"The battle and the following creation of heaven, earth and mankind were expressed by symbolic acts. Once finished, Marduk led the way back to Babylon. This return may have taken place on the tenth of Nisan, after a grand banquet held in the Festival House. If this ordering of the days is correct, then it was that night, either in the Esagila or in the chapel with the couch on the ziggurat, that the sacred marriage of Marduk and Ishtar, often enacted by the king with the high priestess, was celebrated and the renewal of all nature secured. On the tenth day of Nisan, Marduk and those who had taken part in the procession went into residence in the Bit Akitu, and the next day a special festival was held in the Hall. It may have been then that the conflict was given dramatic representation, concluding with the aforementioned banquet, before a return was made to the Esagila where, as we have seen, there is reason to think that the king and queen engaged in a sacred marriage in a chamber decorated with greenery (the gigunu) on one of the stages of the ziggurat. The rites were directed to the maintenance of the fertility of the fields, the flocks and mankind, since fecundity in nature depended upon the union of the Goddess and the Young virile god, enacted on earth by that of the queen and her consort."

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