Esagila Totally Explained

Everything about Esagila totally explained

The Ésagila, a Sumerian name signifying "É (temple) whose top is lofty", (literally: house of the raised head) was a temple dedicated to Marduk, the protector god of Babylon. It lay south of the ziggurat Etemenanki, a memory of which has been perpetuated in Judeo-Christian culture as the Tower of Babel.
   In this temple was the cult image inhabited by Marduk, surrounded by cult images of the cities that had fallen under the hegemony of the Babylonian Empire from the 18th century BC; there was also a little lake which was named Abzu by the Babylonian priests. This Abzu was a representantion of Marduk's father, Enki, who was god of the waters and lived in such Abzu.
   The Esagila complex, completed in its final form by Nebuchadrezzar II (604-562 BC) encasing earlier cores, was the center of Babylon. It comprised a large court (ca. 40 by 70 meters), containing a smaller court (ca. 25 x 40 m), and finally the central shrine, consisting of an anteroom and the inner sanctum which contained the statues of Marduk and his consort Sarpanit.
   According to Herodotus, Xerxes had a statue removed from the Esagila when he flooded Babylon in 482 BC, desecrated the Esagila and sacked the city. Alexander the Great ordered restorations, and the temple continued to be maintained throughout the second century BC, as one of the last strongholds of Babylonian culture, such as literacy in the cuneiform script, but as Babylon was gradually abandoned under the Parthian Empire, the temple fell into decay in the first century BC.
   Under the enormous mass of debris that lay over it, Esagila was rediscovered by Robert Koldewey in November 1900, but it didn't begin to be seriously examined until 1910. The rising water table has obliterated much of the sun-dried brick and other oldest material. Most of the finds at Babylon reflect the Neo-Babylonian period and later. Data from the Esagila tablet, copied from older texts in 229 BC, have aided in its reconstruction. The tablet, described by George Smith in 1872, disappeared into private hands before it resurfaced and began to be interpreted.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Esagila'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://esagila.totallyexplained.com">Esagila Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.