Sacred Space & the Temple's Cosmic Center
The temple was not in the world but at its center — the founded bond where heaven touches earth.
Also: temple hymn · Kesh temple hymn · sacred space · cosmic center · bond of heaven and earth · Enheduana
The temple was more than a place of worship; it was understood as the center and foundation of the world. The collection of Sumerian Temple Hymns praises each great sanctuary in turn, and the Kesh Temple Hymn — one of the oldest literary texts known — exalts the temple of the mother-goddess as a thing of awe rising 'like a mountain.' Such hymns present the temple as founded by the gods in the beginning, as the secure bond joining heaven and earth, and as the source from which order and abundance flow to the land. To honor the temple was to honor the structure of the cosmos itself.
In short
The conception of the temple as the cosmic center — the bond of heaven and earth, founded in primeval time, where the divine and human worlds meet.
Where it’s found
'The temple hymns' (ETCSL 4.80.1) and 'The Keš temple hymn' (ETCSL 4.80.2), both in corpus
How the idea developed across Sumer, Babylon & Assyria
The collection of Temple Hymns (attributed by tradition to Enheduana, the Sargonic priestess-poet) and the Keš Temple Hymn are among the oldest Sumerian literary works; they present sacred space as cosmically central, a theology continuous into Babylonian temple ideology (Esagil 'whose top is in heaven').
The traditional attribution of the Temple Hymns to Enheduana is a tradition/ascription, debated by scholars; present as ascribed, not certain.