"العراق والخليج الفارسي" [ظ‎‎٣‎٩‎٧] (٨٦٢/٧٩٧)

APPENDIX C
TEN HISTORICAL SITES
The following sites have been selected for brief description in order to
give a summary conspectus of the range of antiquity visible in the excava
tions and ruins of Iraq. Ur represents the Sumerian and Akkadian epochs.
Ashur, Nineveh, and Khorsabad show diverse aspects of the Assyrian
Empire. The ruins of Babylon reveal the final achievements of archi
tecture in the Neo-Babylonian period. Seleucia, Hatra, and Ctesiphon
belong to a new age, the mixed Hellenistic and Oriental civilization of the
Parthian and Sassanid empires. Finally, at Ukhaidhir and Samarra the
Moslem architecture of the early centuries of Islam is visible.
Ur (fig. 92; photos. 94, 113)
Ur, originally a settlement and port at the mouth of one of the dis
tributaries of the Euphrates delta, and now 120 miles from the head of
the Khor Zubair, is one of the few ruined sites of Iraq where the general
plan of the town can be distinguished without undue difficulty by the
casual visitor. It has a biblical connexion with Abraham and was inhabited
continuously from the middle of the fourth millennium to the beginning
of the fourth century b.c., when it was finally abandoned. The towns of
several epochs have been excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley, lying one
above another as they were rebuilt generation by generation. Between
two levels of prehistoric periods Woolley discovered a deep layer of pure
sand, which he acclaimed as evidence of a great flood and connected with
the Deluge of the Bible and of Sumerian mythology. But there is evidence
that other floods occurred at different periods at other Sumerian sites such
as Kish and Erech.
Buildings are now visible in different parts of the excavated area dating
from the following periods: Early Dynastic c. 3000-2500 b.c. and Third
Dynasty c. 2200 b.c. (p. 209), Kassite c. 1400 b.c. (p. 211), and Neo-
Babylonian c. 550 b.c. (p. 219). The town was oval in shape and enclosed
by a wall. This mud-brick rampart rises 20 feet above the plain, sloping
back at an angle of 40 degrees and 72 feet thick at the base. Inside it is
vertical and acts as a retaining wall to the platform on which the excavated
levels of the town are built. Within the wall three complexes of buildings
have been excavated: the temples and ziggurat enclosed by the precinct
wall of Nebuchadnezzar II, the inhabited quarter or town proper to the
south-east, and the palace and temple of Nabonidus to the north-east.
Traces of two harbours are visible at the north end and on the west side.
The ziggurat (p. 223) was rebuilt by Nabonidus c. 550 b.c., but contains
in its core the ziggurat built by Ur-Nammu (2300 b.c.). It had three
monumental stairways of 100 steps to the first platform, one of which has