Temples, Shrines, and Ziggurat of Ur

Ur

Ur (modern Tell el-Muqayyar) is perhaps one of the best-known Sumerian cities, in part due to the fact that the Old Testament book of Genesis records that Abraham lived there and in part due to the fact that the lowest stage of its ziggurat has been restored and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This large and important southern Mesopotamian city is situated south of the Euphrates River, ca. 16 km from the modern city of Nasiriyah. Ur is the most important southern Mesopotamian cult center of the moon-god (Nanna/Sîn). Numerous cuneiform sources — including several first-millennium-BC lists of temples and ziggurats and some Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions — record the Sumerian ceremonial names of many of its religious structures, most of which are listed below. Its most important religious buildings were its principal temple Ekišnugal and its ziggurat Elugalgalgasisa, both of which were dedicated to Sîn (Nanna). During the Neo-Babylonian Empire (625–539 BC, Egipar, the residence of the en-priestess of the god Nanna/Sîn, and Enunmah, the bīt hilṣi of the goddess Ningal, were also important religious structures at Ur.

Alphabetical list of temples at Ur

Ur

Satellite image of Ur (modern Tell el-Muqayyar), with its partially reconstructed ziggurat.

In addition, there are at least five unnamed temples mentioned in cuneiform sources. These are dedicated to the deities Anunnītum, Nimintab, Ninegal, Ninšagepada, and Ninšar.

Jamie Novotny & Niclas Dannehl

Jamie Novotny & Niclas Dannehl, 'Temples, Shrines, and Ziggurat of Ur', Babylonian Temples and Monumental Architecture online (BTMAo), The BTMAo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, [http://oracc.org/btmao/Ur/]

 
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BTMAo 2019-. BTMAo is based at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Historisches Seminar (LMU Munich, History Department) - Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East. BTMAo is part of the four-year project Living Among Ruins: The Experience of Urban Abandonment in Babylonia (September 2019 to October 2023), which is funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung as part of the program "Lost Cities. Wahrnehmung von und Leben mit verlassenen Städten in den Kulturen der Welt," coordinated by Martin Zimmermann and Andreas Beyer. Content released under a CC BY-SA 3.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/] license, 2007-.
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