Iraq's answer to the ancient pyramids

Egypt has the Pyramids of Giza, and Iraq has the Ziggurat of Ur - an incredibly well-preserved engineering achievement that surpasses the ruins of an important ancient city.

About 4,000 years ago, this arid, pale region of the Iraqi desert was the center of a civilization. Today the ruins of the great city of Ur, once the administrative capital of Mesopotamia, lie in a barren wasteland near Iraq's most notorious prison.

In the shadow of the towering prison fence, Abo Ashraf, the self-proclaimed custodian of the archaeological site and a handful of tourists is the only sign of life for miles. At the end of a long wooden walkway, an impressive ziggurat line is almost all that remains of the ancient Sumerian metropolis.

Pyramid of Ziggurat of Ur in Iraq.

Ziggurat of Ur - Ancient Sumerian City

Ziggurat of Ur, a massive 4,100-year-old building, multi-storey shrine with giant steps. A high chain link fence blocking the entrance and a paved parking lot are the only hints of the modern world.

The first ziggurats date to before the Egyptian pyramids, and some remains can still be found in Iraq and Iran today. They were as majestic as their Egyptian counterparts and also served a religious purpose, but they differed in a few points: the ziggurat had several steps as opposed to the flat walls of the pyramid, they had no rooms. inside and they have the temple at the top rather than the tombs inside.

"A ziggurat is a sacred building, essentially a temple on a platform with stairs," said Maddalena Rumor, an expert on the Ancient Near East at Case Western Reserve University in the US. The earliest temples show simple constructions of one-room temples on a small foundation. Over time, the temples and platforms were repeatedly recreated and enlarged, increasing in complexity and size, reaching the most perfect form in Ziggurat."

The Ziggurat of Ur was built a little later (about 680 years after the first pyramid), but it is famous for being one of the best preserved, and also for its location in Ur, where holds a prominent place in history.

Accordingly, Mesopotamia was the source of artificial irrigation: the Ur people cut channels and ditches to regulate the flow of water and irrigate the land farther from the banks of the Euphrates.

The Sumerians carved hundreds of square holes in the outer walls to allow the inner mud-brick core to stay dry.

The structure of the pyramid Ziggurat of Ur

The lower floors of the structure remain to this day, although the temple and the terraces at the top have been lost. To figure out what they looked like, experts used all kinds of technology and ancient writings (from historians like Herodotus, as well as the Bible).

In the 2016 paper, A Ziggurat and the Moon, Amelia Sparavigna, an archaeological imaging expert from the Polytechnic University of Turin, wrote, "Ziggurat is a pyramidal structure with a flat top, with a core formed from bricks fired from the sun, covered with baked bricks. The outer surfaces are often glazed with different colors".

Based on the remains found at the site, it is generally agreed that Ziggurat of Ur was a ceramic temple atop two huge mud-brick floors. The base alone consists of more than 720,000 meticulously stacked mud bricks, each weighing up to 15 kg.

Reflecting Sumerian knowledge of the solar and lunar cycles, each of the four corners of the ziggurat points in exactly one direction like a compass, and a grand staircase to the upper floors is directed towards the sun. sunrise in the summer solstice.

Each of the four corners of the ziggurat points to a main direction and a grand staircase towards the rising sun at the summer solstice.

King Ur-Nammu laid the first brick of the ziggurat in 2100 BC, and construction was later completed by his son King Shulgi, at that time the city was the flourishing capital of Mesopotamia. River.

But by the 6th century BC, the ziggurat had been devastated by the extreme heat of the desert and sand. King Nabonidus of Babylonia began restoring the pyramid around 550 BC, but instead of recreating the original three floors, he built seven, in keeping with other great Babylonian structures of the time. such as the Etemenanki ziggurat, which some believe is the tower of Babel.

Much of the ziggurat remains intact to this day largely due to three ingenious improvements by the original Sumerian engineers.

1. The first is ventilation. Like other ziggurat, this building is built with a mud brick core surrounded by sun-baked bricks outside. And because that core traps moisture that can lead to the overall deterioration of the structure, the Sumerians punched hundreds of square holes into the outer walls to allow for rapid transpiration. The rumor explains that without this detail, "the mud-brick interior could soften during heavy rain, and eventually swell or collapse".
2. Second, the walls are built at a slight incline. This allows water to flow down the sides of the ziggurat, preventing accumulation in the upper floors; The angle makes the structure look larger from a distance, threatening enemies of the empire.
3. Finally, the temple at the top is built of completely baked mud bricks that are bonded together with bitumen. This natural tar prevents water from seeping into the unburnt core.

Despite these achievements, by the 6th century C.E., the once flourishing metropolis had dried up materially. The Euphrates River changed its course, leaving the city without water and therefore uninhabitable. Ur and ziggurat were abandoned and then buried under a mountain of sand by wind and time.

Ur is said to be the birthplace of biblical Abraham and the home of the first code of law.

The upper steps and colorful temple were long destroyed and lost to time. But across the nearly flat desert, small mounds of earth can be seen dotting the site waiting to be excavated, undoubtedly harboring a world of undiscovered treasure.