Ziggurat of Ur

Tonight I had the briefing on the Ziggurat of Ur which is just outside the gate, I'll try to summarize what the Chaplain said from my notes so I don't forget it by next week, and then next week I'll actually take the tour and can post pictures. Also someone was there making a video of his presentation, perhaps I can obtain a copy of it somehow and show people, I'll have to ask sometime as I'm sure a lot of my family would be interested in seeing what he has to say. He was a very good speaker but spoke very rapidly as he had another class coming in after ours and I'm sure he's also given the briefing dozens of times by now and just breezes through it and I'm sure I missed some stuff.

Just a warning this is from quickly jotted notes so it'll be kind of unorganized. Sorry. Also I'm sure some of my family knows all this stuff like the back of their hand so may or may not agree with it.

The Chaplain started with a history of the area and talked about how many stories in the Bible actually should have occurred around this area. For one thing some archaeologists think that the Garden of Eden was in this area, as it is between two of the rivers here (Tigris and Euphrates) and there are faults in the ground that could be the other rivers that it refers to.

Also some think that Noah built the Ark at Kufa, which is a ways northwest of where I am right now, Nasiriyah. The Tower of Babel is also said to be near Kish and Babylon, which is north of where I am. The Jonah story also happened a ways north of here in Ninevah, then the Lion's Den, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego both occured in Babylon which is/was a ways north.

There is a huge pit here that was dug by the achaeologist Christopher Wooley, who found the Ziggurat which may show some evidence of the flood.

It is not known for 100% sure where Abraham was born, some think it was here in Ur, others think it was in Sanliurfa, Turkey. Terah, Abraham's father apparently was a nomadic trader and sold people their idols to worship, so he was quite wealthy, which would explain the large house he had here at Ur. Wooley also found a tablet with Terah's name on it as well as Abram's name with a diagram or description of a building that he took to mean their house, and he only found one building in Ur that matched that description, so it is thought to be Abraham's house. The Pope wanted to come pray at the site so it was rebuilt in 1999 at the order of Saddam, but Saddam later changed his mind and said he could not protect the Pope if he came, so the Pope never came, even though reconstruction of the house was done.

Ur is the former capital of Mesopotamia and is estimated to have been established 5900 - 4000 BC. The Sumerians then re-established it in 2600 BC. Three dynasties ruled the area, the third of which built the Ziggurat. King Ur Nammu started it and his son King Shulgi finished it, as well as many other buildings around the area. The Chaplain told a story of how just inside the front door of the palace a statue was found that was supposed to be King Ur Nammu and it showed him carrying a clay pot on his head to show that he had built the palace and the Ziggurat. The Chaplain compared this to the military, how a General or Colonel will come with a chrome plated shovel to dig one shovel full of dirt to break the ground, then after the workers have finished it, that shovel is hung inside the door with a plaque that says that the General or Colonel built the building. In other words the Kind didn't really do anything, he just took the credit for it and tried to inspire his people to show them that he worked as well.

The Sumerians invented: Beer, the Wheel (which started as a child's toy), written language starting with iconography and later going to Cuneiform writing, the first printed law, irrigation, the sexagesimal numeric system (based on 60, used for time and direction on a compass even today). The Sumerians were polytheists and their main god was Sin or Nana, "The Illuminator", basically they worshipped the Moon. The Ziggurat is thought to have been built as a stairway to heaven to reach the moon god.

Ziggurat in Akkadian means "To build high". Then in the Etruscan language it came to mean "Sharp heaping breast of God", then later became a slang term for large breasts or women with large breasts in Latin, finally meaning "to heap up, or enlarge" or exaggerate, in English.

The Ziggurat of Ur pre-dates the pyramids, being built somewhere around 2100 BC which would make it almost 4,000 years old and I believe the oldest or one of the oldest standing structures in the world.

The Ziggurat is a solid platform made from 7,000,000 sun baked bricks, with 800,000 glazed bricks stamped with the seal of the King used on the outside of the building for decoration. There are weeper holes throughout, which look like windows. Basically these allow water to drain from the inside of the building which is full of dirt, as well as lets air inside to dry out the moisture.

Every 6 layers of bricks there is a layer of reeds that are placed on tar, then covered with sand. This allows the building to shift and sway a little bit in an earthquake or just with erosion of the ground. There are also special drains on the building to pull water off the roof and push it away from the building to keep it from eroding the sand and causing the building to collapse. Basically they invented a way to build a house on the sand, despite that song!

Queen Shubad or Pu-abi (may have been a priestess, not a queen) was buried in one of the mud tombs with 5 soldiers and 13 ladies in waiting, along with a ton of precious treasures which are now in museums all over the world.

There are special drains throughout the site including 5 at the Ziggurat that were made by using primitive cement to create a bowl or tube, then they poked holes in it with their fingers before it dried. They then stacked up those tubes and packed broken pottery around it. When it rains the water is funneled into the tubes, which fill up with water, then the water slowly drains out through the holes, then through the broken pottery and is evenly distributed throughout the ground so that it doesn't flood and doesn't all turn to mud and cause huge sink holes. These drains still work as designed today, thousands of years later.

Pietro della Velle originally discovered Ur / the Ziggurat in 1620 but it wasn't really excavated fully and publicized until Christopher Wooley. His discovery earned him Knighthood and a BBC radio special. Lawrence of Arabia visited the excavation site, as well as Agatha Christie, who based her book "Murder in Mesopatamia" on the excavation site of the Ziggurat.

That's about it, from my notes and memory. I could have some things wrong, or the Chaplain may, who knows. Interesting stuff, regardless. Next week is when I'll actually go on the tour and can post pictures that I take, etc. There is also an Iraqi tour guide that has lived here his whole life that will actually show us around the Ziggurat. His grandfather helped Wooley excavate, his father helped rebuild it, etc. Should be pretty cool! It's also the only option I have for touristy stuff here in Iraq, so I'll make the best of it.