How grain came to Sumer

Sumerian cylinder seal, Uruk, c. 3500-3100BC , currently in Louvre 

Description: cattle herd in a grain field...Now unless Sumerians grew giant grains, this is most likely a symbol, of something, but what?

Well, as I already explained in my post "Bulls and grain bowls", this is a calendar marker for the grain harvest which in Mesopotamia starts in Apr/May, Taurus

Taurus, which is an ancient animal calendar marker which marks the beginning of the calving season of the wild Eurasian cattle, which used to start in Apr/May...

And has nothing to do with stars...I talked about this in my post "Dairy farming seal"...

Keeping that in mind, let's have a look at another interesting cylinder seal from Uruk, dated to 3200BC, also in Louvre. Description: king-priest and his acolyte feeding the sacred herd...

You can see that the king is feeding the calves...So again we are in Taurus, the calving season...But what is the king feeding the calves with? It's hard to see on this impression.

Here is another depiction of the same scene. And here it is pretty clear that the king-priest's acolyte is holding the same giant grain...Which is then what the king is feeding the calves with...

So again, unless Sumerians grew giant grains, this is also a symbol, of the same thing: We harvest grain at the same time the wild Eurasian cattle calve...

And maybe Sumerians had some kind of thanksgiving ritual, where they fed the first calves with first grain? Don't know...

But I have already talked about all this before...So today I would like to talk about something else: How old are some of the Sumerian legends? For instance this one: "How grain came to Sumer"...

In this legend, we can read that: 

"Men used to eat grass with their mouths like sheep. In those times, they did not know grain, barley or flax"

When was this time "before grain" in Mesopotamia?

"An brought these down from the interior of heaven"

What does this mean "the interior of heaven"? 

Look at this: 

Sumerian: kur: n., mountain; highland; (foreign) land; the netherworld...

Sumerian Ekur (𒂍𒆳 É.KUR), is a term meaning "mountain house". The term was applied specifically to the mountain(s), where the gods were born...

And before the later speculative view was developed, according to which the gods, or most of them, have their seats in heaven, it was on the E.KUR mountain(s) where gods dwelt...

So maybe An didn't bring the grain from "the interior of heaven" but from the mountains...

E.KUR (The mountain house) was thus the place of the Assembly of the gods in the "Garden of the gods". Which is why E.KUR was also the name for Ziggurats, which were supposed to be models, imitations of the real, one and only E.KUR...

"Enlil...looked southwards and saw the wide sea; he looked northwards and saw the mountain of aromatic cedars. Enlil piled up the barley, gave it to the mountain..."

"Then Ninazu said: "Let us go to the mountain, to the mountain where barley and flax grow; ...... the rolling river, where the water wells up from the earth. Let us fetch the barley down from its mountain, let us introduce the barley into Sumer..."

Very very interesting...Because that is exactly what happened...around 9000BC...

Today I came across this article: "The distribution, natural habitats and availability of wild cereals in relation to their domestication in the Near East: multiple events, multiple centres" which compares the late Pleistocene/early Holocene archaeobotanical assemblages found in the Near East with present-day distributions of wild cereals...

The early agricultural sites are found in the same areas where the wild grains grow in abundance even today. In the mountains and highlands surrounding (and mainly to the north of) Mesopotamia...Look at the relief of the early cereal domestication sites...

Remember my article about the Garden of eden? You know the garden of the God(s)...Which was located "on the holy mountain"...Where, it turns out, grains grew wild in huge amounts...

Is this the place where during "Golden age humans enjoyed the spontaneous bounty of the earth without labor"? You know, Eden...The place from which 4 rivers emerge...The mountains north of Sumer...

Apart from wild cereals, these uplands are full of edible trees: sweet oaks, hazels, fir, junipers...The true garden of eden: God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds”

I wrote series of articles about human relationship with oaks and human consumption of acorns. It seems that all the earliest permanently settled sites were located in edible acorn rich areas. The jump page to the acorn related articles is called  🙂 "Acorns"

Oak uplands can easily support large villages of up to 1000 people and these people could harvest in 3 weeks enough acorns to last them 2 to 3 years...

