University of Duhok

College of Engineering
Department of Architecture

History of Architecture I
Second Class
2010-2011

Architecture of Ancient Mesopotamia

Lecture 3 & 4

Assistant Lecturer:
Shermeen A. Yousif
M. Arch. Anhalt University, Germany
 Architecture of Ancient Mesopotamia

Early Mesopotamian & Sumerian Architecture -Examples-

Warka (Uruk), 2900-2340 BC

Was the largest of the Sumerian cities which eventually had a perimeter of
over 9 km. About one-third of this great area was occupied by temples and
other public buildings. The two major areas of the city with important
buildings were the Eanna and the Anu districts, associated with mother
goddess and the sky god respectively. The Eanna district had become an
impressive grouping of temples, larger than any previously built.
Cones of baked clay were set in mud plaster over many of the walls faces in
the Eanna district temples, forming a distinctive mosaic decoration.

Eanna temple, Uruk

One of the most important examples of this is so-called Pillar-Temple, which

stood on a terrace or platform and included two rows of massive columns,
2.6m in diameter. The great way, in which the columns are constructed, with
bricks laid radially to form an approximate circle, suggest an experimental
approach to an advance in building techniques, this being the oldest surviving
evidence of free-standing columns. However, the pattern of cone mosaics
clearly suggests imitation of palm body.

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Eanna temple, Uruk

The Anu Ziggurat is more typically Mesopotamian in its tripartite ( ‫ثالثي‬

‫ )الجوانب‬plan for the temple: it is in fact not a ziggurat at all, but a series of
temples, each built on top of the previous one and each on a high platform.

Anu temple, Uruk

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Anu temple, Uruk

White Temple, the best preserved in the Anu series, may be said to illustrate
the origin of the ziggurat, or temple-tower in the prehistoric Mesopotamian
temple set on its platform. The concept of the ziggurat may well have
combined two separate functions, the religious one being the recreation of a
sacred mountain in the flat alluvial plain and the secular one being to provide
a permanent reminder to the populace of the political, social and economic of
the temple.

White Temple, Uruk

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 White Temple, Uruk

The white temple platform had sloping sides, three of which had flat
buttresses; a subsidiary square platform of similar height overlapped the
north corner, served by a long flight of easy steps from which a ramp led off
from an intermediate landing. The temple, originally whitewashed, had an
end to-end hall with a span of 4.5 m, flanked on both sides by a series of
smaller rooms, three of which contained stairways leading to the roof. Of four
entrances, the chief was placed asymmetrically on one long side, giving a
bent-axis approach to the sanctuary, marked by an altar platform 1.2m high in
the north corner of the hall. Centrally nearby was a brick offering table,
adjoined by a low semicircular hearth (fireside). Shallow buttresses formed
the principal decoration of the hall and external walls. The platform stood
13m high.

Sumerian architecture, the Ziggurat and City of Ur

Already very old, were extensively re-modeled by Urnammu and his
successors. The complex comprised the ziggurat and its court, a secondary
court attached to it, and three great temples. All these stood on a great
rectangular, platform at the heart of an oval-shaped walled city, itself about
6.1m above the surrounding plain.

The ziggurat of Ur, 62m *43m at its base and the ziggurat height 21m

Carried the usual temple on its top. The ziggurat at Ur had a solid core of mud
brick, covered with a skin of burnt brickwork 2.4m thick, laid in tar (‫ )قار‬and
with layers of matting at intervals to improve pastiness. Its sides were
slightly bent, giving an added effect of mass, with wide shallow corner
buttresses, Weeper-holes through the brickwork allowed for drainage and the
slow drying out of the interior: this is a likelier explanation than the theory of
“trees were planted on the stages of the ziggurat as the sacred mountain, and
required regular watering”.

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 Ziggurat of Urnammu

Close to the ziggurat zone at Ur stood a building with rooms corbel-vaulted in

fired brick and approached down long flights of steps. The floors had to be
raised to avoid the Euphrates flood water. This is usually described as the
mausoleum (shrine) of the kings of the powerful Third Dynasty of Ur,
although there is no proof that they were buried in the city.

Complex of Ziggurat of Urnammu

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City of Ur, 2100-1900 BC

The temple Oval at Khafaje, north east of Baghdad, was an unusual complex
dating from the Early dynastic and subsequent periods. Within the ovals the
layout was rectilinear, the corner oriented to the four cardinal points. Of
three ascending terrace levels, the lowest made a forecourt approached
through an arched and towered gateway from the town, with a many-roomed
building on one side, either administrative or a dwelling for the chief priest.
The second terrace, wholly surrounded by rooms used as workshops and
stores, had at its further end the temple platform about 3.6m high.

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The temple Oval at Khafaje

Near its staircase, against the side of the side of the temple
temple terrace, was an
external altar; while elsewhere in the court were a well and two basins for
ritual ablutions.

• The usual plan of Mesopotamian temple before the end of the dynastic
period had an indirect or “bent axis” approach, with the entrance in
one of the longer walls. But later it became normal to have the
entrance at one end, giving a long straight approach to the altar.
alta
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Kassite Architecture
The four centuries of Kassite rule in Babylonia (1595-1171 BC) were
undistinguished in art and architecture generally, being marked by
restorations at Ur and elsewhere, but at the new capital of Dur Kurigalzu,
32km west of Baghdad, the royal palace has some new features including a
court bordered on two sides by an ambulatory (‫ )خاص بالمشي‬with square
pillars.

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