Where is the great ziggurat of ur located

Lubinski from Iraq, USA. Unfortunately, King Ur-Nammu died before the temple was finished, and the construction was completed by his son and successor King Shulgi. He managed to rule for 48 years and at his time Ur flourished and became the capital of the state. Eventually, Ur became the most powerful city and controlled almost all of ancient Mesopotamia at the time.

In order to gain the allegiance of the newly conquered city-states and display his great power, King Shulgi announced himself as a god to the Mesopotamians. However very soon after his death, Ur began to decline and with it the ziggurat slowly became more ruins than a temple.

In the 6th century, somewhere around the Neo-Babylonian period, the ziggurat was restored and upgraded by King Naboidus, the last ruler of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

He built four more stores to it, which was now a total of seven, rather than the previous three. The remains of the massive rectangular structure are three-layered solid mass of mud brick core and burnt bricks in bitumen. The lowest layer is from the original construction and the upper two are from the Neo-Babylonian repairs, including amazing engineering and design details.

The core of the ziggurat is made of mud brick covered with baked bricks laid with bitumen, a naturally occurring tar. Each of the baked bricks measured about The lower portion of the ziggurat, which supported the first terrace, would have used some , baked bricks. The resources needed to build the Ziggurat at Ur are staggering. The Ziggurat at Ur and the temple on its top were built around B.

The structure would have been the highest point in the city by far and, like the spire of a medieval cathedral, would have been visible for miles around, a focal point for travelers and the pious alike. As the Ziggurat supported the temple of the patron god of the city of Ur, it is likely that it was the place where the citizens of Ur would bring agricultural surplus and where they would go to receive their regular food allotments.

In antiquity, to visit the ziggurat at Ur was to seek both spiritual and physical nourishment. Clearly the most important part of the ziggurat at Ur was the Nanna temple at its top, but this, unfortunately, has not survived.

Some blue glazed bricks have been found which archaeologists suspect might have been part of the temple decoration. There are some excellent books on the subject. I know its hard for westerners to imagine a society that had priestesses and goddesses but they existed and were powerful. The constant misgendering of Inanna is partially due to the fact that Enheduanna celebrated the fluidity of gender in her poems and Inanna was a war goddess who "turn woman into man and man into woman are yours Inanna" is a line directly from the poem.

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Login or Register in order to comment. Kali Brown wrote on 16 November, - Permalink. Arquitectura sumeria wrote on 2 January, - Permalink. Excelent article, will use it on my thesis. Mary Anna Pomonis wrote on 16 November, - Permalink. Mary Anna Pomonis wrote on 31 October, - Permalink.

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