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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) In the desert of Iraq, a huge monument seems to emerge from the sands, the Great Ziggurat of Ur.

This is the only Ziggurat that survived.

It dominates the remains of the first known civilization, that of the Sumerians.

The Bible calls these lands the Garden of Eden.

The Ziggurat symbolizes the dawn of civilization.

Recent conflicts had made the site difficult to access.

But our cameras were allowed to explore this extraordinary monument.

Here, archaeologists investigate the mysteries of the Great Ziggurat and its 4,000 years of history.

It's exciting, there are still so many things to discover.

According to ancient writings, a lost city once surrounded the Great Ziggurat.

How was a major civilization created in this place?

To find out, we will reconstruct the city as it was at its peak.

Reveal the treasures of former kings.

And reveal the architectural feats that made Ur one of the first and most glorious cities in the world.

We are in Nasiriyah, in Iraq.

300 km south of Baghdad.

In this arid desert, a gigantic pyramid structure bars the horizon.

It's a Ziggurat.

A huge cube of brick, 64 meters wide.

An open window on a lost civilization.

That's something exceptional for archaeologists.

The Britishman Leonard Wooley was the first to explore the site as of 1922.

With his team, he unearths a huge pile of bricks.

And in his footsteps, a rocky wall and a building.

Then the excavations stop, decades pass and the desert regains its rights.

The sand covers the ziggurat and hides its underpart.

Until Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq.

The Great Staircase was then restored, and entire walls were rebuilt.

A few years later, the Gulf War broke out.

The conflict inflicted new damage to the venerable monument.

But 4,000 years ago, this abandoned site was a huge city.

The beating heart of the Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia.

In 2100 B.C., the Great Staircase dominated a set of temples and palaces.

According to the written sources, this sacred complex is surrounded by a dedalus of workshops and housing.

All of it, belted by a defensive wall.

The city of Ur is undoubtedly one of the first metropolises that has ever existed.

Here, the Sumerians invented the urban way of life.

Ur still holds many mysteries.

But the conflicts have long interrupted research.

Today, the searches have resumed.

And our cameras have been able to follow a team of archaeologists at work in this exceptional complex.

The head of the mission is Abdullamir Hamdani.

He is a researcher at the University of Durham in England, and a former minister of Iraqi culture.

He takes us to the discovery of the ziggurat, the epicenter of the city of Ur.

At the foot of the monument, there are still very old ceramic teapots.

The style and the decoration of the ceramic indicates that these teapots date back to the 5th millennium B.C.

So they are 7000 years old.

Abdullamir Hamdani has obtained the exceptional permission to fly a drone over the site.

It will allow us to explore the immediate environment of the great monument.

The interior of the city is located there.

As the drone moves away, we discover an extraordinary setting.

An urban landscape in ruins.

We see the contours of temples and palaces appear.

A vast cemetery is hidden under the sand of the desert.

In the outskirts of the city, the remains of public buildings are a labyrinth of residential and working areas.

It extends over thousands of square meters.

For millennia, the remains of Ur have remained hidden under 5 meters of soil.

It was a ruined city.

Beyond the ramparts in ruins, Abdullamir shows us a curious crater.

A memory of the war and the many damages related to the conflicts that shook Iraq.

One of the missiles hit the site and made a huge hole.

The crater has revealed archaeological remains.

We are here, about 1 km from Ziggurat.

It's full of containers, jars, dishes.

It was obviously a residential area with houses.

It shows that the site is huge. It occupies nearly 500 hectares.

These findings confirm the legend.

Around 2000 BC, Ziggurat is the epicenter of a large city.

A metropolis of 65,000 inhabitants.

They decided to enlarge the city.

To build a wall, a Ziggurat, a temple and a palace.

And they called it Ur.

Ur is at the heart of the cradle of civilization.

The fertile croissant.

This prosperous city has centuries of history in Egypt and Babylon.

In Egypt, the pyramids of Giza are half a millenium old.

But the capital of the pharaohs, Memphis, is only half the size of the capital of Sumeria.

Babylon is only a village on the banks of the Euphrates.

The Tower of Babel and the Gate of Ishtar were not built before 1500 BC.

The Sumerians are among the pioneers of urbanization.

It took skilled builders to get such monuments out of the ground.

But also, and more curiously, advanced astronomical knowledge.

Abdulhamid Hamdani returns to the Ziggurat at dusk to show us its orientation in relation to the environment.

We think that the Ziggurat is aligned with the moon.

At the time of the construction of the Ziggurat, the moon reaches its maximum elevation at an azimuth of 56 degrees.

This is what is called a lunar knot.

At this time, after being mounted in the night sky for 18 years, the moon seems to stop.

Then leave for a lower orbit cycle.

Armed with his compass, Abdul Hamer determines the influence of this phenomenon on the plan of the Ziggurat.

The north is here.

Now, if we measure 56 degrees from the north, we reach the point where the moon appears highest on the horizon.

And we see that the needle is in the axis of the large staircase.

So it could be aligned with the moon.

They knew perfectly well the lunar cycles and used them to build their cities.

The Sumerians had developed a real astronomical science based on observation.

