Chogha Zanbil
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How it came to be
Chogha Zanbil is the religious city founded around 1250 BC by the Elamite king Untash-Napirisha, who reigned from 1275 to 1240 BC, in what is now Khuzestan province in south-west Iran. Its ancient name, Dur Untash, means town of Untash, and it was dedicated mainly to the god Inshushinak. Its ziggurat originally measured 105.2 m on each side and about 53 m in height, in five levels.
Excavators found 5,257 inscribed bricks, 67 of them in Akkadian. The city was never completed, and the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal destroyed it in the mid-7th century BC. The ziggurat now stands only 24.75 m high.
A geologist prospecting for oil came across an inscribed brick, and Roland de Mecquenem then surveyed and excavated the site in 1935 to 1939 and in 1946. Roman Ghirshman dug there for six seasons between 1951 and 1962. The site was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1979.
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