Babylonians for the stages of their towers; but there is no satisfactory evidence that this was the case. That these colors were brought into connection with the planets, as some scholars have supposed, is highly improbable.