Acorns could be stored in above ground aerated bins, in underground pits or they can be buried at the edge of streams where they can get leached while they keep fresh...

The people of these oak cultures could, with very little effort, provide their daily bread doing what god told them to do: eat the fruit of the trees and plants that bear seeds...

With plenty of free time people could enjoy life and develop their culture and technology. With plentiful supply of food there was no need to kill and eat all the animals that were caught...

So people could catch and keep the animals, breed them and eventually domesticate them. It was these animals that were probably first fed the wild grasses which later became our grains...

Interesting, right?

Garden of the gods? So how old is the Sumerian legend about "How grain came to Sumer"? Old, very old...And, considering that cuneiform emerged in Sumer in the late fourth millennium BC, and that grain was brought to Sumer from the northern mountains in the tenth millennium BC, this legend was already 6000 years old before it was possibly first time written down...

Guess what, there could be one even older legend. Found in Europe...But possibly not originating in Europe...

Before people gathered and processed grain, they gathered and processed acorns...

Sooooo???

Have you ever heard about the legend how Pelasgos taught people how to eat acorns? 

Apparently: "...Pelasgos was he who checked the habit of eating green leaves, grasses, and roots always inedible and sometimes poisonous. But he introduced as food the nuts of trees, not those of all trees but only the acorns of the edible oak..." 

I talked about this in my posts "Pelasgos" and "Acorns in ancient texts"...

So how old is this myth? And where did it originate? Lots of things to ponder...

That's it for tonight...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

Bulls and grain bowls

Fragment of a vessel with wheat stalks and a procession of bulls in relief, Late Uruk–Jemdet Nasr, 3300–2900 BC, Southern Mesopotamia. Why bulls and grain? Currently in the Met Museum

Steatite bowl with bulls in relief (5 cm. high). Found in a house of much later (Persian) times; dated stylistically to the Jemdet-Nasr period, 3100–2900 BC, Southern Mesopotamia. Currently in the gallery of the University of North Carolina...

Sumerian limestone bull cup with wheat stalks. Late Uruk–Jemdet Nasr, 3100–2900 BC, Southern Mesopotamia. Why bulls and grain? Sold by Christies...

Why bulls and grain? For the same reason sun god Shamash/Utu was depicted as a bull with a tail made of wheat...

Because it is in Taurus (Apr/May), at the beginning of the hot half of the year, when sun god ascends to his throne, that the grain harvest begins in Mesopotamia...

But this is the old Taurus, which has nothing to do with stars...It is an ancient animal calendar marker which marks the beginning of the calving of the wild Eurasian cattle. 

I talked about this in many posts...

Like "Ram and bull" about the zodiac sings of Aries and Taurus and their link to annual lifecycles of wild sheep and cattle...

Like "Green pastures" about this plaque from Tel Asmar...

Or like "Butt chewing", about this plaque from the first dynasty of Ur...

If you look at the Mesopotamian agricultural calendar, you will notice that: 

Mesopotamian summer (Apr/May-Jul/Aug) started with grain harvest and ended with grain threshing and storage...These are Neolithic sickles from Mesopotamia

I talked about this in my posts "Sickle" and "Seven seals"...

The grain collecting season, summer, which starts in Taurus, is symbolised by a bull, because both calving (begins in Apr/May) and mating (begins in Jul/Aug) of Wild Eurasian cattle takes place during the summer, May to August...

I talked about animal symbols of the seasons in my post "Symbols of the seasons"...

Which is why on the Late Uruk–Jemdet Nasr vessels we see bulls depicted with ripe grain...

Now check Hesiod and what his agricultural calendar has to say about grain: "When the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas, are rising, begin the harvest". 

At the mid 8th century BCE in Bœotia, the heliacal rising of the Pleiades occurred about 47 days after spring equinox, which corresponds approximately to the first week of May...in Taurus...

