Ziggurat tour!

Just got back from the ziggurat tour and it was really interesting. Took 86 pictures but have narrowed them down to the ones below.

First let me get this out of the way. It's a little video of the Explosive Ordinance Disposal guys doing a controlled detonation on base. As soon as the video starts you can see the second mushroom cloud already forming (I couldn't get my camera out fast enough to catch all of them) and then 5 or 6 seconds later you actually hear the sound. It doesn't sound loud through my crappy camera microphone, but in person it shakes everything and sounds like one of the giant 4th of July fireworks went off 10 feet outside your car.

I'm going to post the pictures in the basic order of which they were taken, so sorry if I jump around a bit.

It's the ziggurat! I thought about only posting this picture and acting like that was the only picture I got, which I thought would be hilarious. But it seemed like too much trouble to make a second post a few days from now for the maximum comedic effect, so I just didn't do it.

This is Dife (no idea how to spell it, but it rhymes with "life"), he was our tour guide. His grandfather and father helped excavate the ziggurat and other buildings and helped with the reconstruction some. He's lived in the area his whole life. He speaks 5 languages, all of which he taught himself from reading a dictionary for that language. So, his grammar and pronunciation are not the best, but it's because he was just reading a dictionary to learn the languages. Pretty remarkable. I could understand him quite well after a couple of minutes.

Here is a short video of him speaking so you can hear how is accent sounds.

These are the ruins of the king's palace. Quite a large structure. What is left of all of these buildings is basically only the foundations. The upper levels of most of them were constructed of reeds and mud, which of course rotted away in the past few thousand years.

All of the walls in the picture above had been reconstructed, I think he said in the 1950s. They used tar to put between the bricks, but they used modern oil based tar, which is in the picture above.

This picture shows the original natural tar that came from a site west of Baghdad. Dife only pointed out this one wall that was still standing from the original building, or at least that still had the original tar.

This is a door hinge. It sits right next to a little opening in the walls and they think that a large wooden door had a little pivot point that stuck in the big hole on the rock to allow it to pivot easier.

More palace views. Sorry if this is boring, I know it's all just a bunch of brown bricks but it's pretty cool when you consider how old they are.

Another shot of the palace with ziggurat in the background. The ziggurat was the highest building in the city, and actually originally had another level on top plus a temple built with reeds and mud on top of that, so it was even taller than it is now.

These are the royal tombs. Unfortunately we were not allowed to go down in them for safety reasons they said, even though the tours from 3 weeks ago got to go. The tombs are where they found the kings and queen buried with all of their servants and guards, as well as all of their treasure like a golden harp and silver model ship. Apparently when the kings died all of their servants and guards drank poison so that they could be buried with the king.

Another shot of the tombs.

There are shards of pottery everywhere. When they were building the mud part of their buildings they put the broken pottery in the mixture to try to make it stronger, and now the mud has turned back to dust leaving only the shards of pottery behind.

It's me and the tombs! What do you do with your hands when you are in a picture?

Obviously my only idea was to hold them together in front of me.

Here's a much larger pile of broken pottery. Apparently some people tried to pick some up and put it in their pocket and so we got a little briefing from the chaplain's assistant half-way through the briefing that people needed to put them back before the end of the tour or the military police would be called, as we are not allowed to take them.

This is Dife in front of Abraham's house.

This is Abraham's house, or best guess that it is anyway. More correctly it is Terah's house I suppose, his father's. Like I said in previous post, this was rebuilt by Saddam so the Pope could come pray at the site, but he ended up not coming for security reasons.

The house has 27 or 29 rooms, I can't remember. It has three stairways which led to two rooms upstairs, which were made of reed and mud so they are obviously not there anymore.

This is one of the drainage holes I talked about in the last post. Basically the house had five courtyards in it, which were areas in the middle of the house that had no roof so that sunlight could come into some of the rooms from the courtyards and also so the water could drain into the courtyards and then down these drains.

In this shot you can see the holes where they stuck their fingers in the cement before it dried to create the holes.

These are shelves, the bottom of which is original, the others were rebuilt. They assume this was the kitchen, since it has the shelves and the original archaeologists found smoke residue on some stones nearby so they thought that's where they cooked.

The nice thing about Iraq not being as particular about their historic sites as America is that you can just walk all over them and they don't care.

The chaplain talking to Dife in a courtyard.

More wall walking.

Looks like some other buildings used to be around the house but they were not rebuilt or full excavated.

Dife walking around outside Abraham's house.

This is the largest courtyard, where we met to leave the house.

A little stairway leading upstairs. Very low archway. Either they were very short people or they just ducked a lot.

This is another drainage thing at another site. Kind of shows a cutaway view so you can see how it worked. There used to be houses built on top of these, but they were made out of mud so all that's left is the drainage pipes.

This was a temple and they believe it to be the first museum, as the archaeologist found artifacts from several different time periods and locations in the same room, as if they were being displayed in a museum. It was the largest building in the city but is only partially excavated.

Here's a really cool thing. This is the oldest known standing arch in the world. I took two pictures of it from basically the same place, but they were off enough that I could animate them together and they look 3D! I didn't do it on purpose at all but it worked out pretty well and actually looks 3D, to me at least.

Here you can see where the front bricks of the arch were put back on with cement, but the original arch still makes up most of the structure, which you can see with the bricks that are stuck together with tar still.

This is a view of the temple/museum from the top of the ziggurat.

Someone having their picture taken on the ziggurat.

This was inside one of the little holes on the side of the ziggurat that allows it to dry out, shift, swell with temperature and moisture, etc. Luckily there were no camel spiders or vipers in the hole to scare me to death.

This is the souvenir shop outside the ziggurat. It is hilarious looking.

Some real Iraqi rugs, not the kind they sell at the BX that are actually made in China and are probably Indian designs anyway.

This was a little Iraqi kid standing at the souvenir shop. I guess his dad ran the shop and his job was just to look cute. Surprisingly they didn't charge for people to get their picture taken with him. I think they are missing some money making opportunities.

I would have bought one of these collections of Iraqi money and stamps, but the BX wasn't giving any cash back and the finance office is closed so I couldn't get any cash. Maybe I'll see if the chaplain's assistant can buy it for me on the next tour or something.

Side of the ziggurat.

A sign in Arabic with a map of the layout of the area surrounding the ziggurat.

Overall it was a cool little tour. Not the most exciting tourist attraction ever, but considering it's the only one we have to choose from it isn't so bad. Apparently there are still miles of the city that have not been excavated. Even some areas right around the ziggurat have not been excavated yet, so who knows what else they will eventually find there. Could be more tombs full of treasure, who knows!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. If I can get these others to stitch together right I'll post some panoramas from the top of the ziggurat.