Essentially, the first of these ziggurats comprised a simple tower built on top of a platform. 3500-2900 BC) – named for the city where civilization first began in Mesopotamia – when temples began to be built that can be considered “archaic” or proto-ziggurats. It was during what is known as the Uruk Period (ca. They were also the first people to build ziggurats in the southern portion of that land, generally known as Sumer. The Sumerians were the first ethnic group to bring civilization to Mesopotamia. Still, based on references to the structures in Sumerian and Akkadian language texts, modern scholars have determined that the ancient Mesopotamians believed they were their many deities' earthly homes. Unfortunately, there is no known extant text that explains precisely what ziggurats were intended to symbolize. Like the most monumental building in the ancient world, ziggurats' development was a long process that took hundreds of years to reach its maturity. Map Depicting the Distribution of Known Ziggurats in Ancient Mesopotamia: Note that Most Are in the Fertile area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers Any king worth his salt in ancient Mesopotamia had to build a ziggurat that could be seen for miles around, which would ultimately serve to immortalize him for posterity. An examination of the various dynasties that came to rule Mesopotamia shows that ziggurats were important for several reasons: they served as a way for the people to connect to their most important gods, they provided a focal point for the secular community, and they also acted as a visible and tangible sign of a king’s power. The fact that ziggurat construction took place over such a long period – from the third millennium until the sixth century BC and is an indicator of the importance of these colossal structures. Still, they all followed a similar religion and built ziggurats to appease their gods and assign temporal power. Mesopotamia, unlike Egypt, was full of disparate and, at times, warring ethnic groups. Ziggurats were also built over a much longer period than Egyptian pyramids, and most importantly, ziggurats were built by a plethora of different people who inhabited ancient Mesopotamia. Although both pyramids and ziggurats were constructed during the same time period, they served different functions and were built using different methods and from different materials. Today, many people like to compare ziggurats derived from the ancient Akkadian word for the structures, ziggurratu – with their counterparts, the pyramids in Egypt. The physical focal point of their religion was the monumental, triangular structures known as ziggurats. This page was created in 2004 last modified on 12 October 2020.The people of ancient Mesopotamia practiced a religion that modern scholars are only just beginning to understand. This aspect of Babylonian cosmology is echoed in the Biblical story, where the builders say "let us build a tower whose top may reach unto heaven". Here, a straight line connected earth and heaven. The Etemenanki was next to the Esagila, and this means that the temple tower was erected at the center of the world, as the axis of the universe. After he had killed her, he brought order to the cosmos, built the Esagila sanctuary, which was the center of the new world, and created humankind. According to the Babylonian creation epic Enûma êliš the god Marduk defended the other gods against the diabolical monster Tiamat. The most famous ziggurat is, of course, the "tower of Babel" mentioned in the Biblical book Genesis: a description of the Etemenanki of Babylon. By building ziggurats, the king showed that he could perform more impressive religious deeds than the priesthood. In third millennium BCE Mesopotamia, there was a conflict between the two great organizations, the temple and the palace. Archaeologists have discovered nineteen of these buildings in sixteen cities the existence of another ten is known from literary sources. Ziggurats played a role in the cults of many cities in ancient Mesopotamia. The best preserved temple tower is at Choga Zanbil in Elam, modern Khuzestan in Iran. Even larger was the shrine of the god Anu at Uruk, built in the third or second century BCE. The temple tower known as Etemenanki (the 'House of the foundation of heaven on earth') in Babylon was 92 meters high. Our word ziggurat is derived from ziqqurratu, which can be translated as "rising building" (Akkadian zaqâru, "to rise high"). But there are two differences: a ziggurat was not a tomb but a temple, and ziggurats were built well into the Seleucid age, whereas the building of pyramids came to an end after c.1640 BCE. Ziggurats are, architecturally, the Mesopotamian equivalent of the Egyptian pyramids: large artificial square mountains of stone. Ziggurat: a multi-storied temple tower from ancient Mesopotamia.
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