I talked about this in my post "Hesiod on grain"...

Oh by the way, this is also when the Sacred marriage ceremony between Enki/Ea and Inanna/Ishtar was performed on threshing floors in Mesopotamia...I talked about it in my post "Sacred marriage on the threshing floor"...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

Dairy farming seal

Cylinder seal, c.3200-3000 B.C. Late Uruk-Jemdet Nasr period. Official description:

In the lower field of this seal appear three reed cattle byres (cow sheds). Each byre is surmounted by three reed pillars topped by rings, a motif that has been suggested as symbolizing a male god, perhaps Dumuzi... (question here: why?)

Within the huts calves or vessels appear alternately; from the sides come calves that drink out of a vessel between them. Above each pair of animals another small calf appears. A herd of enormous cattle moves in the upper field...

This is a very interesting seal. First I think that it is a calendar marker. The cattle are the wild eurasian cattle, aurochs, which start calving in Apr/May. This is what the original Taurus animal calendar marker marked...

I talked about this in my post "Ram and bull"...

This is a super important part of the year in Mesopotamia. The peak of the water levels of Tigris and Euphrates. The annual flood...Which was believed to be caused by Enki, the god of fresh water...

Water level charts:

Tigris

Euphrates

Which is why, in "Enki and the world order" we read: "...Father Enki...he stood up full of lust like a rampant bull, lifted his penis, ejaculated and filled the Tigris with flowing water. He was like a wild cow mooing for its young in the wild grass..." 

I talked about this in my post "Shamash young and old"...

The houses depicted on the seal are the houses of the so called Marsh Arabs...The annual flood which coincides with the beginning of the aurochs calving season used to turn the central Mesopotamia into this 

I talked about this in my post "Enki's little boat"...

You can see cattle, sheep and goats inside of pens, enclosures, located next to houses...Not inside of the houses...Which makes me doubt whether the buildings depicted on the seal are indeed cattle byres...

So what is depicted on this seal?

What is very interesting is that one of them is full of calves and the other one is full of ceramic vessels...What could this mean?

Is it possible that this is a very early depiction of butter production? Like humans, cows only produce milk after they have given birth...Almost all calves are separated from cows within hours or days of birth, so that they don't drink all the milk the cows produce...

So if you want to milk the cows, you would take the calves away from their mothers, and put them into a separate object, a calves shed. You would then milk the cows, take part of the milk for yourself and give part of it to the calves...

This would explain that only calves are depicted in the so called cattle byres. And this would also explain why the calves are drinking out of vessels...But what about the pots? Well, I think they could be butter churns and butter storage vessels...

Exactly that is depicted on the frieze from the temple at Ubaid, near Ur, in southern Mesopotamia. Dating from ca. 2,500 B.C., this frieze has been cited as "the earliest absolute evidence for the use of milk"...

Here is the same scene drawn, so you can see the details more clearly. The drawing is from this interesting paper: "Cows, milk and religion: the use of dairy produce in early societies"... 

Top row shows cows being milked with their calves tied around their necks...

Bottom row shows calves in their separate shed, separated from their mothers, who are now milked for their milk, which is then turned into butter, by the man in the middle...

Cows, milk and religion: "Milk quickly turned sour in the hot climate of Early Mesopotamia and as a consequence appears not to have been consumed to any great extent by adults. It was fed to young babies [and calves]...but was mainly processed to make butter and cheese"...

"The early texts indicate that Sumerian butter and cheese were made from soured milk...The fact that the early sources note that the butter was poured and stored in similar vessels to other liquids indicates that butter was clarified to form ghee"...

"Butter would first have been produced in solid form and then boiled in order to remove the water content. It is the water in solid butter that causes it to turn rancid but conversion to ghee increases its life for up to a year"...

"Ghee would have had similar uses to olive oil, the latter being little used in early Mesopotamia...Ghee also had non-culinary uses. One Ur III (2112-2004 BC) text indicates that it was used for sealing the hulls of boats"...

