Temples, Shrines, and Ziggurat of Sippar

Sippar

Sippar (Sumerian Zimbir; modern Tell Abu Habbah) is the principal Babylonian cult center of the sun-god Šamaš and his wife Aya. Because this northern Babylonian city — which is located on the east bank of the Euphrates River, approximately 70 km north of Babylon — was very important and influential, its city wall Baduldua (also called Badullisâ), its principal temple Ebabbar, and its ziggurat Ekunankuga are included in first-millennium-BC lists of temples and ziggurats. In a text that enumerates religious structures hierarchically, the so-called "Babylonian Temple List," Ebabbar is ranked second, after Ekur (the temple of the god Enlil at Nippur) and before Esagil (the temple of the god Marduk at Babylon).

Obv. of K 4407+

Obverse of K 04407 + K 21429, the "Babylonian Temple List." The name of Šamaš' temple at Sippar, Ebabbar, is mentioned in line 2 as the second highest-ranking temple in Babylonia. Image adapted from the CDLI.

Alphabetical list of temples at Sippar

Construction work on Ebabbar and Ekunankuga are well attested in late Neo-Assyrian (721–612 BC) and Neo-Babylonian (625–539 BC) royal inscriptions.

Banner image: satellite image of Sipper (left); plan of Ebabbar and Ekunankuga (center); and photo from the excavations of the library at Sippar in March 1989 (right). Plan adapted from L. De Meyer Tell ed-Dēr 3: Sounding at Abū Ḥabbah (Sippar), plan B. Excavation photograph by Jean-Luc Manaud/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.

Jamie Novotny

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

 
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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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