The ziggurat of Ur ππΌπ π is one of the oldest temples that remained in Iraq, located about 40 km west of the city of Nasiriyah (340 km south of Baghdad), built by the Sumerian king Ur Namu π¨ππ, founder of the third dynasty of Ur, and its greatest king in 2100 BC.m It is considered evidence that people at the time converted to a wide range of religions.
Ur ziggurat is rectangular in shape, measuring 200×150 m, and 45 feet high. It was originally composed of three layers, above which rises a temple dedicated to the worship of the city's chief god, the god Sin πππ , and rises to it by two side stairs, and a third middle, and later became composed of seven layers during the Assyrian rule. Currently work is underway on a project to build a tourist city and a museum in the city. Pope Francis recently visited it, the first visit outside the Vatican since the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, as well as the first visit in history by a pontiff to Iraq. Pope Francis fulfilled an old dream of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who in 2000 planned a similar visit as part of his trip to the Holy Land at the turn of the millennium. The construction of the upper temples or pyramidal structure is thanks to the Sumerians, and the oldest ziggurat in history is the ziggurat of Uruk, which was built in 4000 and preceded the stepped pyramid of Djoser, which was built in Egypt in 2700 BC.
The temple was built during the Bronze Age (twenty-first century BC) but collapsed to ruins by the sixth century BC in the Neo-Babylonian period, where it was restored by King Nebo Ned, who rebuilt it with seven layers instead of three, for lack of evidence of the original shape of the temple.
The remains of the ziggurat were first discovered by William Loftus in 1850. The extensive excavation and uncovering of the remains of the temple took place in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century, by Sir Leonard Woolley. During the reign of Saddam Hussein in the eighties, the façade of the temple and the huge staircase were partially rebuilt.
Iraqi postage stamp category 2 filsan issued in 1967 within the World Tourism Year group showing Ur ziggurat
In the 1991 Gulf War, the ziggurat was damaged by small arms fire, and the building was shaken by explosions. Four bomb craters can be seen nearby, and the walls of the ziggurat are distorted by more than 400 bullet holes.
The design of the Egyptian pyramids, especially the stepped designs of the oldest pyramids (the pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, 2600 BC), may be an evolution of ziggurats built in Mesopotamia.