Temples, Shrines, and Ziggurat of Borsippa

Borsippa temples

Several first-millennium-BC lists of temples and ziggurats preserve the ceremonial names of the most important religious buildings at Borsippa, the principal Babylonian cult center of the god Nabû. The "Kuyunjik Ziggurat List" and the "Neo-Babylonian Ziggurat List" record that Eurmeiminanki was the ziggurat, the ruins of which were mistakenly identified as the biblical Tower of Babel, whose construction by the tyrant Nimrod is recorded in Genesis 11:1–9. The "Canonical Temple List" and the "Babylonian Temple List" respectively list Ezida, the main religious structure in Borsippa, as the first temple of the god Nabû and the fifth most important Babylonian temple. These two buildings, together with at least five other temples at Borsippa, are well attested in other cuneiform documents (especially royal inscriptions).

Alphabetical list of temples at Borsippa

In addition to these religious structures, the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 604–562 BC) states that he rebuilt in Borsippa two unnamed temples: one for the storm-god Adad and one for the god Mār-bīti. Moreover, Nabonidus (r. 555–539 BC), Babylon's last native ruler, mentions the cella of the goddess Tašmētu (Nabû's consort) and a building or a room (in Ezida) that went by the name Elagabgid.

The "Dais of Destinies" (Akkadian parak šīmāti), a seat that Borsippa's patron god used during New Year's festivals (Akkadian akītu), when he was travelling to and from Babylon, is also attested in cuneiform sources.

Banner image: plan of the excavated remains of Nabû's temple and ziggurat (left); satellite image of Borsippa with the ruins of Ezida and Eurmeiminanki (center); and photo of the ruins of the god Nabû's ziggurat, Eurmeiminanki (right). Plan by Robert Koldewey and photograph by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin.

Jamie Novotny

Jamie Novotny, 'Temples, Shrines, and Ziggurat of Borsippa', Babylonian Temples and Monumental Architecture online (BTMAo), The BTMAo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, [http://oracc.org/btmao/Borsippa/TemplesandZiggurat/]

 
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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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