what primary purpose did the mesopotamian ziggurats serve
Ziggurat According to Herodotus, at the top of each ziggurat was a shrine, although none of these shrines have survived.[1] One practical function of the ziggurats was a high place on which the priests could escape rising water that annually inundated lowlands and occasionally flooded for hundreds of kilometres, for example the 1967 flood.[6] Another practical function of the ziggurat was for security. Since the shrine was accessible only by way of three stairways,[7] a small number of guards could prevent non-priests from spying on the rituals at the shrine on top of the ziggurat, such as initiation rituals such as the Eleusinian mysteries, cooking of sacrificial food and burning of carcasses of sacrificial animals. Each ziggurat was part of a temple complex that included a courtyard, storage rooms, bathrooms, and living quarters, around which a city was built.[8]
Tigris–Euphrates river system The ecoregion is characterized by two large rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. The rivers have several small tributaries which feed into the system from shallow freshwater lakes, swamps, and marshes, all surrounded by desert. The hydrology of these vast marshes is extremely important to the ecology of the entire upper Persian Gulf. Historically, the area is known as Mesopotamia. As part of the larger Fertile Crescent, it saw the earliest emergence of literate urban civilization in the Uruk period, for which reason it is often described as a "Cradle of Civilization".