From time to time extraordinary days of public humiliation or thanksgiving were ordered to be observed. These were prescribed by the government and were generally the result of some political crisis or danger. When the Assyrian empire, for instance, was attacked by the nations of the north in the early part of Esar-haddon’s reign, public prayers and fasts “for one hundred days and one hundred nights” were ordained by the “prophets” in the hope that the Sun-god might “remove the sin” of the people and stave off the threatened attack. So, again, when Assur-bani-pal had suppressed the Babylonian revolt and taken Babylon after a long siege, he tells us that “at the instance of the prophets he purified the mercy-seats and cleansed the processional roads that had been polluted; the wrathful gods and angry goddesses he appeased with special prayers and penitential psalms.” The temple was erected on ground that had been consecrated by libations of wine, oil, and honey, and was a square or rectangular building enclosing an open court, on one side of which was a _ziggurat_, or “tower.” The tower was built in successive stages, and in the topmost stage was the shrine of the god. Each “tower” had a name of its own, and was used for astronomical purposes. It corresponded with “the high-place” of Canaan; in the flat plain of Babylonia it was only by means of a tower that the worshipper could “mount up to heaven” and so approach the gods. Herodotus states that the topmost story of the tower attached to the temple of Bel Merodach at Babylon contained nothing but a couch and a table. The image of the god stood in the innermost shrine or Holy of Holies of the temple itself. In front of it was the golden table on which the shew-bread was laid, and below was the _parakku_, or “mercy-seat,” whereon, according to Nebuchadnezzar, at the festival of the new year, “on the eighth and eleventh days, the king of the gods of heaven and earth, Bel, the god, seats himself, while the gods of heaven and earth reverently regard him, standing before him with bowed heads.” It was “the seat of the oracles” which were delivered from it by the god to his ministering priests. In front of the shrine was an altar cased in gold, and another altar stood in the outer court. Here also was the great bason of bronze for purificatory purposes, which was called “the deep,” and corresponded with the “sea” of Solomon’s temple. Like the latter, it sometimes stood on the heads of twelve bronze oxen, as we learn from a hymn in which the construction of one of these basons is described. They were supposed to represent the primeval “deep” out of which the world has arisen and on which it still floats.