Sacred Space & the Temple's Cosmic Center

The temple was more than a place of worship; it was understood as the center and foundation of the world. The collection of Sumerian Temple Hymns praises each great sanctuary in turn, and the Kesh Temple Hymn — one of the oldest literary texts known — exalts the temple of the mother-goddess as a thing of awe rising 'like a mountain.' Such hymns present the temple as founded by the gods in the beginning, as the secure bond joining heaven and earth, and as the source from which order and abundance flow to the land. To honor the temple was to honor the structure of the cosmos itself.