A video on the second floor features different hypotheses on the purpose and function of Maiden Tower.
For some scholars, it was a Zoroastrian temple. The dead were laid on the top of the temple as food for the birds, then the bones were slid down pipes in the walls and buried. On this basis they date Maiden Tower to the 8th -7th centuries BCE. Some scholars believe that the Tower was a fortified part of the Shirvanshahs’ defensive structure and was used to send signals from the top to other towers in times of danger. Since Maiden Tower is aligned so that the ancients could observe the sun’s rise at significant times of the year as well as some of the most important celestial objects, other scholars have insisted that the monument was used as an ancient observatory.