Mesopotamian temple
Topic: Bronze Age Civilisations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 1 "Writing and City Life"
Meaning
In Mesopotamia a temple was the "house" of a god. It was the first big institution of the towns. Settlements in the south grew from c. 5000 BCE, and the earliest known temple was a small shrine of unbaked brick. Temples had a typical outer wall that went in and out at regular intervals. The god was treated as the owner of fields, fisheries and herds, but only in theory. So the temple organised production: pressing oil, grinding grain, spinning and weaving. It also employed merchants and kept written records of what it handed out.
Example
Ur had a temple to the Moon God. Inanna, Goddess of Love and War, was another major deity. The first writing, on clay tablets from Uruk (c. 3200 BCE), mostly lists oxen, fish and loaves of bread that came into a temple or were given out from it.
Don't confuse with
- Ziggurat: a tall stepped temple tower with a holy place at the top. "Temple" is the wider term for the god's house and all its economic work.