The most striking feature of E-temen-anki was naturally the temple-tower itself, which rose high above the surrounding buildings and must have been visible from all parts of the city and from some considerable distance beyond the walls. Its exact form has been the subject of some controversy. Dr. Koldewey rejects the current view, based upon the description of Herodotus,[165] that it consisted of a stepped tower in eight stages, with the ascent to the top encircling the outside. It is true that the excavations have shown that the ascent to the first stage, at any rate, was not of this character, consisting, as it did, of a triple stairway built against one side of the tower;[166] but, as the ground-plan only of the building can now be traced, there is nothing to indicate the form of its upper structure. Dr. Koldewey does not regard the evidence for the existence of stepped towers in Babylonia as satisfactory, and he appears to consider that they depend solely on the description of Herodotus, who, he claims, says nothing about stepped terraces, nor that each stage was smaller than the one below it. He is inclined to reconstruct the tower as built in a single stage, decorated on its face with coloured bands, and surmounted by the temple to which the triple-stairway would have given direct access. This view of its reconstruction is shown in Fig. 28, but its author considers the problem as still unsettled, and suspends his judgment until the Ziggurat at Borsippa, the best preserved of the temple-towers, is excavated.