So that would explain the scene depicted on the original seal. In the left house we see amphoras for storing ghee on the left and butter churns on the right. And in the right house we see calves...Calves which drink from the same vessels...Indicating they are drinking milk...

This is super cool. Why? Cows, milk and religion: "The evidence for "dairying" in Mesopotamia...are virtually

absent from Uruk IV (3200-3100 BC) texts but become plentiful during the Uruk III (3100-3000BC). This may indicate an expansion in the use of dairy produce at this time"

The original seal is from 3200-3000 BC...So from the time of the sudden arrival of dairying to Mesopotamia...So this could actually be the oldest depiction of a dairying scene found in Mesopotamia, predating the Ubaid frieze by half a millennium...

Where did dairying arrive from so suddenly? In this article "Milk, butter, cheese" I talked about early butter churns from Neolithic Levant, Anatolia and Central Europe...Things that looked like this:

These vessels were filled with milk from the top, then hanged from a tree or a tripod and swung to shake the milk inside the vessel and separate butter from milk liquid...

These ceramic butter churns were clay versions of much older sheep (or goat) skin churns, like this one on the picture, which were still used by Beduins, Arabs, Kurds and Iranians until the 20th century...

Cows, milk and religion: "[according to the early textual and graphic depictions]...the butter was churned in earthenware vessels...the skin bags used for butter making are rarely mentioned in the early Sumerian texts"...

That is very interesting...The butter churn depicted on the Ubaid frieze looks very much like this: traditional Indian butter churn...

Why? Did dairying arrive to Mesopotamia from the east and not from the west?

Cows, milk and religion: "[After suddenly appearing during 3100-3000BC]...records of dairy produce tend to decline from the Old Babylonian period (2000-1600BC) onwards and are rare in Babylonian or Assyrian sources"...

Why? Is this sudden appearance and disappearance of the dairying records in some way linked to sudden appearance and disappearance of dairy liking people?

Cows, milk and religion: "Cattle, however, were not kept primarily for their milk and their main role appears to be the provision of traction. Old Babylonian texts record a price of 7 ⅔ shekels for a fully grown milking cow, compared with 12 shekels for a draft ox"...

But that was after the decline of dairying in Mesopotamia...Very strange...To me anyway...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

Marble copy of the Mask of Warka

This is the so called "Mask of Warka", made between 3300 BC and 3000 BC. It was found in the temple precinct of Inanna, Uruk (today village of Warka)...

Everyone is raving about this piece of art because it is considered to be the first anatomically correct depiction of the human face in Mesopotamia.

What I find absolutely amazing, is that no one is commenting on the fact that the head is actually carved out of marble, but in a way as to mimmic a head sculpted out of clay. Look at the hair. It looks like crudely fashioned with few thumb strokes going from back forward...

Was this an exact marble copy of previously existing clay head?

To me it looks like someone made a quick sketch of a human head in clay, and told a stonemason: this is how you do it. So he did. He copied everything exactly as he saw on the model. To the last detail... 

Here is another picture of the Mask of Warka, uder different light, which makes it look like it was made of clay. 

Look at the eyebrows. They look like they were gouged by a single stroke of a sharp piece of reed or wood through a soft clay. To me this is totally fascinating...

I mean even the eyes look like they were cut by a sharp knife in a single stroke. Look at the bottoms of both eyes, the thin lip of the material sticking out, like it was pressed out and down during the cutting movement. And was just left like that, like in a quick sketch...

How did this stay unnoticed I have no idea. Or maybe it was noticed but I haven't come across the article that talks about it...

But then we have the most delicately and beautifully sculpted bottom half of the head. The chin, lips, cheeks (and probably nose before it was broken off) are so life like. They are perfect...In sharp contrast to the top part of the head which was left "half finished"...

It gets curiouser and curiouser the more you look at this thing...

I think that the reason why the top part was left the way it is (sketched or unfinished or unpolished, called it what you want) is because the top of the head was covered with the wig, false eyebrows were inserted into the eyebrow groves and false eyes, with false eyelashes were inserted into eye sockets...

