Ziggurat of Ur

From Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat_of_Ur

The remains of the ziggurat were first described by William Kennett Loftus in the early 19th century. The first excavations at the site were conducted by John George Taylor (mistakenly credited as "J. E. Taylor")^[5] in the 1850s, leading to the identification of the site as Ur. After World War I, preliminary excavations were performed byReginald Campbell Thomson and Henry Hall. The site was extensively excavated in the 1920s by Sir Leonard Woolley by appointment of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum in the period of 1922 to 1934. The ziggurat of Ur is the best preserved of those known from Iran and Iraq.^{[citation needed]} It is one of three well-preserved structures of the Neo-Sumerian city of Ur, alongside the Royal Mausolea and the Palace of Ur-Nammu (the E-hursag).

The remains of the ziggurat consist of a three-layered solid mass of mud brick faced with burnt bricks set in bitumen. The lowest layer corresponds to the original construction of Ur-Nammu, while the two upper layers are part of the Neo-Babylonian restorations. (Woolley 1939). The facade of the lowest level and the monumental staircase were rebuilt under the orders of Saddam Hussein. The ziggurat was damaged in the First Gulf War in 1991 by some 400 bullet holes and the structure was shaken by explosions, recognizable from four nearby bomb craters.