Stairways to the Gods: Ziggurats of Ancient Mesopotamia

Imagine the tallest building on your street — then stack seven more on top. That is how big a ziggurat was! These giant stepped towers were built by some of the first city builders in the world, more than 4,000 years ago. And they were built mostly out of mud.

In this lesson you will: • Tell what a ziggurat is and what it looks like • Name the people who built the first ziggurats • Explain why people built ziggurats • Describe one real ziggurat that you can still visit today

A ziggurat is shaped like a huge staircase going up, up, up to the sky. Each level is smaller than the one below it — like a birthday cake with many layers. Most ziggurats had between 3 and 7 levels. The very top level held a small temple — a special room for the gods. Long ramps or staircases connected each level so priests could climb all the way to the top. The walls were made of millions of small mud bricks baked in the sun to make them hard. The outside walls were sometimes painted in bright colors — red, black, and white — so the ziggurat could be seen from far away across the flat land.

The first ziggurats were built by the Sumerians — the people who lived in a place called Mesopotamia (mess-oh-poh-TAY-mee-ah). Today that land is the country of Iraq. The Sumerians were amazing builders and inventors. They created the first writing system, some of the first wheels, and some of the first laws. Building a ziggurat took thousands of workers many years to finish. Later, other civilizations — like the Babylonians and Assyrians — built their own ziggurats too.

The Sumerians believed their gods lived in the sky. A ziggurat was like a ladder from the earth up to where the gods lived. At the very top was a small room called a temple. Priests — special helpers of the gods — climbed the ziggurat to bring offerings like food, cloth, and precious things. They believed the god would come down from the sky to rest in the temple at the top. Ziggurats were also a sign of how powerful a city was. If your city had a bigger ziggurat than the city next door, it showed your god was stronger and your city was more important.

The most famous ziggurat still standing today is the Great Ziggurat of Ur. It was built around 2100 BCE — that is over 4,000 years ago! It was dedicated to Nanna, the Sumerian moon god. People believed Nanna would bless their city and help their crops grow. The ziggurat of Ur was partially rebuilt in the 1980s, so you can still see what it looks like. It stands in the middle of the Iraqi desert, with three huge staircases leading up to the first level. Scientists and explorers have studied it to learn how the ancient Sumerians built such amazing structures without modern machines.