Esagil

The Esagil is the principal temple of the god Marduk, located in the crowned district of Babylon, the city of which he is the guardian divinity. Its name comes from the Sumérien É.SAG.IL and means " The temple with the pinâcle surélevé". At its sides the ziggurat Etemenanki had been built.

Esagil was probably born with Babylon, in moved back times. It had a turbid history, with the image of that of the city, from which it underwent all the disasters, of the raid of the Hittites causing the fall of the first Babylonian dynasty, and were catch the statues of Marduk and Zarpanitu, recovered later under the Kassites, with the destruction of this last dynasty by the Élam, then with the many Assyrian raids, of which most terrible, that inflicted by Sennacherib, which destroys the ziggurat, which will be restored by its successors. Esagil was restored by Assarhaddon, in spite of the fact that Marduk ordered with its priests that is not done before a certain duration after preceding disaster. Nabuchodonosor II, the most prestigious sovereign chaldéen, restored it, and Nabonide did not forsake it either. The king Perse Xerxès damaged the temple and his ziggurat in repression with a revolt of the city. Under the Séleucides, one of its priests, Bérose, wrote famous the Babyloniaka . After, Esagil sank in the lapse of memory with Babylon, with the first gleams of our era.

This temple was located in an enclosure at the edge of Euphrate, just beside the ziggurat. It was explored partly during the excavations of Babylon directed by Robert Koldewey at the beginning of the 20th century, and its length was estimated at 150 meters. Its dependences formed a quadrilateral of approximately 500 meters on side (more for the length, less for the width). Its plan passes to be traced by the Marduk god itself. The temple in him even had a form in " L" turned over, 180 meters length and 120 meters width approximately, and its height was estimated at 10 meters. One entered there by an external court, for then arriving, after having passed a monumental door, in the central court, located in the principal part of the building, a building of 85 meters out of 80 meters. Around this court, one found several rooms where are all that was necessary for the worship and the priests. One arrives then at concealed of Marduk, Ekua, located opposite the entry connecting the interior court outside. At its sides those of the members of its family were, Zarpanitum her parèdre, in north, and of his/her son Nabû, in the south. One found in these vaults the statue of the divinities, who were vêtues every morning by the ministers of religion during a precise ceremony. Two other doors were bored in the frontages north and south of the building, on the other hand one of the other. To the south of the first court a third court was added which one joined by the east.

The importance of this place lets imagine its richness, which one alas found that few things because of many plunderings that it underwent, made running at that time. Hérodote itself claimed to have seen a statue of the gold god, and still quotes other richnesses. One knows by Nabuchodonosor that the walls of Ekua were covered with gold. All furniture, the objects dedicated to the worship of Marduk had a great value. One found of more than many statues of characters and mythological creatures, out of bronze and even out of money. The prestige of Esagil enabled him to become a major economic agent in its region, thanks to the extent of its possessions.

The Enuma Elish, the Epopee of Creation, theological account raising Marduk with the rank of king of the gods, and making of him the creator of the World and the Men, gave also the origin of Esagil. The temple passed to be built by the gods themselves on the first emerged grounds of Apsû, the subterranean water, in the honor of their new king Marduk, as well as themselves. Thus, Esagil was the house of the king of the gods, of which the image (the judicious statue to ensure its real presence) trônait in Ekua, the crowned vault, but also that of all the gods, whose statues were in the other vaults surrounding the interior court (what explains the size of the building). For Mésopotamiens this place, first emerged of chaos, is also the center of the World, the place where was creates any thing being on ground. Therefore Babylon was represented on the charts of the World of Mésopotamiens in the center. But the " center center" , it was Esagil, memory of a time when the Man did not exist yet, the work of the gods. That explains why this place had this importance for the believers of all the country.

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