Which would make the "sketched" or "unfinished" or "unpolished" parts of the head invisible, and which is why the artist didn't bother to finish them. 

What is strange is that if you were doing this head straight out of a piece of stone, the unfinished parts wouldn't look like this

But they would look exactly like this if you made the head out of clay. 

What I think happened is that there was another, earlier, original, clay head, of which this stone head is a copy. It had a wig, false eyebrows and false eyes, which covered the "unfinished bits"...

That head was sacred. It could even have been a depiction of Inanna. And you don't mess with Inanna. You definitely don't change the head of the goddess, if you were told to make a stone copy of her miraculous idol, which was made in her likeness, who knows when...So you copy it exactly...

It's like the icons painters who copy icons exactly, because they believe that they are miraculous, sacred, exactly the way they are...

Etemenanki

There is a strange object that could be seen on Mesopotamian stelas, cylinder seals and reliefs. It is held by a god or goddess and in a lot of cases is being offered to a king who is standing, often making a sacrifice, or otherwise showing respect. The symbol dates from the Neo-Sumerian Empire (c. 22nd to 21st century BC) to the Neo-Assyrian Empire (c. 911 and 609 BC).

The best known examples of the symbol are from Code of Hammurabi stela

and the Burney Relief (also known as the Queen of the Night relief)

This object is commonly known as "Rod and Ring" symbol and is explained as depiction of  a measuring string and a yardstick.

The myth of Inanna's descent to the nether world describes how the goddess dresses and prepares herself: "She held the lapis-lazuli measuring rod and measuring line in her hand..."

The actual reason why gods and goddesses would hold such things as measuring rod and measuring line and why kings would be so grateful to receive such mundane objects is a mystery. 

I love solving mysteries :)

So here is my proposal what this all means:

I believe that Sumerian mysterious symbol "measuring rod and measuring line" was the precursor of the "square and compasses" and it has exactly the same meaning. 

In my post "Square and compasses" I talked about thy symbolism of these two measuring tools. 

I explained how ancient Hebrews saw the universe as a stone built structure with the stone flat Earth as the base and the stone Heavenly dome as the roof. 

Knowing this, the idea of God as the Great Mason, Great Architect who built heaven and earth starts making a lot of sense. Only the Great Mason, the Great Architect could have built such a magnificent stone universe...

That architect would have used the Compasses to draw the top of the universe, the great stone semi circular dome of Heavens. He would also have used the Square to draw the bottom of the universe, the great stone flat earth. 

And this is exactly how the Compasses and Square are positioned in the Masonic symbol: the Compasses at the top, representing the Heavens, the Square at the bottom, representing the Earth. 

Life is the product of the constant interaction of Sky and Earth. Life is the product of the Sacred Marriage of Sky Father and Earth Mother. 

This is a doodle that got me into trouble when I was in primary school. Father (top) and Mother (bottom) in an act of creating life :)

Looks familiar? Well it should be. It is the above Square (Mother Earth) and Compasses (Father Sky) image again...

Hebrew mythology owes a lot to Sumerians. 


And Sumerians saw the sky as Father God An and Earth as Mother Goddess Ki. They believed that An (Sky Father) and Ki (Earth mother) mated and produced basically everything there is including all life. 

Sumerians also believed that both sky dome and flat earth were built out of stone. Basically the world to them looked like this

Ok but what about measuring rod and measuring line?

Well if you were a builder and you wanted to draw a straight line, you would use a measuring stick. But if you wanted to draw an arch or a circle, you would not use compasses. You would use measuring line. Like this:

You take the measuring line, tie it to the central pole and then walk around the pole. As you walk you mark a circle with the centre in the pole. This predates compasses. Also, you can't use compasses to draw large arches or circles. You have to use measuring line. 

I talked about this in my post "Boaz and Jachin". 

So the original symbol of a mason was indeed a measuring rod and measuring line.

There is actually Serbian saying "Pomoću štapa i kanapa" (Using stick and rope) meaning "in the old primitive way"...

