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Ancient temples and ziggurats world-wide are oriented either to the solstices or the equinoxes. Solstice temples eventually "get out of whack" because the earth's wobble affects where the sun would be seen to rise. Such temples would have to be "re-set" every so often, either by moving a marker as at Stonehenge, or by building a re-oriented new wing onto an existing temple, such as can be seen at the great temples in Egypt. Eqinoctal temples were oriented due east; they were considered "eternal", as was the temple in Jerusalem and in many other sites in the Middle East.

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Most such temples were oriented towards the rising of the sun or a particular star on a particular day, rather than the setting of the sun. For religious and calendar purposes in some parts of the world, the day began at sunset. This was honed even closer when the test of not being able to see the difference between a dark and a white thread is used to determine the absolute beginning of the night. And that is putting Mr. Sitchin's ideas into my own words.

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We in these modern days (I define this as post-Renaissance) have to some extent lost some of the charm of the old temples. I tend to think that we build our "temples" oriented "any old which way", instead of aligning the front doors up so that the first ray of the light of dawn on an equinox will shine straight through to the "holy of holies". This is not to say that many of our most revered buildings do not have this orientation, but, on the ordinary level, in our neighborhood houses of worship, it is the orientation of the frontage on the streets that determine which way a house of worship should face.