Temple-Building & Sacred Architecture
The king dreams the god's command, lays the sacred bricks, and the god comes home to dwell.
Also: temple building · Gudea Cylinders · sacred architecture · the god's house · e · Eninnu · foundation rites
Building or restoring a god's temple was among the highest acts a king could perform. The temple was the god's 'house' (e), and its construction was framed as a sacred drama: the god commissions the work, often in a dream; the king secures the materials, lays the foundations with prescribed rites, and the god takes up joyful residence. Gudea of Lagash devoted two great clay cylinders to the building of Ningirsu's temple — the longest Sumerian literary text — narrating the dream, the bricks, and the god's entry. Temple-building proved a king's piety and secured his city's blessing.
In short
The royal duty and ideology of building, restoring, and provisioning the god's house (Sumerian é, 'house'/temple), portrayed as a sacred commission received in dreams and crowned by the god's joyful entry.
Where it’s found
'The building of Ninĝirsu's temple (Gudea, cylinders A and B)' (ETCSL 2.1.7, in corpus); Neo-Babylonian building inscriptions (akkadian-pending, RINBE)
How the idea developed across Sumer, Babylon & Assyria
The Gudea Cylinders (Lagash, c. 2100 BCE) are the classic Sumerian statement; the genre continues in Akkadian royal building inscriptions down to the Neo-Babylonian kings (Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar II), who likewise narrate temple-building as divine commission. Foundation deposits and rites accompany the ideology materially.