Temples, Shrines, and Ziggurat of Kish

Obverse of BM 055476, a clay tablet with an explanatory temple list now in the Sippar collections of the British Museum (London). Lines 1–10 provide information about Kish's temples, city wall, New Year's temple, and ziggurat. Reproduced from George, House Most High, pl. 15.

A Neo-Babylonian explanatory temple list devoted to providing information about the topography of four northern Babylonian cities gives some details about Kish's holy buildings, as do several lists of temples and ziggurats. Edubba ("Storage House") was the temple of Kish's patron deity Zababa; EgišhurbiGALAM.GALAM ("House Whose Ordinances are Skilfully Contrived") was the New Year's temple; and Eunirkitušmah ("House, Temple-Tower, Exalted Abode"), which was sometimes called Eanurkitušmah ("House of the Foundation of Heaven, Lofty Abode"), was its ziggurat. The aforementioned texts also provide the names of five cellas in Edubba, in particular Emeteursag ("House, Worthy of the Hero") and Egalgasu ("House Filled with Counsel"), as well as the names of several other temples, including Esulimanna ("House of the Awesome Radiance of Heaven"), which was dedicated to the goddess Ištar in her manifestation as Bēlet-Eanna ("Lady of Eanna").

Alphabetical list of temples at Kish

Eakkil: temple of the god Ninšubur
Eazbzukuga: cella of the god Zababa
Eanurkitušmah: variant name of the ziggurat
Edubba: temple of the god Zababa
Edukuga: a sanctuary of the god Zababa
Egalgasu: cella of the goddess Baba
EgišhurbiGALAM.GALAM: New Year's temple
Einimkuga: a sanctuary of the god Zababa
Ekiaggani: a cella (probably in Esulimanna)
Ekitušgalanna: a temple
Ekiš[...]: a temple
Emeteursag: cella of the god Zababa
Emuš[...]: a temple
Enitakalagga: a temple (perhaps at Kish)
Erabriri: cella of the god Madānu
Esilim[...]: a temple
Esulimanna: temple of the goddess Ištar (as Bēlet-Eanna)
Ešulanna: a sanctuary of the god Zababa
Ešuluhbikuga: courtyard (probably of Esulimanna)
Etemenbinukur: cella of the goddess Bēlet-Kiš ("Lady of Kish")
Eunirkitušmah: ziggurat

Jamie Novotny

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

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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