A multidisciplinary study describes how the ziggurats of Mesopotamia influenced religious imagination, the centers of power of city-states, and even modern architecture.
Mesopotamia and the strength of early urban culture. Illustration: depositphotos.com
Ziggurats were mud-brick temples designed to “bridge” between heaven and earth. For thousands of years, they anchored religion, government, and architecture in the ancient Near East.
A ziggurat (sometimes also ziqqurat) is a raised structure with four sloping sides, in the shape of a stepped pyramid. Such structures were common in Mesopotamia – roughly in modern-day Iraq – between about 4,000 and 500 BC.
Unlike the pyramids of Egypt, ziggurats were not used as royal tombs. They functioned as temples dedicated to the city's patron god.
How were ziggurats built, and what was their function?
Mesopotamia had almost no stone. Therefore, builders relied mainly on sun-dried mud bricks. They were sometimes coated with limestone and bitumen – a sticky, tar-like substance – to improve durability.
The exterior walls were often decorated with incised patterns, and completed with layers of lime plaster or gypsum. In some cases, colored glaze was also used, which created a particularly striking appearance.
Ziggurats did not have inner chambers like the pyramids. The temple itself was at the top of the structure, where the god was believed to “reside.” They ascended to it by stairs. The top point was seen as the meeting place between heaven and earth.
Ziggurats towered over city centers. According to archaeological evidence, they were usually built near the king's palace or the city temple, to emphasize that the god supported the government.
From Uruk to the “Tower of Babel”
The oldest known ziggurat, the “Ziggurath of Anu,” was built in Uruk (now Warqa), about 250 kilometers south of Baghdad, around 4,000 BC. It was dedicated to the sky god Anu. Between 3,500 and 3,000 BC, the “White Temple” was built above it.
Image caption
The White Temple: A building about 12 meters high, so called because it was completely whitewashed inside and out. According to researchers, it must have shone in the sunlight. (From the original description)
Over time, the Sumerian culture was replaced by the Akkadian Empire, and later the Babylonian and Assyrian empires. Despite the rise and fall of empires, ziggurats continued to be built throughout the Ancient East.
The word “ziggurat” is related to an Akkadian verb that means “to build high.”
Other famous ziggurats
The kings of Assyria built an impressive ziggurat at their capital, Nimrod, about 30 kilometers south of Mosul. It was dedicated to Ninurta, the god of war and victory in Sumerian and Akkadian traditions.
Nippur – a holy city in Mesopotamia – had a central ziggurat for the worship of the god Enlil.
Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II dedicated the ziggurat Atmanenki to the god Marduk. The name means “temple of the foundation of heaven and earth.” Atmanenki was located north of another temple called Esgilla, which was Marduk’s main temple in Babylon.
According to scholars, Atmanenki is a prime candidate for the inspiration for the story of the Tower of Babel in the Old Testament. The Book of Genesis (Chapter 11) describes a “tower” built of mud bricks rather than stone, and intended to reach heaven. The act is seen as an expression of human pride. According to the story, God confused the languages of humans and scattered them over the face of the earth.
The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that Marduk would choose a woman to spend the night with him in the upper temple of the ziggurat. This has sometimes been interpreted as a “sacred marriage” ceremony involving a symbolic sexual union between a woman and the god. However, scholars suggest another interpretation: it may have been an “incubation” ceremony, in which a person slept in a sacred place to receive a revelation of the will of the god.
Constant preservation and influence up to the skyscrapers
Mud bricks are not as durable as stone. Therefore, ziggurats required constant maintenance and restoration. In Babylon, Atmanenki was rebuilt several times. In 323 BC, Alexander the Great ordered his soldiers to demolish the structure in order to rebuild it from the ground up. His early death halted the plan, and it is unclear whether his successors completed it.
Better preserved ziggurats include the Ziggurat of Ur in the Tell al-Muqair area of Iraq. King Ur-Namu dedicated it to the moon god Nana (or Sin) around 2100 BC.
Another example is the ziggurat of Chuga Zanbil in Iran, built around 1250 BC. Today it is only 24.5 meters high, compared to an estimated original height of 53 meters.
The architectural influence did not stop in antiquity. According to researchers, ziggurats also influenced the “cascade skyscrapers” of the Art Deco period in the 20th century. Examples of such structures appeared on the New York skyline.
If you look closely, the researchers claim, you can also identify a “ziggurat language” in the Empire State Building in Manhattan.
According to the researchers, the modern examples remind us of how deep the continuity of planning ideas is: a design language that originated in the Middle East more than six thousand years ago is still present in the modern city.
The article was published on THE CONVERSATION website.
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