Here is what the measuring rod and line would have looked like separate and being held together:

These two objects represent Heaven (Sky) and Earth. Sky Father and Earth mother. They represent the power of Sky and Earth to create and destroy life. 

The absolute power. 

And the reason why gods were giving these tools to the kings is to remind them of their duty to build ziggurats...

I believe that building ziggurats was one of the main duties of kings in Mesopotamia. 

Why?

This is Ziggurat of An from Uruk. 

Built during 4th millennium BC it was 21 meters tall. Sometime at the end of the 4th millennium BC, the massive White Temple was built atop of the ziggurat. The Stone Temple was built of limestone and bitumen on a podium of rammed earth and plastered with lime mortar. The podium itself was built over a woven reed mat called "giparu", a word which originally referred a reed mat used ritually as a nuptial bed but took on the meaning as the source of abundance which radiated upward into the structure...

Sumerians believed that the rain was Sky God's semen and that when it fell down it fertilised the Mother Earth, who then gave birth to food. 

No holly loving, no munching...

And to Sumerians living during the second half of the the 3rd millennium, it must have seemed like Sky God have completely lost interest in Mother Earth. 

The third millennium BC was time of catastrophic weather events which caused chaos across early Bronze Age civilisations. Droughts and floods devastated many areas around the world. The worst of those weather events was the so called "4.2 kiloyear event". 

The 4.2-kiloyear BP aridification event was one of the most severe climatic events of the Holocene epoch. It defines the beginning of the current Meghalayan age in the Holocene epoch. Starting in about 2200 BC, it probably lasted the entire 22nd century BC. It has been hypothesised to have caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt as well as the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, and the Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangtze River area. The drought may also have initiated the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation, with some of its population moving southeastward to follow the movement of their desired habitat, as well as the migration of Indo-European speaking people into India. The below map shows global distribution of the 4.2 kiloyear event. The hatched areas were affected by wet conditions or flooding, and the dotted areas by drought or dust storms.

In Mesopotamia this weather event had horrendous effects. By 2100 BC, drought, soil erosion and salt buildup have devastated agriculture. One Sumerian wrote that the "earth turned white."

The Sky God seemed to have lost interest in Mother Earth and his people. The result was hunger, abandonment of cities and eventual civilisation collapse and fall under the foreign rule. 

Archaeological evidence documents widespread abandonment of the agricultural plains of northern Mesopotamia and dramatic influxes of refugees into southern Mesopotamia, around 2170 BC. A 180-km-long wall, the "Repeller of the Amorites," was built across central Mesopotamia to stem nomadic incursions to the south. Around 2150 BC, the Gutian people, who originally inhabited the Zagros Mountains, defeated the demoralised Akkadian army, took Akkad, and destroyed it around 2115 BC....

Lament for the Destruction of Ur, ancient Sumerian composition bewailing the collapse of the 3rd Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 – c. 2004 BC) in southern Mesopotamia. The lament, primarily composed of 11 "songs" or stanzas of unequal length, begins by enumerating some of the prominent cities and temples of Sumer and the deities who had deserted them. In the second “song,” the people of Ur and of other cities of Sumer are urged to set up a bitter lament. The third “song” relates that the goddess Ningal hears the pleas of the people of Ur, but she is not able to dissuade the gods Anu and Enlil from their decision to destroy the city, and the remaining “songs” relate the devastating results of Ur’s defeat in battle. 

At some stage, probably during this period, the white temple at the top of the ziggurat of An in Uruk was ritually destroyed and covered with alternating layers of clay and stone, then excavated and filled with mortar sometime later.

Is it because the god to whom it was dedicated abandoned his people and people in return abandoned their god?

The next great ziggurat to be built, the greatest ziggurat of them all, was dedicated to Marduk (Basically the same old Sky Father An under a different name). Its name was Etemenanki and this ziggurat was very interesting indeed.  

This is Etemenanki a ziggurat built in the ancient city of Babylon. Originally 91 meters in height, it now exists only in ruins.

