Why were mountain tops sacred to so many ancient cultures, in the Near East especially?

Answer 1

Because the higher people moved the closer to their gods the felt. Early cultures recognized that their Gods were more powerful than them and that they either lived on mountaintops or above the mountains in the sky. For example, Sir Leonard Woolley found ziggurats in Ur, a site in Mesopotamia about 4,000 years old. The ziggurats were similar in shape to mountains and the priests would tend to their Gods in the temple on top of the ziggurats. Many other cultures did the same, particularly in Mesopotamia. Egyptians were one exception, to the southwest of Mesopotamia. Their pyramids were used to bury their kings, and they had very few buildings of significant height. One reason for this is that the Pharaohs themselves were considered by some as Gods living with the people themselves.