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Ziggurats

Ziggurats. Temples to the Mesopotamian gods. Ziggurats were the famous Pyramid Temples of Mesopotamia. Ziggurats were the famous Pyramid Temples of Mesopotamia. No one knows for sure what Ziggurats looked like but they can get a good idea from the many ruins that exist today.

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Ziggurats

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  1. Ziggurats Temples to the Mesopotamian gods.

  2. Ziggurats were the famous Pyramid Temples of Mesopotamia. Ziggurats were the famous Pyramid Temples of Mesopotamia.

  3. No one knows for sure what Ziggurats looked like but they can get a good idea from the many ruins that exist today. In fact there are around 25- 30 known ziggurat ruins around the area that was once Mesopotamia.

  4. Possibly the most famous one today is this restored Ziggurat at Ur, where Abraham lived when God called him to move to Canaan

  5. The temple was just the small building on the very top. The rest of the pyramid was simply to raise the temple up closer to heaven so the gods could come down. Though Ziggurats were Temples, they were not big hollow pyramids for people to go inside to worship.

  6. It is believed that only priests were ever allowed to enter the small temple on the top so that they could take care of the gods and grant them what they needed.

  7. It is believed that light, shining at a particular angle on a particular day through the doors of the top unit of the ziggurat, was the signal for the beginning of the agricultural year on which the whole country depended. 

  8. Ziggurats were made from sun-dried brick mixed with straw and it is believed that they were sometimes covered with plants.

  9. The Canaanite tribes in the land that became Israel did not need ziggurats, since there were mountains. Instead, they set up 'high places' which probably served the same function as the ziggurat.

  10. It has been suggested that the ziggurat was a symbolic representation of the primeval mound upon which the universe was thought to have been created.

  11. The ziggurat may have been built as a bridge between heaven and earth, and the underworld, and a horizontal bond between the lands.

  12. Much of what we know about Ziggurats is guess-work. Some people believe that the Tower of Babel was possibly a large Ziggurat.

  13. However, this could be possible because as people spread out over the earth after God confused their languages, it seems they took the idea of the Pyramid style buildings with them.

  14. Many pyramids of Egypt.

  15. Nubian Pyramids (Sudan)

  16. Pyramid buildings in Timbuktu (Mali)

  17. Mayan Pyramids of Mexico and South America.

  18. In Cambodia there are the Khmer Pyramids.

  19. There are even pyramids in Greece.

  20. The Mesopotamian Ziggurat – another one of the many influences that we still have today from this fascinating ancient culture.

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