Ziggurat at Ur, c. 2100 B.C. essays

Ziggurat at Ur, c. 2100 B.C. essays Ziggurats are a form of ancient temple common to the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians. A Ziggurat is a huge platform with a series of smaller platforms on top. They look like a stepped pyramid with stairs leading to the summit where there was a small temple. Each ziggurat was dedicated to the city's most important god or goddess. Ziggurats are like a mud-brick mountain fit for the gods. Around 2100 B.C. king Ur-Nammu built a ziggurat in honor of the God Sin. It was called Etemennigur, which meant a house whose foundation creates terror. It was built in Ur, south of Iraq and has been visible on the flat Mesopotamian plain for thousands of years. The ziggurat was built from small mud bricks that were locally produced. The mud bricks were made out of mud and reed; the reed was pressed into moulds that had been left to dry in the sun. Each brick measured around 25 x 16 x 7 centimeters and weighed around 4.5 kilograms. The core of the ziggurat at Ur was constructed using mud bricks which were then covered with baked bricks. The baked bricks, which measured about 30 x 30 x 7 cm and weighed up to 15 kg, they were made out of clay pressed into moulds. The bricks were left to dry and were then baked in a mud oven using dry twigs which were set on fire. This made the bricks water resistant. The first stage of the ziggurat was built using around 7,000,000 mud bricks And 720,000 baked bricks. On top of every sixth layer of bricks, reed matting was placed in a criss-cross manner. Sandy soil was also placed with the layer of reeds. Most of the bricks were stamped with the name and title of King Ur-Nammu. The base of the temple was either square or rectangular, and the most common size for it was either 50x50 or 40x50 meters. From the base, new steps were added, until the ziggurat was topped by a small sanctuary. All walls were sloping, and all horizontal lines ...