The Temples of Babylon Interest has naturally centred around the excavation of the five great temples of Babylon, the ground-plans of four of which have been laid bare. The temple of E-Makh, dedicated to the goddess Nin-Makh was the first to be excavated. It contains one of the only two altars found in Babylon, a structure of plain, crude brick, simple and unadorned, which stands outside its main entrance. As the only other example in the city occupies an exactly similar position, we must conclude that custom or ritual dictated an exterior site for the sacrificial altar. The temple of Nin-Makh was a simple shrine of mere mud-brick, decorated with black and white designs superimposed upon a scanty coating of whitewash. Nin-Makh (the great lady) was one of the titles of Ishtar. The temple appears to have been built round a large court, and to have been entered by a gateway flanked by a series of square, solid towers, three on either side. There is a long, narrow passage behind the shrine, which probably gave access to a concealed opening in the back wall of the temple behind the image of the goddess, who could thus have been made to give forth oracular utterances. In the courtyard was a well from which water was drawn for the purpose of performing lustral rites. We are ignorant of the precise form of the upper part of Babylonian temples (apart from the _zikkurats_ or towers), as only the lower portions of their walls in most cases remain to us. But from certain plaques and seals on which temples are represented we can glean that they were probably turreted or castellated in front and perhaps at the sides as well, and that the entrance was arched, the frontage presenting a picture not very unlike that of a heavily constructed castle of the Norman epoch. Indeed one unidentified temple bears resemblance to a prison, so forbidding is it in its almost unbroken line of turret and retaining wall. We must remember, however, that colour lent embellishment to these buildings, the otherwise heavy façades of which would have been dreary indeed. E-Sagila