Ziggurat of Ur

The Ziggurat of Ur is the best-preserved temple tower of ancient Mesopotamia apart from Chogha Zanbil in Iran: a stepped mass of brick rising from the flat plain of southern Iraq, more than four thousand years old. Its Sumerian name, Etemenniguru, is usually translated as "house whose foundation creates terror". A broad monumental stairway climbs the front of its base toward the upper terraces, giving the whole structure the look of a mountain made by hand.

It was raised in the 21st century BC by Ur-Nammu, founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and completed under his successor Shulgi, under whom Ur became the capital of a state controlling much of Mesopotamia. The ziggurat was the centrepiece of a temple complex devoted to Nanna, the moon god and patron of the city, which also served as its administrative heart. The base measured about 64 by 45 metres, and the original tower probably stood over 30 metres high, though only its lower part survives. By the 6th century BC it had decayed, and Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, rebuilt it — in seven stages rather than the original three.

What survives is a solid core of mud brick faced with fired brick set in bitumen; the lowest layer is Ur-Nammu's work, and the two above belong to the Babylonian restoration. William Loftus noted the mound in 1850, John Taylor's excavations in the 1850s identified the site as Ur, and between 1922 and 1934 Sir Leonard Woolley excavated it for the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1980s the façade of the lowest stage and the great stairway were rebuilt. The structure bears scars of the 1991 Gulf War, including hundreds of bullet marks. Ur itself, a later tradition holds, was the home of the patriarch Abraham, and since 2016 the archaeological city has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Ahwar of Southern Iraq".

Getting there

The ziggurat stands at Tell el-Muqayyar in Dhi Qar Province, on the south side of the Euphrates, about 16–18 km southwest of the city of Nasiriyah. Nasiriyah Airport (XNH), the former Tallil air base, lies only about 3 km away; the main international gateway for the south is Basra International Airport (BSR), about 156 km to the southeast.