Ekitušgarza (temple of Ištar as Bēlet-Eanna at Babylon)

Ekitušgarza was one of the three religious buildings in the Tuba district of West Babylon, at least according to Tablet IV of the scholarly compendium Tintir = Babylon. That temple was dedicated to the goddess Ištar in her manifestation as Bēlet-Eanna ("Lady of Eanna"). According to Akkadian inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 604–562 BC), Ekitušgarza temple was located "in a corner of the city wall of Babylon" (Akkadian ina tubqāt dūr bābili), on the western bank.

Ashm1924-0846_tuba.jpg

Reverse of clay tablet Ashm 1924-0846, which is inscribed with a copy of Tintir = Babylon Tablet IV, which lists the three temples of the Tuba district in West Babylon. Image adapted from the CDLI.

Names and Spellings

This temple at Babylon went by the Sumerian ceremonial name Ekitušgarza, which means "House, Abode of Regulations." Some copies of Tintir = Babylon Tablet IV call the temple Egarza ("House of Regulations") or Ekisaduga ("House, Place of Regular Offerings").

Written Forms: e₂-garza: e₂-ki-tuš-garza; e₂-ki-sa-dug₄-ga.

Known Builders

Building History

Nebuchadnezzar II, the son and immediate successor of Nabopolassar (r. 625–505 BC), claims to have built many temples at Babylon, including two in the Tuba district of West Babylon: Ekitušgarza for Bēlet-Eanna and Esabad for the healing goddess Gula. Although this Neo-Babylonian king's inscriptions provide almost no information about the project itself, apart from the fact that he had the temple's brick superstructure raised to a great height, these texts do provide some topographic information about Ekitušgarza's location. A few texts record that it was in West Babylon — information known from scholarly compendium Tintir = Babylon — while others record that it was "in a corner of the city wall of Babylon" (Akkadian ina tubqāt dūr bābili). Because there was no location where the city walls Imgur-Enlil and Nēmetti-Enlil changed direction in the Tuba district, thereby creating a corner at the point where the walls met, it is often assumed that this temple of Bēlet-Eanna might have been near the corner of a large projecting tower, perhaps one belonging to the monumental Šamaš Gate, located on the southern stretch of the inner city wall, just west of the Arahtu River, the arm of the Euphrates River that ran through Babylon.

Archaeological Remains

Ekitušgarza has not yet been positively identified in the archaeological record.

Further Reading

Jamie Novotny & Joshua Meynell

Jamie Novotny & Joshua Meynell, 'Ekitušgarza (temple of Ištar as Bēlet-Eanna at Babylon)', Babylonian Temples and Monumental Architecture online (BTMAo), The BTMAo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, [http://oracc.org/btmao/Babylon/TemplesandZiggurat/Ekitushgarza/]

 
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BTMAo 2019-. BTMAo is based at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Historisches Seminar (LMU Munich, History Department) - Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East. BTMAo is part of the four-year project Living Among Ruins: The Experience of Urban Abandonment in Babylonia (September 2019 to October 2023), which is funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung as part of the program "Lost Cities. Wahrnehmung von und Leben mit verlassenen Städten in den Kulturen der Welt," coordinated by Martin Zimmermann and Andreas Beyer. Content released under a CC BY-SA 3.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/] license, 2007-.
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