1 jan 3000 ano antes da era comum - White Temple ziggurat in Uruk

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DID NIMROD BUILD THE TOWER OF BABEL ? by Gerard Gertoux

The White Temple was reconstructed exactly through a model found inside the remains of the building (Hageneuer: 2016: 112-113). This White Temple is the oldest known building in the world (c. 3000 BCE). Its builders used two remarkable techniques (which were not generalised until the modern era!): the use of crenelated walls, like the surrounding walls of the predynastic tombs in Abydos, and the use of a mosaic of coloured cones, similar to the sed festival garb celebrated by a predynastic pharaoh.

Excavators of the White Temple estimate that it would have taken 1500 laborers working on average ten hours per day for about five years to build the last major revetment (stone facing) of its massive underlying terrace (the open areas surrounding the White Temple at the top of the mastaba) 9. Although religious belief may have inspired participation in such a project, no doubt some sort of force (corvée labor—unpaid labor coerced by the state/slavery) was involved as well. The White temple was rectangular, measuring 17.5 x 22.3 meters and, at its corners, oriented to the cardinal points. It is a typical Uruk “high temple” type with a tri- partite plan: a long rectangular central hall with rooms on either side. The White Temple had three entrances, none of which faced the mastaba ramp directly. Visitors would have needed to walk around the temple, appreciating its bright façade and the powerful view, and likely gained access to the interior in a “bent axis” approach (where one would have to turn 90 degrees to face the altar), a typical arrangement for Ancient Near Eastern temples during the period 2900-2600 BCE. The northwest and east corner chambers of the building contained staircases (unfinished in the case of the one at the north end). Chambers in the middle of the northeast room suite appear to have been equipped with wooden shelves in the walls and displayed cavities for setting in pivot stones which might imply a solid door was fitted in these spaces. The north end of the central hall had a podium accessible by means of a small staircase and an altar with a fire-stained surface. Very few objects were found inside the White Temple, although what has been found is very interesting. Archaeologists uncovered some 19 tablets of gypsum on the floor of the temple—all of which had cylinder seal impressions of animals and reflected temple accounting. Also, archaeologists uncovered a foundation deposit of the bones of a leopard and a lion in the eastern corner of the Temple.
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9 The sides of the mastaba were very broad and sloping but broken up by recessed stripes or bands from top to bottom, which would have made a stunning pattern in morning or afternoon sunlight. The only way up to the top of the ziggurat was via a steep stairway that led to a ramp that wrapped around the north end of the mastaba and brought one to the temple entrance. The flat top of the mastaba was coated with bitumen (asphalt—a tar or pitch-like material similar to what is used for road paving) and overlaid with brick, for a firm and waterproof foundation for the White temple. The temple gets its name from the fact that it was entirely whitewashed inside and out, which would have given it a dazzling brightness in strong sunlight. To the north of the White Temple there was a broad flat terrace, at the centre of which archaeologists found a huge pit with traces of fire (2.2 x 2.7m) and a loop cut from a massive boulder. Most interestingly, a system of shallow bitumen-coated conduits were discovered. These ran from the southeast and southwest of the terrace edges and entered the temple through the southeast and southwest doors. Archaeologists conjecture that liquids would have flowed from the terrace to collect in a pit in the central hall of the temple.

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