"For in the view of the old Sumerian astronomical observers, the universe was neither flat nor a sphere, but in the form of a great mountain rising in stages from an infinite sea; and it was this glorious world mountain, marked in its stages by the orbits of the circling spheres--the moon, Mercury, Venus and the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn--that the imposing temple towers were designed to reproduce in local, visible form."

- Joseph Campbell, The Mythic Image