But let us pause, to repeat: We have named the Proto-Neolithic period of the Natufians, c. 9000 B.C., where the first signs of an incipient grain agriculture appear; the Basal Neolithic of the Aceramic, Ceramic, and Early Chalcolithic villages, c. 7500-4500 B.C., when the mother goddess of an already well-established peasantry makes her first dramatic appearance; then the High Neolithic (Middle and Late Chalcolithic) of the Halaf and Samarra painted wares, c. 4500 B.C., when the abstract concept of a geometrically organized aesthetic field first appears and the late Neolithic market towns begin to elevate temple towers; and now, finally, we have come to an epochal date c. 3200 B.C., when, suddenly, at precisely that geographical point where the rivers Tigris and Euphrates reach the Persian Gulf, the wonderful culture-flower comes to blossom of the hieratic city state.45
The whole city now (not simply the temple area) is conceived as an imitation on earth of the celestial order–a sociological middle cosmos, or mesocosm, between the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of the individual, making visible their essential form: with the king in the center (either as sun or as moon, according to the local cult) and an organization of the walled city, in the manner of a mandala, about the central sanctum of the palace and the ziggurat; and with a mathematically structured calendar, furthermore, to regulate the seasons of city’s life according to the passages of the sun and moon among the stars; as well as a highly developed system of ritual arts, including an art of rendering audible to human ears the harmony of the visible celestial spheres. It is at this moment that the art of writing first appears in the world, and that literately documented history begins. It is at this moment that the wheel appears. And we have also evidence that the two numerical systems that are still normally employed throughout the civilized world had just been developed, namely, the decimal and the sexagesimal: the former used for business accounts in the offices of the temple compounds, where the grain was stored that had been collected in taxes, and the latter used for the ritualistic measuring of space and time: three hundred and sixty degrees still represent the circumference of the circle–that is to say, the mandala of space; while three hundred and sixty days, plus five, mark the measurement of the mandala of time, the cycle of the year. And those five intercalated days–which represent the opening through which spiritual energy flows into the sphere of time from the pleroma of eternity, and which, consequently, are days of feast and festival–correspond in the temporal mandala to that mystical point in the center of the spatial mandala which is the sanctuary of the temple, where the earthly and heavenly powers join in. The four sides of the temple, oriented to the four points of the compass, come together at this fifth point, where the energy of the pleroma enters time–and so once again we have the number five added to three hundred and sixty to symbolize the mystery of the immanence of eternity in time. (FWG 120-2)
