In The Ancient Mesopotamian City, Marc Van de Mieroop writes: “Gods required temples, and temples needed to be located in cities.”¹ Although his remarks are made specifically regarding Mesopotamian religion, his comments seem to summarize the trend of temple-building cultural across the greater Near East through the Iron Age. In figure 1, we can see the temple site locations as points superimposed on a heat map of settlement areas. Ignoring the heat map, it is obvious that the distribution of points across the region correlates along the political boundaries of the prolific building societies in the region which are easily recognizable to anyone with a passing familiarity with 'ancient history'. The sites seem to cluster in along the Nile in Egypt, the fertile crescent in Mesopotamia, and the Levantine coast of the Mediterranean. For comparison, it is useful to observe the heat map, identical in figures 1 and 2, which identifies areas of settlement within the same regional parameters governing the inclusion of temple site data in the project.²

In figure 1 it is clear that with just a few outlying points, the locations of temple sites fall within the areas of settlement. The highest concentration of settlement appears to correlate with the highest concentration of temple sites within modern-day Israel (and Palestinian territories). It is worth noting, that one of the biases of the parameters of this project lies in an emphasis on temple-building: it does not consider destruction, renovation, or re-building. Compared to the ebb and flow of settlement, conquest, and political dissolution across the Levantine region, the religious culture and political unity of Mesopotamian and Egyptian societies might seem relatively stable (only by comparison) until the period of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Thus, it is possible to see new sites settled and new temples built repeatedly over time in the same politically unstable area in a way that is not reflected to the same degree on the scales of seemingly more stable neighboring civilizations. This is not to say that any society in this region was free from factors of instability which might alter patterns of settlement and temple-building, but it is clear that whatever shifts occurred within Egyptian society and religion, for instance, prior to the Persian conquest, the society which was settled and developed along the Nile could arguably be considered Egyptian and the temples built as belonging to Egyptian religious culture.

In figure 2 I have identified temple site locations by 'religion' which requires some explanation in order to be useful to our discussion. Egyptologist Jan Assman describes the inextricable situation of religion and culture in the ancient world: “To speak of Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, and Roman 'religions' means to reconfigure— or even distort— the historical phenomena according to a perception of reality proper to monotheism but alien to 'paganism.' There were no 'religions' in pagan societies, only 'cults' and 'cultures.' 'Religion,' like 'paganism,' is an invention of monotheism.”³ For purposes of this study, I am utilizing the term 'religion' and 'religious culture' interchangeably to describe the religious practices, beliefs, and spaces in these various ancient civilizations. In order to examine temple-building as a factor in, or product of, the development of a religious culture, it is sufficient to our discussion to identify the 'religion' of a particular people with that people.⁴

There can be no doubt that the temples in this dataset which are associated with Egypt and Mesopotamia hold numeric domination over any other religion represented on the map. This reinforces our understanding from figure 1 that the settlement patterns of these various societies are correlated with their temple-building culture. If we accept a connection between ancient Iranian and Persian religions, a close examination of figure 2 would seem to confirm the veracity of Herodotus' statement regarding Persian religious culture. Similarly, we can see a lack of temple-building culture among the Israelites, despite the clear regional preference for temple-based worship. The identification of archaeological remains as ancient Iranian or Israelite temple sites is far from clear, requiring further discussion. Before we turn to consider that, however, it is important to observe the overall trend revealed in this project and figures 1 and 2: temple-building culture is not simply correlated with settlement patterns, it is a significant aspect of settlement-building societies. Figure 2 shows that among the prodigious building societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia, temple-building was not undertaken in moderation or as a rare event. Thus, what can be extrapolated regarding the religions of ancient Iranians and Israelites is that even if temple-building constituted an aspect of religious culture, it was significantly different from that of neighboring religions.⁵ We can understand this more clearly by examining the situation of Mesopotamian temples in an urban context.