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]
Garden of Eden According to the Bible, the location of Eden is described in the Book of Genesis, chapter 2, verses 10â€“14 as the source of four tributaries. However, the Garden of Eden is considered to be mythological by most scholars.[11][12][13][14] Among those that consider it to have been real there have been various suggestions for its location:[15] for example, at the head of the Persian Gulf, in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq) where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run into the sea;[16] and in the Armenian Highlands or Armenian Plateau,[17][18][19] among other proposed locations.