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The Sialk ziggurat, in Kashan, Iran, is the oldest known ziggurat, dating to the early 3rd millennium BCE. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] Ziggurat designs ranged from simple bases upon which a temple sat, to marvels of mathematics and construction which spanned several terraced stories and were topped with a temple.
Ziggurats were built by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Elamites, and Assyrians as monuments to local religions. The earliest examples of the ziggurat were raised platforms that date from the Ubaid period [20] during the fourth millennium BC, and the latest date from the 6th century BC. The top of the ziggurat was flat, unlike many pyramids.
The ziggurat was a piece in a temple complex that served as an administrative center for the city, and which was a shrine of the moon god Nanna, the patron deity of Ur. [ 6 ] The construction of the ziggurat was finished in the 21st century BC by King Shulgi , who, in order to win the allegiance of cities, proclaimed himself a god.
Although similar in some ways to Egyptian pyramids, these New World structures have flat tops (many with temples on the top) and stairs ascending their faces, more similar to ancient Mesopotamian Ziggurats. [1] [2] The largest pyramid in the world by volume is the Great Pyramid of Cholula, in the east-central Mexican state of Puebla.
Choqa Zanbil, a 13th-century BCE ziggurat in Iran, is similarly constructed from clay bricks combined with burnt bricks. [ 1 ] Mudbrick or mud-brick , also known as unfired brick, is an air-dried brick , made of a mixture of mud (containing loam , clay , sand and water ) mixed with a binding material such as rice husks or straw .
The ziggurat was given a facing of baked bricks, a number of which have cuneiform characters giving the names of deities in the Elamite and Akkadian languages. Though the ziggurat now stands only 24.75 metres (81.2 ft) high, less than half its estimated original height, its state of preservation is unsurpassed.
Notable ziggurats include the Great Ziggurat of Ur near Nasiriyah, the Ziggurat of Aqar Quf near Baghdad, the now destroyed Etemenanki in Babylon, Chogha Zanbil in Khūzestān and Sialk. Subcategories
The 4100-year-old Great Ziggurat of Ur in southern Iraq. Ziggurats were huge religious monuments built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels. There are 32 ziggurats known at, and near, Mesopotamia.