The Cylinder of Gudea Temple Building in Sumerian Period

In the tradition of Agamas the temple is the central point in worship. The tradition of Agamas we cansee in several of the Sumerian and Akkadian texts handed down to us. We read in poems like „the exaltation of In Anna“ written by the priestess Anna around 2300 b. C. various metaphysicalthoughts, which we find in the later Agama and Tantric texts of ancient India. From these texts, weunderstand and see clearly, the tradition of Agamas is Non-Vedic in philosophical thought and is pre-Vedic. We read in the literature of the Brahmana in ancient India on the existence of Non-Vedicpeople, which worship their gods in icon form and follow a Non-Vedic tradition. From this it is clearthe tradition of Agamas is existent in the entire territory of the Vedic settlements from the earliesttime in history. The handed down texts from the Princess Anna is for our knowledge on the ancientAgamas of greatest importance. The title of the priestess Anna was En Hudu Anna, which means theheavenly star. She was the daughter of King Sargon the Great, the founder of the Akkadian Empire. In previous volumes we have given her poem „exaltation of In-Anna“ and her „hymns from the temple of Kes“ with a detailed analyses of the metaphysical thought found inside. In these texts we sawalready the importance of the temple as the central point of the worship and the common life in thecity states of the ancient Sumerian period. We have in the cylinder of Gudea, who was a governor ofthe Sumerian city state Lagas, a number of cylinder texts, which give to us an insight into the buildingof the Sumerian Temple. A study of these texts will increase our understanding for the metaphysical thoughts of Agamas very much. The cylinder texts of Gudea we can date in a time of around 2100 b.C.

The Sumerian word for temple is e and in Akkadian we have the word bitu for the temple. This wordis used not only for the temple; it was used for the house as well during the entire Sumerian andAkkadian Period. The plan for the house is for the domestic houses and the temples of three parts.They consisted of a long inside room, which got entered on the long side and some outer rooms oneach side. This was in use from the time of the Ubaid Period ~ 5th millennium b. C. through the periodof Uruk until to the Early Dynastic Period 2900-2350 b. C.

We find the earliest Sumerian temple in Eridu, which is of the greatest importance, because it is theplace of the God Enki, the chief god of Eridu. Here in this temple we find the plan, which elements wefind followed in the later temples as well. In later times we find the temple with a courtyard, this was an open courtyard with rooms on all sides. We have temples excavated by archaeology, which showmore than only one courtyard and these temples with courtyard we find in the poems from priestessAnna mentioned and described. In the time of the Early Dynastic Period we find oval temples. They are called oval temple because of the wall of an oval shape around the temple. The temple, which is known as a platform temple we find already in the Ubaid Period. This was in later times developed to the ziqqurat, which is a kind of platform temple which was built in stages and one could climb up by stairs from one stage to the next. The upper stage was the place of the temple shrine, but no onecould be discovered by archaeology.

The temple was understood from the ancient Sumerians as a house, which was inhabited by thegods. This house is an image of the human household and was the household of a divine pair. Thegods took their place in the building of the temple according to their divine place in hierarchy of thegods. The temple was the central place in the village, city and city states. It was the place of worshipand service to the gods in every aspect. It was the place of justice of the royal organized state. Theking was a servant of the god, which we find in the rituals depicted. The temple as the house of adeity brought the various elements of the people´s world into an easy understandable world. In thetemples the religious traditions got preserved and in the texts of the temple building we find thesetraditions collected. We have at least three different traditions of temple building. The first keepstheir local tradition, from which nothing is found in the official documents, but which could be seenin the administrative texts of the specific temple. The second is tradition kept the tradition of thetemple regarding the main and secondary gods and goddesses. This is what we see here in the Gudeatexts. The third level crossed the boundaries of the city states and was the Sumerian religioustradition. We see in the 3rd millennium a change of the power from the southern part to the northern part, when Kis became the political centre, while Nippur became the religious centre of Sumer. Therewas the God Enlil the chief god of Nippur and got the highest importance in the pantheon. The temple was the image of the state and went on in analogy to the ruler of the city, who was the head of the political, economic, administrative and military force of the state. The same was done to the religious tradition, which got brought together in Nippur under the rule of Enlil, who was the chiefgod of the Sumerian pantheon in this third millennium. This is reflected by the archaeological, iconographic and written sources handed down to us.

The ruler of the city was requested by the religious thoughts for to build, restore and rebuild temples. The building of the temple was the most important ritual for the ruler and is shown in the ritual procedure for the building of the temple. In the texts from the Gudea cylinder we get the complete ritual of the temple construction from its beginning to the end.