Word Finder - ziggurat

definition

A temple tower of the ancient Mesopotamian valley, having the form of a terraced pyramid of successively receding stories

definition

A building with similar style or shape

example

He works in an old ziggurat of an office building.

Access to the stages of the ziggurat, from the court beneath, was had by an inclined plane on the south-east side.

In the west corner stood a temple, with a stagetower (ziggurat) adjoining.

The approach to this ziggurat was toward the north-east, and on this side lay also the principal rooms of the temple of which this was the tower.

The city was divided into two parts by a canal, on an island in which stood the temple, E-mach, with a ziggurat, or stage tower.

To the north-east of the ziggurat stood, apparently, the House of Bel, and in the courts below the ziggurat stood various other buildings, shrines, treasure chambers and the like.

Huge walls were erected at the edges of the ancient terrace, the courts of the temple were filled with houses and streets, and the ziggurat itself was curiously built over in a cruciform shape, and converted into an acropolis for the fortress.

In its final form this temple and tower were the work of Nebuchadrezzar, but from the clay cylinders found by Sir Henry Rawlinson in two of the corners of the tower it appears that he restored an incomplete ziggurat of a former king, "which was long since fallen into decay."

He built temples, canals, defensive fortifications, the gateway of Ishtar, the great ziggurat and the sacred processional way in Babylon.

The temple proper, according to this plan, consisted of an outer and inner court (each covering approximately 8 acres), surrounded by double walls, with ziggurat on the north-western edge of the latter.

Excavations conducted here by Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1854 showed it to be the stage tower or ziggurat, called the "house of the seven divisions of heaven and earth," of E-Zida, the temple of Nebo.

Larsa is mentioned in Babylonian inscriptions as early as the time of Ur-Gur, 2700 or 2800 B.C., who built or restored the ziggurat (stage-tower) of E-Babbar, the temple or Shamash.

Some of the best authorities believe that it was this ambitious but incomplete and ruinous ziggurat, existing before the time of Nebuchadrezzar, which gave occasion to or afforded local attachment for the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

This represents the ancient ziggurat of the temple of Shamash, which was in part explored by Loftus.

After the middle of the 12th century follows another long period of comparative neglect, but with the conquest of Babylonia by the Assyrian Sargon, at the close of the 8th century B.C., we meet again with building inscriptions, and under Assur-bani-pal, about the middle of the 7th century, we find E-kur restored with a splendour greater than ever before, the ziggurat of that period being 190 ft.

The shrine at this time stood on a raised platform and apparently contained, as a characteristic feature, an artificial mountain or peak, a so-called ziggurat, the precise shape and size of which we are, however, unable to determine.