On each side of stage I, five channels served as a constructional measure for rainwater drainage. Decorative wall nails, of which many have been recovered, originally adorned the ziggurat's exterior façade. In the entire brickwork, in each 11th layer, all bricks are stamped. But traces of a staircase to stage II were only found on the south-west side of stage I. It is likely that a terrace served as the foundation for the above-ground ziggurat, and on all four sides, interior staircases led to stage I. 37) could identify this construction method because his team excavated a tunnel which lead into the ziggurat's center. The area between the casing and stage II was steadily filled in and, together with the outer shell, formed the ziggurat's stage I, while stage V would have been the high temple of which no traces have remained. Within this mantle ( Figure 5), the ziggurat was built up through the construction of a square core (stage IV) with two enclosing shells (stages II and III). 104), which served as a protection against rain water, was set up around a slightly sunken brick floor with stairways to the temples for Inšušinak and Napiriša. At the beginning ( Figure 4), a brick formwork (Heinrich, p. The structure is unique, since the chronological sequences of the building phases, that have been recognised, differ fundamentally from that of other known ziggurats in Mesopotamia ( Figure 3). The ziggurat is separated from the town by a temenos wall, and with a lateral length of 105.20 m it is the largest known ziggurat ( Figure 2). 1275-40 BCE), and the ziggurat was dedicated to Inšušinak and Napiriša, the principal deities of the town and the Elamites, respectively. The urban settlement was founded by the Elamite ruler Untaš-Napiriša (r. In the 1950s Ghirshman oversaw a French team excavating the site, and since 1997 the German team of Behzad Mofidi Nasrabadi has conducted further investigations of Choga Zanbil. The town (lat 32☀0′30.4″ N, long 48☃1′19.0″ E) lies on the river Dez in the Khuzestan region, and was discovered in 1936. Neither the reconstruction of this monument as a ziggurat nor its dating to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BCE is accepted in the archeological literature.Ĭhoga Zanbil ( Čoḡā Zanbil, Tchogha Zanbil) is nowadays the most famous ziggurat in Iran, and in 1979 it was added to the UNESCO's World Heritage List. 75), and his interpretation has been widely rejected as pure speculation (Azarnoush and Helwing, p. But his date is based on pottery uncovered exclusively in the debris surrounding the monument (Pfälzner, p. Shahmirzadi (2004, 2005) has proposed to consider this site ( Figure 1) a ziggurat dating to the Proto-Elamite Layer IV. 23-25), the first archeologist to excavate the southern mound, dated the site to the Early Iron Age, and considered the monument a “grande construction.” Based on new excavations in the early 2000s, S. In Iran, monumental buildings, with the exception of Choga Zanbil whose construction sets it apart, were accessible by ramps. External flights of steps are always missing from monumental buildings in Iran, yet they are at all times present in Mesopotamia (for Babylonia, see Ur, Babylon, and Dur Kurigalzu for Assyria, see Assur, Nimrud, Tall ar-Rimah and Khorsabad). In Iran, buildings considered ziggurats or high temples can be distinguished from Mesopotamian ziggurats by their means of access. Slightly smaller monumental platforms which possibly served as substructures for high temples were erected in the Iron Age (between the end of the 2nd and the first half of the 1st millennium BCE), and constitute their second phase. The first phase of ziggurat-like structures und platforms dates to the Early and Middle Bronze Age (between the end of the 4th millennium and the 3rd millennium BCE ). The history of the monumental buildings in Iran can be divided into two phases. Since current research suggests that the representative buildings had absolutely no religious function, these sub-structures will not be discussed in this entry. At sites such as Ulug Depe (Turkmenistan) there are also terrace-like substructures which supported large representative buildings. The monumental buildings have terraces or platforms, which possibly served as foundations for a ziggurat or a similar high temple (Akkadian gigunû, kukunnû). In Iran there are ziggurats as well as monumental buildings which exhibit similar functions, but it is unclear whether the ziggurats influenced the development of the monumental buildings, or vice versa. 319), the high temple is not separate from the ziggurat, and the entire ziggurat should be understood as a raised temple. According to Wilfrid Allinger-Csollich (p. ZIGGURAT (Akkadian ziqqurratu “temple-tower”), a tower consisting of several stages, on whose uppermost platform existed in all probability a high temple (Roaf, pp.
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