2/

The Waiting Room: At the very top of those stairs—which the maintenance team is currently restoring—there would have been a small shrine. This wasn't a place for public worship, but a "waiting room" where the deity (in Ur's case, the moon god Nanna) was believed to dwell when visiting the city.

#Ur
#archaeology
#Akkadian
#meru
#history

In the cosmology of ancient #Mesopotamia, a ziggurat like the one in Ur temple, wasn't just a building; it was a meru, a cosmic mountain that served as a physical bridge between the earthly realm and the divine.

The term "Ziggurat" itself comes from the Akkadian ziqqurratu, meaning "built on a high area" or "to rise high," signifying its role as a literal staircase for the gods to descend to earth and for priests to ascend toward the heavens.

#Ur
#archaeology
#Akkadian
#meru
#history

@cavyherd I really liked [Loka](https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/96cb102d-6158-4b55-ac23-156decd273ad) (and it's prequel #Meru, but I found #Loka to be the stronger story)

It takes a bit of a "what if we learned not to do a colonialism but we leaned too far into the liberal 'anticolonialism' that is essentially isolationism"