The ziggurat was a massive stepped platform of mud brick built in the cities of Mesopotamia from around 3000 BCE, raising a temple high above the surrounding plain, as at Ur and Uruk. It was not a tomb but a raised stage for the city's principal cult, ascended by ceremonial stairways and dedicated to the city's patron deity. Its bulk dominated the settlement and concentrated religious and political authority in one place.
The ziggurat created a sacred vertical focus around which the earliest cities were organised, fusing religion, kingship and urban form. It established the enduring idea of the monument as the symbolic centre and skyline of the city.