Editing Ziggurat (section)

==Interpretation and significance==
[[File:قصر الزقورة.jpg|thumb|[[Al Zaqura Building]] in Baghdad, constructed in the 1970s]]
According to [[Herodotus]], at the top of each ziggurat was a shrine, although none of these shrines have survived.{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=73}} Functionally, ziggurats offered a high place on which priests could escape rising water that annually inundated lowlands and occasionally flooded for hundreds of kilometers.<ref>Aramco World Magazine, March–April 1968, pp. 32–33</ref> They also offered security; since the shrine was accessible only by way of three stairways,{{sfn|Crawford|1993|p=75}} a small number of guards could prevent non-priests from spying on the rituals at the shrine on top of the ziggurat, such as initiation rituals like the [[Eleusinian mysteries]], cooking of sacrificial food and burning of sacrificial animals. Each ziggurat was part of a temple complex that included a courtyard, storage rooms, bathrooms, and living quarters, around which a city spread,{{sfn|Oppenheim|1977|pages=112, 326–328}} as well as a place for the people to worship. It was considered to be a sacred structure.