The ziggurat of Ur
Ur-Nammu’s ziggurat (c. 2100 BC): a stepped mass of mud brick cased in baked brick, climbed by a triple stair. Upper stages and shrine restored after Woolley.
The rules it illustrates
The ziggurat: a solid mountain in stages. Build the temple tower as a solid stepped mass of brick, each stage set back on the one below, with a shrine on its summit and stairs climbing its principal face.
A skin of baked brick bedded in bitumen. Build the core of sun-dried mud brick; case it with baked brick laid in bitumen, with layers of reed matting through the mass and weep holes to let water out.
Articulate brick walls with buttresses and recesses. Break the long faces of brick walls with regularly spaced shallow buttresses (or recesses), so that light and shadow give scale and rhythm to a material without mouldings.
Where it appears in the book
In the styles Mesopotamian.
In the chapters The Ancient World.