Mesopotamian Architecture

Monumental Architecture

Palaces

Ziggurats

A ziggurat is a massive building or temple. Ziggurats were almost like churches or temples for many american today. Today it is mainly in Iraq. Ziggurats were a precursor to the great pyramids of Egypt. Ziggurats were square or rectangular in shape. Approximately 25 ziggurats are known in the cities of Mesopotamia. They were built by Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Elamites, and Ebaites. Ziggurats were part of a temple complex that included other buildings. You use a stairway to ascend but this was not used for the majority of ziggurats. They started off as square platforms and were like a Mastaba structure with a flat top. (NV)

Hanging Gardens

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. They were built by King Nebuchadnezzar II, he created them for his Median wife, Amytis, because she missed the gardens and greenery of her homeland. To build the gardens, they had to do a complex system of irrigation. It is not fully known how they got the water from the Euphrates River, to the top of the gardens which were 75 feet up in the air.

A theory on how they did it was a system of pumps and water wheels. There are many theories on The Hanging gardens of Babylon, some of them say that the Hanging Gardens weren’t even in Babylon, there is a theory that they were actually in Nineveh. Some people stick with the ancient writers and wait to find resources that show positive proof, even a few people think that the gardens were just ancient imagination.

Ishtar Gate

The Ishtar Gates were dedicated to the Babylonian goddess of love Ishtar. They were built in 575 BCE. They are not real gates, they are more like arches. They were more than 38 feet tall and they were built out of glazed bricks which were used to make it more shiny and are common now but weren't back then. King Nebunchadnezzar built the Ishtar gates. Imagine building The Ishtar Gates with no construction vehicles! I would assume they used animals to carry heavy stuff. The Lions on the gates symbolize Ishtar, the bulls symbolize Adad and the dragons symbolize Marduk, the patron god of Babylon. The Ishtar gates were dark blue but the animals ( dragons, bulls, and lions ) were a yellow brown color. The Ishtar gates are considered one of the wonders of the world. The Ishtar gates were dedicated to the Babylonian goddess of love Ishtar. The Ishtar gates are very cool and you should visit The reconstructed Ishtar Gate displayed at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. It is in Berlin because the archaeologist who found some pieces of it sold the pieces to the museum and the museum reconstructed it based on what the pieces looked like. (AS)

Royal Tombs of Ur

Leonard Woolley was an archaeologist who found the royal tombs of Ur. He found a cemetery containing 2,500 graves. He had found what became known as the royal tombs of Ur in Mesopotamia, which is also known as the land between rivers. He led archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia from 1922 to 1934 and found many amazing treasures. Nobody had ever found anything like the Royal tombs of Ur before. They contained treasures like lapis lazuli, also pearls and sound boxes which were all items that were found in the tomb of the deceased to please the spirit them in the afterlife. There were human sacrifices on a mass scale, there were many people who were just brought down into the giant tomb and were killed where they stood. The archaeologist figured out that it had been a complex, wealthy and powerful society. They initially dug a trench that they eventually called the gold trench because there were many valuables and there were signs of burials, that was the royal tomb of Ur. They did not excavate that trench and find the royal tombs that first season because Leonard Woolley wanted his crew to have more experience. He found a large number of ancient houses that revealed a lot about daily life in Ur. Close to many of the burials there were often items that would help them in the afterlife. They identified the people by the Cylinder seals found nearby the graves. (AdC)

Homes

City Homes (Mud Brick)

In the cities of ancient Sumer, whether they were rich or poor, every family had its own house. The rich had large wide houses, the poor had narrow houses. All of the houses were built at least three stories high. The first floor was an entryway and courtyard. Children played here, small livestock was kept here, and if the weather made it possible, meals might be cooked here. The next two floors were where the family lived. Their sleeping and sitting rooms were on these two levels as well as food storage. The roof of the house was flat. The people treated the roof as another floor. During good weather, people would cook and eat on the roof of the house. This got everyone up away from the streets, yet still out into the open air.

Country Homes (Straw)

Like many agriculturally-based people, most ancient Mesopotamians were farmers, perhaps 80 percent of them. Their lives differed from those of the city-dwellers. While crops grew abundantly in the fertile soil near the rivers, crops grown farther away required irrigation, which meant maintaining dams or canals that led from the river to the fields. Mesopotamian farmers were laborers and their work was physically hard. Roads, canals and aqueducts had to be built and kept up, and crops needed to be sown, weeded and harvested. From dawn to dusk, men worked in the fields or tended the livestock and women worked in the homes, raising children, making baskets and pottery, weaving cloth and cooking.

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