What Was the Purpose of Mesopotamian Ziggurats?

Ancient Mesopotamia was home to diverse peoples with different origins, cultures, and languages. But, over the course of two millennia, the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Elamites all built towering structures known as ziggurats at the center of their cities. What purpose did Mesopotamian ziggurats serve that they were important to so many cultures? They were homes of the gods, but also focal points for political, social, and economic life.

The modern word ziggurat is derived from the ancient Akkadian word ziggarratu, which means “temple tower.” The word now refers to the entire temple complex. Although the term is Akkadian, ziggurats were first developed by the Sumerians in the third millennium BCE.

Ziggurats were far more than just buildings to the Mesopotamians, they were symbols of their deeply held religious beliefs. Modern scholars believe that ziggurats represented the mountains and summits where the homes of the gods were located. A ziggurat was usually dedicated to the patron deity of the city.

The people of Mesopotamia named their ziggurats, and it is through those names that modern scholars have determined this symbolism. For example, the ziggurat of the god Enlil in the city of Nippur was known as the “House of the Mountain,” “Mountain of the Storm,” and “Bond between Heaven and Earth.”

But while Ziggurats conveyed important religious iconography, they also served important practical purposes.

The Purpose of Ziggurats 

To understand why ziggurats endured across time and cultures, it is important to understand their purpose. For cities that had ziggurats, the structure served as a focal point for the city’s activity.

Ziggurats primarily served as abodes for gods, and were usually dedicated to the god of the city and served as their cult center. Most ziggurats were located in the center of the city and they were also at the center of a much greater temple complex. At the center of the ziggurat itself was usually the god’s cult statue. The cult statue was a physical image of a god, believed to be their earthly avatar.

For example, the god Marduk was associated with the city of Babylon. As Marduk’s priesthood developed rituals, they also built a temple complex and ziggurat, making Babylon Marduk’s cult center. The general public was only allowed access to the outer temple complex. Only the high-priests could visit the very top of the structure.

In addition to serving as the focal point of a particular cult, ziggurats were the center of non-religious activities, although in the ancient Near East religion permeated everything. Priests in the ancient Near East were the most educated members of society. They also served as physicians, scientists, historians, and scribes. Mesopotamian temple complexes served as scribal schools and astronomical observatories.

Ziggurats also had political purposes. New kings often embarked on ambitious building projects to legitimize their rule, especially if they were the first king of a new dynasty. In addition to scoring a propaganda victory, the construction of a new ziggurat could create social cohesion.

Ziggurat workers—both skilled and unskilled—were drafted from the population in a corvee system. Although workers had little choice in the matter, they and their families were compensated. The vast majority of the people at the time would have venerated the god for whom the ziggurat was being built, and workers would have taken great pride in seeing their finished product.

The construction activity would also have been an economic boon for the city, as thousands of workers were required. Finally, if a new king inherited political instability, building a ziggurat would have been a good method to take the people’s minds off their problems.

Although there is no extant “ziggurat construction manual,” modern archeologists are reasonably confident they can reconstruct the methods used. Unlike the Egyptian pyramids that were made from stone, Ziggurats were made of clay and mudbrick, which led to their destruction by the elements over the centuries. The reason the Mesopotamians used less than enduring materials to build ziggurats is simply that there was a lack of stone in the region.

While the Mesopotamians maintained long-distance trade routes with people who did have abundant sources of stone, ziggurat-building techniques were set. The Mesopotamians had no reason to switch to stone because clay and mud brick served their purpose. Besides, building in stone is much more labor intensive, requiring more manual laborers and skilled workers.

Although building an average ziggurat was less labor-intensive than building an average Old Kingdom pyramid, it was still a monumental task. Thousands of workers would have been drafted to work on a single ziggurat, and any project would have taken several years to complete. Among the workers were skilled engineers and unskilled workers who carried and lifted the bricks.

Ziggurats were solid structures that had an inner core and at least one layer of outer bricks. The inner core was sun-dried, while the bricks of the outer core were baked. The baking alone would have required a considerable amount of time and fuel.

The First Ziggurat

The Ziggurat of Ur is considered the prototype of all later ziggurats. It was commissioned by Ur-Nammu (ruled 2112-2095 BCE), the king of Ur, and the first king of the Ur III dynasty (c. 2112-2004 BCE). Part of the massive structure has been rebuilt and stands today.

