In Mesopotamian belief the city was the result of an act of creation, a tangible sign and visible image of the cosmic order, and a necessary element to guarantee and safeguard the continuation of the creation's order. To demonstrate this we can read a Babylonian liturgical text (CT 35–8), commonly called the Bilingual Creation of the World by Marduk, inserted in a ritual text for the renewal of a temple. There the city is seen as the first act of creation even before the making of the world and the birth of mankind: when all the land was only sea, Eridu was raised from the middle of Apsû, Babylon was built and Esagila was completed.

When a king builds or rebuilds a city he acts, ritually, in the same way as the god of creation in mythical time. This act has strong ideological implications because, as asserted by Liverani, “colloca il re fondatore nella lista degli esseri (in ordine di tempo: divini, eroici, regali) che hanno contribuito all'opera di ordinamento del mondo”. It is from this perspective, proven by a large quantity of extant documentation, that the attention given by the Assyrian kings to the founding of a city has to be evaluated. The building processes of the founding, or most of the time the refounding, of the city are the expression of the state's renewal and of the reconstitution of the cosmic order.