Ziggurat of Ashur

35.4540°N, 43.2575°E.

The ziggurat of Ashur — the religious capital of the Assyrian heartland — in modern Saladin Governorate, Iraq, on a bluff overlooking the Tigris River. Original construction began ~2000 BCE during the Old Assyrian period and was substantially expanded by Shamshi-Adad I (~1800 BCE), then maintained and rebuilt continuously through the Middle and Neo-Assyrian periods until the city's destruction by the Medes in 614 BCE. Original base approximately 60 metres per side; original height around 40 metres on multiple terraces. Dedicated to the god Ashur — the eponymous patron deity of the Assyrian state, whose name was identical to the city's and ultimately to the empire's. Excavated by the German Oriental Society under Walter Andrae between 1903 and 1914 in one of the most thorough early-twentieth-century digs in Mesopotamia. The site has been on the UNESCO List of World Heritage in Danger since 2003 and was directly threatened by Islamic State activity in the 2010s.

A ziggurat to a god whose name was the city's name and the empire's name, in a religious capital so identified with its deity that destroying the city was understood by both sides as an attack on the god himself.