Early ziggurat building was confined to the southern Sumerian cities of Nippur, Uruk, Ur, and Eridu. But when the political power of Mesopotamia shifted to the central Mesopotamian region of Babylonia in the early second millennium BCE, so too did ziggurat construction.

The 1st dynasty Amorite kings of Babylon (c. 1894-1595 BCE) built extensively throughout Babylonia and central Mesopotamia. The Amorite kings were impressed with the Sumerian ziggurats to the south, and they followed suit by erecting ziggurats at Kish, Babylon, Borsippa, and Sippar.

The Kassites (c. 1374-1155 BCE) were the next major dynasty to rule Babylon after the Amorites. They accepted most of the religious and architectural ideas of their predecessors. With that said, the Kassites were less ambitious ziggurat builders, only building one notable ziggurat in the city of Dur-Kurigalzu. This does not necessarily mean that the Kassites were not impressed with ziggurats, only that there was already an abundance of the structures in Babylonia when the Kassites came to power.

By the late second millennium BCE, ziggurats had become so important that they were adopted by the Assyrians in northern Mesopotamia and the Elamites.

The Elamites lived just east of Mesopotamia in the region of Elam, in what is today southwestern Iran. Although the Elamites adopted many of the deities of the Sumerian-Akkadian-Babylonian pantheon, they also retained many of their own. Among the most important Elamite gods were Napirisha, the primary god, and Inshushinak, the patron god of the Elamite capital city, Susa.

The Elamite King Untaash-Napirisha (c. 1340-1300 BCE) built a new, eponymously named city (al-Utash-Napirisha) dedicated to himself and the god Napirisha. At the center of the city was a massive temple complex and at the complex’s center was one of the ancient world’s most impressive ziggurats. The ziggurat, which is among the best preserved, was made from millions of baked bricks placed in several rows.

The Assyrians conquered most of the Near East during the reign of King Assurnasirpal II (ruled 853-859 BCE). Although Assurnasirpal did not reign for very long, he established many of the cultural hallmarks of the Neo-Assyrian dynasty, including extensive ziggurat construction. The Assyrians built ziggurats in many of their cities, including Ashur, Dur-Sharrukin, Kalhu/Nimrud, and Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta.

The Greek historian and military general Xenophon noted the remains of Assurnasirpal II’s ziggurat in Khalu/Nimrud when he visited the site in 399 BCE. He wrote: “Near the city there was a pyramid of stone, a hundred feet broad, and two hundred feet high.”

The “stone” Xenophon referred to was likely the baked brick blocks, which had a longer life than clay blocks. With that said, the dimensions he related mean that at one time it was quite an impressive ziggurat.

The Assyrians likely followed the same construction methods used by earlier peoples, but they added one notable feature to their ziggurats. Assyrian ziggurats were apparently built with no staircases, instead being connected directly to the royal palaces. This change in architecture coincided with the increased importance of the Assyrian king.

The Assyrian king, like all Mesopotamian kings, was the high priest of his religion, and during the Neo-Assyrian dynasty, the king’s ritual duties became more important, increasing the political importance of the ziggurat.

Although there is no physical trace of the final ziggurat to consider in this article, it has probably had the greatest impact on history. The ziggurat in question was known as the Etemenanki Ziggurat, or the “House of the Frontier between Heaven and Earth”.

The Etemenanki Ziggurat was built during the reign of the legendary King Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BCE), likely to legitimize his new dynasty, the Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean dynasty (626-539 BCE). Dedicated to the patron god of Babylon, Marduk, the Etemenanki was described by the fifth-century Greek historian Herodotus, as “two furlongs each way” and “one furlong square.” He also described the ziggurat as having eight “towers” erected on top of each other. The ziggurat clearly left an impression on Herodotus, but also on members of the Israelite diaspora.

When Nebuchadnezzar II ordered the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 597 BCE, according to both the biblical and Babylonian sources many Israelites were brought into captivity in Babylon. It was during this captivity that many of the books of the Old Testament were compiled, so it is likely that those Israelite scholars saw the Etemenanki Ziggurat daily.

Modern scholars have argued that the Tower of Babel of Genesis 11:1-9 was based on the Etemenanki Ziggurat. It impressed the imaginations of people during that time and continued to do so for centuries. Later artists made attempts to portray the Tower of Babel.