The Sumerians were people who lived in Mesopotamia (Ancient Iraq) from the mid 6th millennium BC to the early 2nd millennium BC. Among their architectural accomplishments are the invention of urban planning, the courtyard house, and ziggurat step pyramids. No architectural profession existed in Sumer; however, scribes drafted and managed construction for the government, nobility, or royalty. The Sumerians were aware of 'the craft of building' as a divine gift taught to men by the gods as listed in me 28. Sumerian Architecture is the foundation of later Hebrew, Phoenician, Anatolian, Hittite, Hurrian, Ugaritic, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Islamic, and to a certain extent Grecoroman and therefore Western Architectures.
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The story of Sumerian architecture is overwhelmingly one of clay masonry and of increasingly complex forms of stacked bricks. Because these bricks were sun baked, Sumerian buildings eventually deteriorated. They were periodically destroyed, leveled, and rebuilt on the same spot. This planned structural life cycle gradually raised the level of cities, so that they came to be elevated above the surrounding plain. The resulting hills are known as tells, and are found throughout the ancient Near East. Civic buildings slowed decay by using cones of colored stone, terracotta panels, and clay nails driven into the adobe-brick to create a protective sheath that decorated the facade.
Sumer lacking both forests and quarries, used adobe-brick (also called mud-brick) as the primary material. Adobe-brick was preferred over vitrious brick because of its superior thermal properties and lower manufacturing costs. red brick was used in small applications involving water, decoration, and monumental construction. A late innovation was glazed vitrious brick. Sumerian masonry was usually mortarless although bitumen was sometimes used. Brick styles, which varied greatly over time, are categorized by period.[1]
Since rounded bricks are somewhat unstable, Sumerian bricklayers would lay a row of bricks perpendicular to the rest every few rows. The advantages to Plano-Convex bricks were the speed of manufacture as well as the irregular surface which held the finishing plaster coat better than a smooth surface from other brick types.
Building materials other than brick were used for sheathing, flooring, roofing, doors, and special applications. These materials include:
Espcecially prized were imported building materials such as cedar from Lebanon, diorite from Arabia, and lapis lazuli from India
The Sumerians were the first society to create the city itself as a built form. They were proud of this achievement as attested in the Epic of Gilgamesh which opens with a description of Uruk its walls, streets, markets, temples, and gardens. Uruk itself is significant as the center of an urban culture which both colonized and urbanized western Asia.
The construction of cities was the end product of trends which began in the Neolithic Revolution. The growth of the city was partly planned and partly organic. Planning is evident in the walls, high temple district, main canal with harbor, and main street. The finer structure of residential and commercial spaces is the reaction of economic forces to the spatial limits imposed by the planned areas resulting in an irregular design with regular features. Because the Sumerians recorded real estate transactions it is possible to reconstruct much of the urban growth pattern, density, property value, and other metrics from cuneiform text sources.
The typical city divided space into residential, mixed use, commercial, and civic spaces. The residential areas were grouped by profession.[2] At the core of the city was a high temple complex always sited slightly off of the geographical center. This high temple usually predated the founding of the city and was the nucleus around which the urban form grew. The districts adjacent to gates had a special religious and economic function.
The city always included a belt of irrigated agricultural land including small hamlets. A network of roads and canals connected the city to this land. The transportation network was organized in three tiers: wide processional streets (Akkadian:sūqu ilāni u šarri), public through streets (Akkadian:sūqu nišī), and private blind alleys (Akkadian:mūṣû). The public streets that defined a block varied little over time while the blind-alleys were much more fluid. The current estimate is 10% of the city area was streets and 90% buildings.[3] The canals; however, were more important than roads for transportation.
