Nanna was depicted as a wise and unfathomable older man with a flowing beard and four horns, and a single small shrine to the god was placed upon the ziggurat’s summit. The ziggurat was part of a temple complex that served as an administrative center for the city, and it was also thought to be the place on earth where the moon god Nanna, the patron deity of Ur, had chosen to dwell. At the top was a small room assumed to be a religious place. With a base of about 50 feet to a side, ziggurats may have been as high as 150 feet. To build a ziggurat, builders stacked squares of diminishing size, like a step pyramid, but unlike a step pyramid, there were stairs to climb to the next higher level. Its corners are oriented to the compass points, and like the Parthenon, its walls slope slightly inwards, giving an impression of solidity.
It consists of a series of successively smaller platforms that rose to a height of about 64 feet and was constructed with a solid core of mud-brick covered by a burnt bricks’ thick skin to protect it from the elements. The Ziggurat at Ur, a massive stepped pyramid about 210 by 150 feet, is the most well-preserved monument from the Sumerians’ remote age. Except for small chambers around the outer bottom level, these were solid structures with no large internal spaces. There is no evidence to suggest they were used as locations for public worship or ritual, and it is believed that only priests were generally in attendance at a ziggurat. It is also believed they served practically as shelter from floods. It is a fair assumption, though, to think that ziggurats, like most temple structures for various religions, were conceived of as homes for the local gods. The exact purpose of a ziggurat is unknown since these religions did not document their belief systems in the same manner as, for example, the Egyptians did. What were Ziggurats of Mesopotamia used for? The number of floors ranged from two to seven. Kings sometimes had their names engraved on these glazed bricks. The facings were often glazed in different colors and may have had astrological significance. Each step was slightly smaller than the level below it. The sun-baked bricks made up the core of the construction with facings of fired bricks on the outside. The ziggurats began as a platform (usually oval, rectangular, or square) and were mastaba-like structures with a flat top. The ziggurat’s precursors have raised platforms dating from the Ubaid period during the sixth millennium. Each one was part of a temple complex that included other buildings. The Sumerians started the tradition of creating a ziggurat, but other civilizations of Mesopotamia, such as the Akkadians, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians, also built ziggurats for local religions. Only a few of the Egyptian pyramids predate the oldest ziggurats. Ziggurats are some of the oldest ancient religious structures in the world, with the first examples dating to about 2200 BCE and the last constructions dating to approximately 500 BCE. Side View of a Temple | | Mesopotamian Architecture History of the Ziggurats – Harriet Crawford 2 Ziggurats Architecture in Mesopotamia Photographs In the present state of our knowledge, it seems reasonable to adopt as a working hypothesis the suggestion that the ziggurats developed out of the earlier temples on platforms and that small shrines stood on the highest stages… Erosion has usually reduced the surviving ziggurats to a fraction of their original height, but textual evidence may yet provide more facts about the purpose of these shrines. It is usually assumed that the ziggurats supported a shrine, though the only evidence for this comes from Herodotus 1, and physical evidence is nonexistent. Material: Mud-brick with burnt brick facing.Dimensions: 50 meters (170 feet) square or 40 × 50 meters (125 × 170 feet) at the base on average.Location: Mesopotamian valley and the western Iranian plateau.Topics: Religious Architecture, Temples, Desert Architecture, Pyramids, Massive Architecture.Ziggurat Architecture Technical Information Their bases were square or rectangular, and they had sloping walls. They were made of mud-brick that appear to have served as temples to the ancient gods of Mesopotamia. Ziggurats were ancient towering, stepped structures built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels. The ziggurat Architecture of Dur-Kurigalzu in 2010 | Mesopotamian Architecture