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(PLEASE NOTE: CLICK ON A THUMBNAIL TO ENLARGE A PICTURE) The remains of the oldest pyramid in the world is to be found in the Middle East. Buildings constructed in pyramid type shapes are evident all over the Middle East, for example, in the ancient town of Samarra, Iraq (North West of the Capital Baghdad) The Great Mosque is a descendant of the pyramids.
There are pyramids mentioned in the Bible, for example, Babylon, the city that destroyed Jerusalem had a pyramid structure, the Tower of Babel, which may have looked similar to the Great Mosque in Samarra. A vision of the Tower of Babel was painted by the artist Pieter Brugel The Elder in 1563.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries European archeologists went to Iraq and other parts of the Middle East to try and find proof that the stories in the Bible were based on fact. They found evidence of a pyramid there and some decided to look for the world's first pyramid. One archeologist, Sir Leonard Wooley (1880-1960) went to Iraq in 1922. He traveled to the ancient city of Ur, Iraq, the birthplace of Abraham. The city was founded by the Sumer civilization. In the ruins of Ur Wooley found the remains of a Ziggurat which is a step pyramid of sun-baked mud bricks faced with glazed bricks or tiles. The tower of Babel as described in the Bible may have been a Ziggurat. Wooley also found evidence of other ziggurats more than 5,000 years old showing that the Sumerians built pyramid structures 400 years before the Ancient Egyptians. The Sumerians also built the first cities and invented the wheel. The ziggurat was the centre of the city and the focus of religious ceremonies mostly led by their ruler. Ur's ruler was seen as the link between it's people and their gods. The Sumer civilization had due to civil wars disappeared by 2000BC and the desert engulfed the city and it's ziggurat.
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Pictures taken from Compton's Encyclopedia and Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. All copyrights remain the property of their respective owners.
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