erected in accordance with recognized
custom follows from De Sarzec's discovery of two enormous round columns
within the sacred quarter of Lagash.[1350] In the light of Peters'
excavations, the significance of the columns at Lagash becomes clear.
Unfortunately, De Sarzec's excavations at Lagash at the point of the
mound in question were interrupted, but he gives reasons for believing
that other columns existed near the two large ones found by him.[1351]
There is, therefore, every reason to conclude that at Lagash, as at
Nippur and no doubt elsewhere, the two columns belonged to a great
gateway leading into a large court of columns. That these columns served
a symbolic purpose in the Babylonian temple as they did at Jerusalem,
cannot be maintained with certainty, but is eminently likely.

The court of columns was surrounded by a series of rooms. If the view
taken of the building is correct, these rooms were used for the temple
administration. However this may be, there can be no doubt that the
structures of various size found around the zikkurat at Nippur served as
dwellings for the priests and the temple attendants, as stalls for the
temple cattle, as shops for the manufacture and sale of votive objects,
and the like. Within the temple area proper were the schools where young
priests were trained to be scribes, and received instructions in the
doctrines and rites. The astronomical observatories, too, were situated
near the temple. The schools served, as they still do in the orient, as
the gathering-place of the mature scholars. The systematized pantheon,
and the cosmological and astronomical systems represent the outcome of
the intellectual activity that manifested itself within the sacred
quarters of the cities of Babylonia. The execution of justice being in
the hands of the priests, the sacred area also contained the rooms where
the judges sat. It is interesting to note that Gudea mentions a hall of
judgment in the temple to Nin-girsu at Lagash. The number of such
buildings attached to the temple precinct varied, of course, according
to the needs and growth of each place. In Nippur, the numbers appear to
have been very large. We may assume, likewise, that at Sippar, Uruk, Ur,
and Larsa the zikkurat was the center of a considerable group of
buildings, while at Babylon in the days of her greatest power, the
temple area of E-Sagila must have presented the appearance of a little
city by itself, shut off from the rest of th