3 These holes were lined with fired bricks, instead of the typical sun-dried bricks. The core of this structure is essentially solid, with only a small exception: in order to allow water to evaporate from the solid core, “weeper-holes” pierce the inward-sloping walls. The British Museum owns one such example of the stamped bricks from the Ziggurat of Ur (see above). Two dog’s paw marks are seemingly-accidentally marked on one side. 2 Such fired bricks weighed up to thirty-three pounds (which is impressive, but this weight pales in comparison to the Great Pyramid at Giza, where the stones weigh an average of 2.5 tons!).īrick from the ziggurat of Ur, stamped with Ur-Nammu’s name, c. They would have been pressed into rectangular molds and left to dry in the sun, or they could have been fired to ensure the brick would better withstand moisture and wind. 1 In fact, the first stage of the ziggurat construction was built using seven million mudbricks and 720,000 fired bricks.These mudbricks were created from clay and reeds.
We know that this structure was built by Ur-nammu because mudbricks from this structure are stamped with Ur-nammu’s name. This ziggurat was built around 2100 BCE by the king Ur-nammu and his son Shulgi (see a reconstruction drawing of the structure and a map of the original complex HERE). Recently I learned a few interesting points about the mudbricks of the Ziggurat of Ur. Image courtesy Wikipedia via user Hardnfast.
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