Building

       __**General Information**__ The Sumerians made many great buildings. I will tell you about these buildings in my journal. Early Sumerian architects did not now how to make a building hollow and at the same time stay up. So older Sumerian buildings are solid like pyramids which are partially solid. Sumerians made walls around there cities. The  se walls would keep out unwanted visitors and protect the city. These walls were also solid because they were made early in a city state. All the walls in a sumerian city state were sloping.

__**Materials**__ Building materials other than brick were used for sheathing, flooring, roofing, doors, and special applications. These materials include: Earth plaster, Lime plaster, a type of terrazzo, Phoenix dactylifera(A type of plant), Fragmites communis (Another plant), Terracottas, Bitumen and lapis lazuli. All most all of these materials were imported from different places. Most Sumerian buildings were made of mud bricks. the reason for this is that there was no building material in the dessert but there was clay. The bricks are made by using mud and shaping it into a rectangle then are dried in the sun. Another word for clay bricks is adobe bricks. The buildings in Sumer would look very boring if they were made of clay bricks. To make them look more attractive to the eye Sumerian architects made patterns with darker and lighter coloured bricks. The mud brick would detiorate and so the sumerians would destroy and rebuild the building in the same site. This caused the level of the cities to rise. Many hills called Tells result in today’s Mesopotamia. Here is a definition from the web "A mound, especially in the Middle East, made up of the remains of a succession of previous settlements."

__**Different Buildings**__ In this section I will talk about the buildings for kings, and civilians. Kings would live in palaces. They would be accompanied by many slaves and their family. The palace wasn't just meant to house the king and his family but it was also a store house for cloth, wheat, and barley and all kinds of items. These items were taxes the people of the city state paid. The people who paid the taxes would live in a nice house or an average house. The nicer houses were near the ziggurat and had two floors. The normal homes had one floor and were in no pattern. The nice homes might have been in a grid. The Sumerians were the first to build huge cities and they were very proud of this accomplishment as said in the epic of Gilgamish. Earlier in the beggining of the sumerians rule over mesopatamia houses were made of bundles of reeds. All of the homes were tightly pack and shared walls with neighbors. The wealthier peoples home would be U shaped with a garden in the center. Most sumerian homes had no windows. On hot nights the second floor would be used for sleeping and cooking because there was no roof. The average size of a sumerian room is 10 by 12 feet. __**Ziggurats**__ Ziggurats were one of the most important buildings in a city state. A ziggurat is a huge stairway. They were a symbol of power and made to please the gods. Each city state had its own ziggurat. On top of the ziggurat is a temple to one of the Sumerian gods. One of the most impressive ziggurats is the Great Sumerian ziggurat located in Ur. Not only did the Sumerians build ziggurats but the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Elamites. Ziggurats formed from 5300 BC - 600 BC. There are 32 known ziggurats in Mesopotamia and around it. Ziggurats were always either squares or rectangles. With one side which was normally more than 50 metres long. Some buildings have been built using the same style as he ziggurats like the The University of Tennessee Hodges Library in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Sukhmun Hare  <span style="font-size: 110%; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">