Ziggurat
Zigurat
- Date
- c. 2100 BCE · confidence high
- Place
- Ur (ziggurat of Ur-Nammu), Iraq
- Credited to
- Ur-Nammu and Shulgi of Ur III
- Field
- Tools
What it is
Massive stepped mudbrick tower faced with fired brick and bitumen, with monumental staircases and a temple at the top, raising the god's house above the city. It fixes an architectural type repeated from Ur to Babylon (Etemenanki, the 'Tower of Babel').
What it led to
- Concentration of religious and political power in a monument visible for kilometres
- Fired brick and bitumen as a durable cladding technology for large mudbrick masses
- Cultural memory of the ziggurat in biblical tradition and in Assyrian and Babylonian imperial architecture
Built on
- Platform temple (proto-ziggurat)c. 5300 BCE
- Mould-made and fired brickc. 3500 BCE
- Standardized fired brickc. 2600 BCE
- Platform temple of Eridu and Uruk (White Temple)
- Moulded mudbrick
- Bitumen as mortar
Made possible
- Etemenanki of Babylon
- Glazed facade brick
- Monumental terrace