Ziggurat of Dur-Kurigalzu

33.3522°N, 44.2013°E.

The ziggurat of Aqar Quf — ancient Dur-Kurigalzu — built by the Kassite king Kurigalzu I in the early fourteenth century BCE, in modern Baghdad Governorate, Iraq. Original base 69 by 67 metres; original height estimated at 52 metres on three terraces. The surviving core rises 52 metres above the plain — within metres of its original height, making it the most intact ziggurat structure surviving from antiquity in terms of preserved elevation. The construction is mudbrick reinforced every seven to nine courses by woven reed matting set crosswise — visible to this day in the eroded faces — providing tensile strength to a structure built without timber. Excavated by Taha Baqir for the Iraqi Directorate of Antiquities between 1942 and 1945. Dedicated to Enlil, the chief Sumerian-Akkadian god of wind and air, in a city the Kassites founded as their administrative capital after taking over Babylon in the sixteenth century BCE.

A ziggurat over thirty metres tall whose reed mats are still holding it together after three thousand four hundred years.