“[T]he word ziqqurat (sometimes transcribed ziggurat or zikkurat) comes from a verb zaquru, which simply means ‘to build high’. . . . All considered, perhaps the best definition of the ziqqurat is given by the Bible (Genesis xi. 4), where it is said that the ‘Tower of Babel’ (i.e. the ziqqurat of Babylon) was meant ‘to reach unto heaven’. In the deeply religious mind of the Sumerians these enormous, yet curiously light constructions were ‘prayers of bricks’ as our Gothic cathedrals are ‘prayers of stone.’ They extended to the gods a permanent invitation to descend on earth at the same time as they expressed one of man’s most remarkable efforts to rise above his miserable condition and to establish closer contacts with the divinity.”

—Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, third edition, 1992.