Dwelling and Temple Structure

Since the plains in Mesopotamia lacked timber and stone (Roux, Ancient Iraq, 28), the people of this region built temporary structures, such as huts and sheep pens, using marsh reeds. They built more permanent structures out of mud-bricks. Cone mosaics were sometimes used as a decoration over the mud-brick.

Sumerian poetry and architecture reflect the belief that people were created to serve the gods (Frankfort, Art and Architecture, 20). The White Temple at Uruk (often connected with the biblical city of Erech in Gen 10:10) resembles religious buildings of earlier periods but was built on a ziggurat—a raised platform that creates an artificial mountain and is accessed by stairways. The White Temple sat 40 feet above the plain and was thus visible for miles. The ziggurat style of temple became common in ancient Mesopotamia and is believed to be the type of structure that the people were building in the Tower of Babel episode (Gen 11:1–9). The ziggurat is distinguished from later temples in that it lacks a central niche where the statue of the god or goddess was generally placed.