Ziggurat of Kish

32.5500°N, 44.6500°E.

The ziggurat of Kish, ancient Sumerian city in modern Babil Governorate, Iraq, dedicated to the war goddess Ishtar. Construction was initiated in the Early Dynastic period (~2600 BCE) and rebuilt several times through the Old Babylonian and Neo-Babylonian periods. Original base 85 by 65 metres; original height unrecovered, with the surviving structure preserving only the lower terraces. Excavated by the Field Museum and Oxford University expedition under Stephen Langdon and Henri de Genouillac between 1923 and 1933. Kish was the first city named in the Sumerian King List as having received kingship after the flood, and held political primacy in Sumer for several centuries before Ur and Uruk eclipsed it. The ziggurat is part of a complex including the palace of King A-anne-pad-da and the earliest documented use of the four-wheeled cart, recovered from a royal grave in 1928.

A ziggurat in the city Sumerian tradition named as the post-flood seat of human kingship, in a cemetery that produced the world's oldest surviving wheels.