It is as builders that the primitive Chaldaean people, the progenitors of the Babylonians, first appear before us in history; and it was on his buildings that the great king of the later Empire, Nebuchadnezzar, specially prided himself.

When Herodotus visited Babylon he was struck chiefly by its extraordinary edifices; and it is the account which the Greek writers gave of these erections that has, more than anything else, procured for the Babylonians the fame that they possess and the position that they hold among the six or seven leading nations of the old world.
The architecture of the Babylonians seems to have culminated in the Temple.

While their palaces, their bridges, their walls, even their private houses were remarkable, their grandest works, their most elaborate efforts, were dedicated to the honor and service, not of man, but of God.

The Temple takes in Babylonia the same sort of rank which it has in Egypt and in Greece.

It is not, as in Assyria, a mere adjunct of the palace.