The pyramids at Giza and the ziggurats of the ancient Near East

             About ten years ago my parents lived and worked in Cairo, Egypt. They resided there for four years, only coming home to the U.S once a year.  I have learned a lot from them and their travels, however the history that Egypt holds continues to fascinate me. The pyramids at Giza are extremely mystical and full of history.  I knew very little about the ziggurats, however upon reading this book I found that there are several comparisons to be made between these two kinds of structures.  Most people tend to think that all pyramids are the same in structure and purpose but there are several important differences between them.  The ziggurats and the Egyptian pyramids are very similar in structural style, yet they had very different uses.  The most famous Egyptian pyramids are found at Giza, “Necropolis” (City of the Dead) just outside the city of Cairo. Several of these pyramids are some of the largest structures ever built. These structures were built to be the "gateway to the afterlife".  Within these pyramids were tombs of kings and that of wealthy upper-level government officials.  Each pyramid had several passageways, chambers and a funerary built next to it.  There were also several false passageways, doors and vaults within the pyramids. These were put in place in order to protect the tombs from intruders as well as robbers.  In order to follow the suns path of east to west, the sites in which the pyramids sit had to be carefully planned out. It is also thought that the designers of the Egyptian pyramids may have incorporated some kind of symbolic astrological calculations.  Each pyramid has a square base and four sloping triangular faces. The angled sides of the pyramids were thought to have been made to represent the slanting rays of the sun.  Inscriptions on the walls of some of the tombs tell of deceased kings climbing up the rays to join the sun god. These pyramids are almost perfectly square, and are aligned to the points of the compass with remarkable accuracy.  Inside each pyramid there lies a narrow shaft that extends from the center chamber to the outside, which is aligned exactly with the polestar.  The material used to make these pyramids was stone.  These large granite and lime stones were roughly cut.  They are laid so tightly that you can’t even fit a knife blade, or sheet of paper between them.  In order to stabilize the structure, gypsum material was used as mortar.  Within the tombs there were large, over-life-size statues and works of pictorial relief.
            Similar to the Egyptian pyramids, ziggurats were constructed as huge pyramidal structures.  However these towers were built as monuments to local religions by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Elamites, and Assyrians.  Ziggurats look similar in shape to the Egyptian pyramids, except for the Ziggurats had a stair-stepped shape.  These structures were large layered platforms, ranging from two to seven tiers.  The first ziggurats may have been built at a sacred site upon the rubble of a previous structure. This broken down material may have been used as a foundation for a more recent structure. Unlike the Egyptian pyramids that were built in the desert, the ziggurats structures were elevated in order to protect the temples from potential flooding.  Egyptian pyramids come to a point at the summit; ziggurats had a temple or shrine at the top. The only way to gain access to the ziggurat was by walking up a series of ramps on one side, or by a spiral ramp that led from the base to the summit. Because they were thought to be the gods’ actual homes, only priests were allowed to enter.  Ziggurats had seven tiers, representing the seven known planets or the seven heavens. Unlike the Egyptian pyramids which were build on a square base, the ziggurat structures were built with receding tiers upon a rectangular, oval, or square platform. Bricks that were sun-baked mud made up the core of the ziggurat.  These bricks had facings of fired bricks on the outside, which were glazed in different colors. Just like the Egyptian pyramids, the ziggurats were thought to have had astrological significance as well.  However, unlike the Egyptian Pyramids which used mortar, reed ropes ran through the core of the Ziggurat sturcture to hold the mudbricks together.  Although there are differences between these two kinds of pyrimidial structures, they both serve very important purposes to the people who created them as well as the community that surround them.