| Notes on Ziggurats Notes to accompany my fictional stories. by James W. Bell © 2003 |
| What follows contains a few facts, but mostly my notes on the ziggurats. I have delineated my speculations by enclosing them in * [ --- ] *. For factual information about ziggurats, click here. * [ In my stories, I have used ziggurats as bases for communication between cities. Ziggurats ranged up to 70 feet in height with a temple or shrine on top, so a priest or his assistant would have been in attendance at most times. ] * * [ In those days (2631 BCE), it was rare that any city in Sumer was more than 20 miles distant from its nearest neighbor. Thus, any means of communication that could span 20 miles would work. Messages could have been sent by mirrors (burnished metal) in daytime or by fire at night. ] * * [ The land in Sumer was almost flat, much like the sea, so a nautical formula can be used to determine the distance to the horizon. That formula is: Distance to the horizon (in statute miles) = 1.35 times the square root of height (in feet). The line of sight distance between two ziggurats would have been roughly double that amount. The results are in the following table: Ziggurat Distance Line of Sight Height (in feet) To Horizon Between Ziggurats 10 feet 4.25 miles 8.50 miles 20 feet 6.00 miles 12.00 miles 30 feet 7.40 miles 14.80 miles 40 feet 8.50 miles 17.00 miles 50 feet 9.50 miles 19.00 miles 60 feet 10.45 miles 20.90 miles 70 feet 11.30 miles 22.60 miles * [ As cuneiform, the written language of Sumer was non-alphabetic, signals used between ziggurats would have had to be in code, known only to those initiated by the priestly class and not readable by scribes versed in cuneiform. If pressed for an explanation as to what was going on atop a ziggurat, a priest might explain that messages, prayers, etc. were being sent to the gods. Thus, the use of ziggurats for sending and receiving signals remained secret, generally unknown to both laymen and scribes. ] * For photographs and imaginative pictures of ziggurats, click here. |