It may further be noted that this exterior position of the altar corresponds to Hebrew usage, according to which the main altar was erected in the outer court in front of the temple proper. Thus Solomon's brazen altar, which under Phoenician influence took the place of earlier altars of earth or unhewn stone,[127] stood before the temple.[128] The altar within the Hebrew temple was of cedar-wood,[129] and it was clearly not a permanent structure embedded in the pavement, for Ezekiel refers to it as a "table," and states that it "was of wood."[130] It was more in the nature of a table for offerings, and it may be inferred that in earlier times it served as the table upon which the shewbread was placed before Yahwe.[131] The complete absence of any trace of a permanent altar within the Babylonian temples can only be due to a similar practice; the altars or tables within the shrines must have been light wooden structures, and they were probably carried off or burnt when the temples were destroyed. There is of course no need to regard this resemblance as due to direct cultural influence or borrowing. But we may undoubtedly conclude that we here have an example of parallelism in religious ritual between two races of the same Semitic stock. What the Sumerian practice was in this respect we have as yet no means of ascertaining; but in such details of cult it is quite possible that the Semitic Babylonians substituted their own traditional usages for any other they may have found in the country of their adoption. The temple of Ninmakh itself, like all the others in Babylon, was built of crude brick, and though its walls were covered with a thin plaster or wash of lime, only the simplest form of decoration in black and white was attempted, and that very sparingly.[132] The fact that the practice of building in mud-brick should have continued at a time when kiln-burnt and enamelled brick was lavished on the royal palaces, is probably to be explained as a result of religious conservatism. The architectural design does not differ in essentials from that employed for buildings of a military character. It will be seen that the long exterior walls of E-makh resemble those of a fortification, their surface being broken up by slightly projecting towers set at regular intervals.[133] Larger rectangular towers flank the gateway, and two others, diminishing in size and probably also in height, are ranged on either side of them. The vertical grooves, which traverse the exterior faces of the towers from top to bottom, constitute a characteristic form of temple embellishment, which is never found on buildings of a secular character. They may be either plain rectangular grooves, or more usually, as in E-makh, are stepped when viewed in section.[134]