In this temple was the
statue of Marduk, surrounded by cult images of the cities that had fallen under the
hegemony of the
Babylonian Empire from the 18th century BC; there was also a little lake which was named
Abzu by the Babylonian priests. This
Abzu was a representation of Marduk's father,
Enki, who was god of the waters and lived in the
Abzu that was the source of all the fresh waters.
Esarhaddon, king of the
Neo-Assyrian Empire (681 – 669 BC), reconstructed the temple. He claimed that he built the temple from the foundation to the battlements, a claim corroborated by dedicatory inscriptions found on the stones of the temple's walls on the site. The Esagila complex, completed in its final form by
Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 BC) encasing earlier cores, was the center of Babylon. It comprised a large court (ca. 40×70 meters), containing a smaller court (ca. 25×40 meters), and finally the central shrine, consisting of an anteroom and the inner sanctum which contained the
statues of Marduk and his consort
Sarpanit. According to
Herodotus,
Xerxes had a statue removed from the Esagila when he flooded Babylon in 482 BC, desecrated the Esagila and sacked the city.
Alexander the Great ordered restorations, and the temple continued to be maintained throughout the 2nd century BC, as one of the last strongholds of Babylonian culture, such as literacy in the
cuneiform script, but as Babylon was gradually abandoned under the
Parthian Empire, the temple fell into decay in the 1st century BC. Under the enormous heap of debris that lay over it, Esagila was rediscovered by
Robert Koldewey in November 1900, but it did not begin to be seriously examined until 1910. The rising water table has obliterated much of the
sun-dried brick and other oldest material. Most of the finds at Babylon reflect the
Neo-Babylonian period and later. ==Esagila tablet==