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POETIC LICENCE: Concerning the great ziggurat at Ur, Iraq

Kaleem Omar

Iraq has been called the cradle of civilisation. This civilisation was the work of the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia, and the impressive remnants of their city-states can still be found in modern-day Iraq. Perhaps one of the best-preserved structures still left from this first urban civilisation is the partially restored great ziggurat of the ancient city of Ur

Until as recently as the mid-19th century, when the Crystal Palace, a building mainly of glass and iron, was built in Hyde Park, London to contain the Great Exhibition of 1851 (the building was destroyed by fire in 1936), structural methods were essentially determined by the limits of building technology, the availability of materials, and regional conditions. In forested areas builders used timber; in rocky landscapes they used stone.

In places where there was neither timber nor rock, human ingenuity devised mud brick — moulded blocks of sun-baked earth, the oldest manufactured building material that is still used widely today in countries like Pakistan, Niger, Nigeria and others.

Public power, the rule of whole societies, has its origins in religious worship. Many ancient kings were also priests whose source of power resided in secret knowledge; people believed that such rulers could “read the skies and predict the seasons,” and could “intercede with the gods” on behalf of mortals. Thus the earliest examples of centres of power are always sacred sites, such as Stonehenge in Britain or the ziggurats of Mesopotamia — today’s Iraq.

More than 5,000 years ago, the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers — which the Americans and British have turned into a battleground — was the site of some extraordinary and critically important developments in human history: the invention of writing and the wheel, the beginnings of law, medicine, astronomy and architecture, and the first urban centres, which emerged at about the same time as the urban centres of the Indus Valley civilisation.

According to some archaeologists, there is evidence to suggest that there was trade, or at least contact of some sort, between the people of Mesopotamia and the people of the Indus Valley civilisation. That’s one of the reasons why we in Pakistan are so saddened by what is happening today in Iraq, where the Americans and the British are raining death and destruction on the people. Numerous priceless archaeological sites are also under threat from coalition bombing.

Iraq has been called the cradle of civilisation. This civilisation was the work of the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia, and the impressive remnants of their city-states can still be found in modern-day Iraq.

Perhaps one of the best-preserved structures still left from this first urban civilisation is the partially restored great ziggurat of the ancient city of Ur. A temple to the moon god, Nanna, it was built between 2125 and 2025 BC by King Ur-Nammu, a reformer, law-maker and architect.

Each city had many temples, but that dedicated to the protective god of the city was the most important. Along with the surrounding temples and palaces, it was the spiritual, economic, administrative and political centre of the city.

The “Guide to the World’s Greatest Buildings: Masterpieces of Architecture and Engineering” tells us that in earlier times, the principal temple had been set on a platform approached by a monumental ramp. Over time, the number of platforms increased, and the resulting stepped towers became known as ziggurats, or “holy mountains.” Ziggurats, recalling the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, are found throughout Iraq.

The great ziggurat at Ur had three platforms. Though only the first platform remains today, it is still an impressive structure. It was about 70 feet high, on a rectangular base of about 200 by 150 feet. Three huge staircases led worshippers up to a great landing, from which further steps took the privileged few — including the king, who was also a priest and the intermediary between the Sumerians and their innumerable gods — to the shrine above.

According to the Guide to the World’s Greatest Buildings, “This was the focal point of the entire structure, where banquets would be set out for Nanna and offerings of human sacrifice made. The shrine’s design, however, is speculative because it no longer exists; the proposed reconstruction of the three supporting platforms made by Sir Leonard Woolley, the English archaeologist who excavated the ziggurat in the 1920s, is more reliably based on existing evidence.”

Unlike the great monuments of Egypt, the great ziggurat at Ur and all the other ziggurats were built not by slaves but by Sumerian farmers, working during the months between the planting and harvest seasons. The Guide to the World’s Greatest Buildings tells us that “the core of the enormous pile was constructed by heaping up millions of mud bricks, the most common building material in a land without substantial supplies of timber or stone.”

The sun-baked bricks were strong but porous, “so further layers, up to 8 feet thick, of harder, kiln-fired bricks were needed as a waterproof casing. It was then covered in millions of glazed terracotta tiles, which would have made the ziggurat seem to glow in rich, deep colours.”

As the Guide to the World’s Greatest Buildings tells us, “The ziggurat and surrounding major public buildings formed the sacred precinct of Ur and were enclosed by a double wall. Just outside was a great mausoleum, known as the Royal Cemetery of Ur; in its 1,840 burial chambers were found fantastically rich grave goods (weapons and vessels in gold and silver, and objects inlaid with lapis lazuli and shell) and the remains of sacrificed retainers.

“Beyond the double wall lay the main residential areas and the two harbours of Ur, which provided access for shipping on the Euphrates. Like all Sumerian cities on the vast alluvial plain of Mesopotamia, which was prone to frequent flooding, the entire city was raised on a high earthen mound and enclosed by a heavily fortified wall to protect it from invasion.”

Today, new invaders, armed with fearsome weapons, have entered that land, in what is a totally illegal and unprovoked act of aggression.

Much of the city of Ur has disappeared; the landscape and even the course of the river have changed. But enough remains of the huge ziggurat of Ur to make it the characteristic building of Mesopotamian civilisation. One can only hope that it will not be destroyed by American bunker busters. It’s not a bunker; it’s a ziggurat.

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