Ziggurat of Chogh Zanbil
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Overview
About this site
Overview
Ziggurat of Chogh Zanbil is an other / unclassified in Khuzestan Province, Iran. It lies at 32.0090° N, 48.5216° E.
Catalogue recordSources and licences
Article
Ziggurat of Chogh Zanbil
ContextSources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
A ziggurat is a massive structure built in ancient Mesopotamia and Iran in the form of a terraced compound of successively receding storeys or levels. Notable ones include the Great Ziggurat of Ur near Nasiriyah, the Ziggurat of Aqar Quf near Baghdad, the vanished Etemenanki in Babylon, and Chogha Zanbil in Khuzestan. The Sumerians believed that the gods lived in the temple at the top of the ziggurat, so that only priests and other highly respected individuals were allowed to ascend. The regional background, “Ziggurats of Mesopotamia and Iran”, is given below.
Dating
No date has been published for this site.
Setting
1 other recorded monument lies within 10 km (1 within 1 km, 1 within 5 km), 1 of them of the same type. In Khuzestan Province, Iran, 3 of the 3 recorded monuments are of this type.
The nearest recorded monuments are Chogha Zanbil (0.1 km south-west, other / unclassified); Ziggurat of Haft Tepe (19.8 km north-west, other / unclassified).
ProtectionSources for this section
Sources for this section
No heritage designation is recorded for the site.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Ziggurats of Mesopotamia and Iran
A ziggurat is a massive structure built in ancient Mesopotamia and Iran in the form of a terraced compound of successively receding storeys or levels. Notable ones include the Great Ziggurat of Ur near Nasiriyah, the Ziggurat of Aqar Quf near Baghdad, the vanished Etemenanki in Babylon, and Chogha Zanbil in Khuzestan. The Sumerians believed that the gods lived in the temple at the top of the ziggurat, so that only priests and other highly respected individuals were allowed to ascend.
The Great Ziggurat of Ur, called Etemenniguru, "house whose foundation creates terror", was built in the Early Bronze Age, in the twenty-first century BCE, by King Ur-Nammu of the Third Dynasty of Ur. It had crumbled to ruins by the sixth century BCE, when it was restored by King Nabonidus. Chogha Zanbil in Iran is an ancient Elamite complex about 30 kilometres south-east of Susa, one of the few ziggurats outside Mesopotamia, dated to the fourteenth or thirteenth century BCE, conventionally 1250 BCE. Etemenanki, the Babylonian ziggurat dedicated to Marduk, lay about 90 kilometres south of Baghdad; some scholars have proposed it as the ziggurat behind the biblical account of the Tower of Babel.
The ziggurat is not built of huge stones: the core was of sun-baked bricks with facings of fired bricks on the outside, each step slightly smaller than the one below, and the facings were often glazed in different colours. Kings sometimes had their names engraved on the glazed bricks, which gives a way to date the building. The Atlas files ziggurats under "other" because they fit no megalithic category.
When visiting, check the security situation, since several sites lie in regions where access is restricted.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Ziggurat, Wikipedia: Ziggurat of Ur, Wikipedia: Chogha Zanbil, Wikipedia: Etemenanki · CC BY-SA 4.0
Where it stands
Iran
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 32°00′32″ N, 48°31′18″ EFor a GPS or map app: 32.00901, 48.52161
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
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Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
1 source behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q82074486wikidata.org
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Compiled from open records (Wikidata, CC0; OpenStreetMap, ODbL) and a regional background article based on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Wikidata Q82074486CC0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0