A number of scholars have suggested that this ziggurat had one purpose: to hold a shrine where the scene of the sacred marriage, the central rite of the great new year festival was performed every year. Herodotus describes the furnishing of the shrine on top of the ziggurat at Babylon and says it contained a great golden couch on which a woman spent the night alone. Well not alone. Having sex with Marduk, Sky. Or possibly a priest pretending to be Marduk. Which is ok, because the woman was pretending to be Ki, Earth. The holly marriage, the marriage between Sky (Heaven) and Earth, between Sky Father and Earth Mother had to be consummated, or there would be no food, no life...

It is unclear when the temple of Sky-Earth was built, but it is accepted that it might have already existed in the 2nd millennium BC. 

Was it built even earlier? 

I would say that it was built probably at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, right during the great drought (c. 22nd to 21st century BC) and right about the time when we see the first depictions of the "measuring rod and measuring line" being given to the kings by gods. 

Believe or not, archaeologists are still debating the reason why Sumerians built ziggurats. To me it is pretty clear that the purpose of ziggurats was to bring the earth closer to the sky in order to help Father sky to consummate his marriage with Mother Earth. 

They were dedicated to Sky Gods in a way that people hoped Sky Gods would visit the ziggurat tops, take the offerings left there and do their duty (spill their semen on the Mother Earth).

That this was the purpose of the ziggurats can be seen from the name of the daddy of all ziggurats: Etemen An Ki (Sumerian É.TEMEN.AN.KI 𒂍𒀭𒆠 "temple of the foundation (support) of heaven and earth")  

I left the best bit for the end:

Historians believe that building of Etemen An Ki possibly inspired the biblical story of the building of the Tower of Babel. 

In Hebrew and Christian tradition, the Tower of Babel was built by legendary king Nimrod, the "mighty hunter before god" who ruled over the cities of Babel, Erech, Akkad, and perhaps Calneh, in Shinar.

Since Accad (Babylonian Akkad) was destroyed and lost with the destruction of its Empire in the period 2200–2154 BCE (during the 4.2 kiloyear event), the stories mentioning Nimrod seem to recall the period just before the collapse of the Akkadian empire. The association with Erech (Babylonian Uruk), a city that lost its prime importance around 2,000 BCE as a result of above mention catastrophic weather event and subsequent struggles between Isin, Larsa and Elam, also attests the early provenance of the stories of Nimrod. 

So was the Tower of Babel built before the 4.2 kiloyear event (2200-2100 BC) or during or after?

I believe during...

Jewish and Christian legends say that Nimrod built the tower of Babel to show that he is as great as God (The Great Mason, Great Architect). This apparently pissed god off a lot...

But I believe that Etemen An Ki was built so high "as to touch the sky" in a desperate attempt to "bring Mother Earth as close to Father Sky as possible" so that he might decide to lay with her again and pour his semen (rain) on the parched Mother Earth. 

Interestingly it is the building of the Tower of Babel which is said to have been the first project done by Masons whose symbol is Square and Compasses...Or should we say Measuring rod and Measuring line...And Nimrod is regarded as the first Mason...

Nimrod figures in some very early versions of the history of Freemasonry, where he was said to have been one of the fraternity's founders. According to the Encyclopedia of Freemasonry: "The legend of the Craft in the Old Constitutions refers to Nimrod as one of the founders of Masonry"...

Lets have a look at Hammurabi stela again:

The description of the scene is: Hammurabi (standing), depicted as receiving his royal insignia from Shamash (or possibly Marduk)...

What Hammurabi is receiving from Marduk is measuring rod and measuring line. This is very interesting. So by 19th century BC, the symbols of the Great Mason, Great Architect became "royal insignia"! 

What the Sky God is saying to the king is: here are the Mason tools. Use them to build a temple to me. The high place where I will mate with Earth Goddess. Build it and you will rule, in my name...The symbol basically represented covenant with Sky God...

This is all very interesting. Don't you think?