Construction of the White Temple and Anu Ziggurat at Uruk
- Date
- c. 3500 BCE
- Category
- Religion & ideology
- Region
- Southern Mesopotamia (Iraq)
- Era
- Prehistory
- Significance
At Uruk the Sumerians raised a high mud-brick platform in the Anu district and crowned it with the whitewashed sanctuary known to archaeologists as the White Temple, an early example of the stepped temple-platform tradition that would culminate in the monumental ziggurat.
Radiocarbon analysis of organic material in the structure points to construction beginning in the mid-fourth millennium BCE. Building the underlying terrace alone is estimated to have required around 1,500 labourers working long days for several years, implying centralised authority capable of mobilising and feeding a large workforce, very likely through corvée obligations. Elevated above the city and visible from afar, the temple expressed the central place of the gods in Sumerian life and the temple's role as an economic institution that owned land, stored grain and redistributed goods. The complex is a foundational monument in the history of monumental religious architecture.
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Essential reading
- Monumental urbanism at Caral and the Norte Chico civilisationc. 2600 BCE
- Standardised Binary Weights System of the Indusc. 2600 BCE
- Rise of Kerma as an Urban Centre in Nubiac. 2500 BCE
- Decline and De-urbanisation of the Indus Civilisationc. 1900 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
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