Residential design was a direct development from Ubaid houses. Although Sumerian cylinder seals depict reed houses, the courtyard house was the predominant typology, which has been used in Mesopotamia to the present day. This house called e (Cuneiform: 𒂍, E2; Sumerian: e2; Akkadian: bītu) faced inward toward an open courtyard which provided a cooling effect by creating convection currents. This courtyard called tarbaṣu (Akkadian) was the primary organizing feature of the house, all the rooms opened into it. The external walls were featureless with only a single opening connecting the house to the street. Movement between the house and street required a 90° turn through a small antechamber. From the street only the rear wall of the antechamber would be visible through an open door, likewise there was no view of the street from the courtyard. The Sumerians had a strict division of public and private spaces. The typical size for a Sumerian house was 90 m2.[4]
Temples often predated the creation of the urban settlement and grew from small one room structures to elaborate multiacre complexes across the 2,500 years of Sumerian history. Sumerian temples, fortifications, and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques, such as buttresses, recesses, and half columns. Chronologically, Sumerian temples evolved from earlier Ubaid temples. As the temple decayed it was ritually destroyed and a new temple built on its foundations. The successor temple was larger and more articulated than its predecessor temple. The evolution of the E2.abzu temple at Eridu is a frequently cited case-study of this process. Many temples had inscriptions engraved into them, such as the one at Tell Uqair. Palaces and city walls came much later after temples in the Early Dynastic Period.
The form of a Sumerian temple is manifestation of Near Eastern cosmology, which described the world as a disc of land which surrounded by a salt water ocean, both of which floated on another sea of fresh water called apsu, above them was a hemispherical firmament which regulated time. A world mountain formed an axis mundi that joined all three layers. The role of the temple was to act as that axis mundi, a meeting place between gods and men.[5] The sacredness of 'high places' as a meeting point between realms is a pre-Ubaid belief well attested in the Near East back the Neolithic age. The plan of the temple was rectangular with the corners pointing in cardinal directions to symbolize the four rivers which flow from the mountain to the four world regions. The orientation also serves a more practical purpose of using the temple roof as an observatory for Sumerian timekeeping. The temple was built on a low terrace of rammed earth meant to represent the sacred mound of primordial land which emerged from the water called dukug, 'pure mound' (Sumerian: du6-ku3 Cuneiform:) during creation.
The doors of the long axis were the entry point for the gods, and the doors of the short axis the entry point for men. This configuration was called the bent axis approach, as anyone entering would make a ninety degree turn to face the cult statue at the end of the central hall. The bent axis approach is an innovation from the Ubaid temples which had a linear axis approach, and is also a feature of Sumerian houses. An offering table was located in the center of the temple at the intersection of the axes.
Temples of the Uruk Period divided the temple rectangle into tripartite, T-shaped, or combined plans The tripartite plan inherited from the Ubaid had a large central hall with two smaller flanking halls on either side. The entry was along the short axis and the shrine was at the end of the long axis. The T-shaped plan, also from the Ubaid period, was identical to the tripartite plan except for a hall at one end of the rectangle perpendicular to the main hall. Temple C from the Eanna district of Uruk is a case-study of classical temple form.
There was an explosion of diversity in temple design during the following Early Dynastic Period. The temples still retained features such as cardinal orientation, rectangular plans, and buttresses. Now however they took on a variety new configurations including courtyards, walls, basins, and barracks. The Sin Temple in Khafajah is typical of a this era, it was designed around a series of courtyards leading to a cella.
The high temple was a special type of temple that was home to the patron god of the city. Functionally, it served as a storage and distribution center as well as housing the priesthood. The White Temple of Anu in Uruk is typical of a high temple which was built very high on a platform of adobe-brick. In the Early Dynastic period high temples began to include a ziggurat, a series of platforms creating a stepped pyramid. Such ziggurats may have been the inspiration for the Biblical Tower of Babel.
Classical ziggurats emerged in the Neo-Sumerian Period with articulated buttresses, vitreous brick sheathing, and entasis in the elevation. The Ziggurat of Ur is the best example of this style. Another change in temple design in this period was a straight as opposed to bent-axis approach to the temple.
The palace came into existence during the Early Dynastic I period. From a rather modest beginning the palace grows in size and complexity as power is increasingly centralized. The palace is called a 'Big House' (Cuneiform: E2.GAL Sumerian e2-gal Akkdian: ekallu) where the lugal or ensi lived and worked.
Text sources indicate open space planning was a part of the city from the earliest times. The description of Uruk in the Epic of Gilgamesh tells of one third of that city set aside for orchards. Similar planned open space is found at the one fifth enclosure of Nippur. Another important landscape element was the vacant lot (Akkadian: kišubbû) which was used alternatively for agriculture and waste disposal.[6]
External to the city, Sumerian irrigation agriculture created some of the first garden forms in history. The garden (sar) was 144 square cubits with a perimeter canal.[7] This form of the enclosed quadrangle was the basis for the later paradise gardens of Persia.
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