This alignment on the moon is not a simple coincidence.

Seen from the sky, other buildings are oriented in the same way.

In 2100 B.C., the Ziggurat is at the center of this revolutionary metropolis, placed under the sign of the moon.

From the top of these 4000 years, it remains very imposing.

But at the top of its glory, it was undoubtedly even more impressive.

Abdul Hamer Hamdani is on the traces of the missing floor of the Ziggurat.

At the beginning, the structure had three floors.

It culminated at 46 meters.

From this third and last floor, there is only one floor left.

What did it look like?

Let's go to Cambridge University in England.

Augusta McMahon is a Sumerian specialist.

She shows us a model of the great Ziggurat at its peak.

This is what we see on the site today.

The first two degrees of the pyramid.

And this is what is missing.

An additional floor, which is itself decorated with a shrine.

A temple of brilliant white is built at the top of the Ziggurat.

Its cover has probably been designed to reflect the moonlight.

The white is not just white paint.

It is a hot cast, made of small crystals.

When the rays of the full moon strike the sanctuary, it shines with a thousand fires.

It is dazzling.

The show must have been very impressive.

The Ziggurat acted as a lighthouse in the desert.

It sent a clear signal to the rival people.

In Mesopotamia, no one could dispute the power of Ur.

Everyone could see the Ziggurat.

It was a symbol of not only the power of the kings of Ur,

but also of the city and its immense importance.

2,000 years BC, this building rises to more than 30 or even 40 meters above the ground.

It is the highest point with hundreds of kilometers in circumference.

According to archaeologists, it is a temple.

It houses a hotel where priests worship the night sky.

Every 18 years, the large staircase leading to the entrance is perfectly aligned with the moon

when it reaches its peak in the sky.

But why make so much effort to follow the race of the moon?

Abdul Hamer examines the bricks of the large staircase.

There are traces of the first known writing.

What we see here on this brick is an inscription in cuneiform writing, in Sumerian language.

Cuneiform is an invention of Mesopotamia.

For the first time, men keep track of events.

They enter the historical time and realize their beliefs.

Here, they have written for eternity the name of a god.

It is written that the sanctuary is dedicated to Nana, the god of the city,

and that it was built at the top of the Ziggurat.

Unlike the Egyptians who worship the sun,

the Sumerians worshipped the moon god, Sin or Nana.

It is one of the most powerful deities of their pantheon.

The moon was very important for the inhabitants of Ur.

Their calendar was based on the movements of our natural satellite.

From the top of the Ziggurat, the priests observe the race of the moon and the stars.

They thus become able to predict their movements in the sky.

Astronomy and astrology are linked.

An eclipse of the moon is a bad omen.

It announces a catastrophe for the king, who must then hide.

A doublet of the king takes his place.

To deceive the moon god, he dresses up and behaves like the real sovereign.

When the danger is over, the king's replacement is sacrificed to appease the divinity.

We can imagine the scene.

It is night, the priest goes up to the sanctuary.

The whole population of Ur is gathered to celebrate this ceremony.

It is a magical scene, a very important rite in the worship of the moon.

4,000 years ago, the great Ziggurat was built for the god of the city, the moon.

And it is in Ur that the Sumerians invented what is called civilization.

They built a great metropolis, perfected astronomy and developed writing.

This society was structured around a king.

But who were the rulers of Ur?

In the 1920s, archaeologists unearthed a vast necropolis.

In the raw brick tombs, they discovered royal tombs.

Inside, precious gold objects, piles of silverware and refined coffers.

Around these funerary chambers, there are still hundreds of skeletons.

They are carefully aligned and all carry wounds to the skull.

Who are these people? Why are they buried here?

These mysterious remains are a precious testimony of the Sumerian murders.

They show how the sovereigns maintained their hold on this immense city.

Abdul Hamer Hamdani leads us to the tomb of Shugi, the king who saw the completion of the great Ziggurat.

Shugi remained famous among the rulers of Mesopotamia.

He was a musician, an architect and a poet.

His remains were in one of these two funerary chambers.

Many precious objects had been deposited there.

These funerary chambers are more or less the same as those of the great pharaohs of Egypt.

And they are just as sumptuous.

But the king's tomb faces a very different structure from what we find in Egypt.

Another monumental chamber made of brick.

When archaeologists unearthed it, they discovered many human skeletons here too.

The cause of their death allows us to determine their identity.

They obviously suffered a violent death, just like the bodies found in the false graves.

These people were assaulted.

They were killed by mass.

The skulls of the victims bear many traces of trauma.

This is the undeniable proof that these are human sacrifices.

These skeletons could be the remains of important characters.

Abdul Hamer examines the excavation plans.

They indicate the precise locations of the royal treasure and the 2,000 bodies buried in these false graves.

There are several levels.

Here we have gold and silver harps.

They could indicate the identity of these people.

They could be musicians.

These precious instruments seem to indicate that the king's musicians were buried here.

In the pit, we also find weapons and even a combat tank.

These are members of the high Sumerian society.

Why were they all killed and buried here?

Abdul Hamer leads us near the walls of the necropolis.

We can clearly see inscriptions on the bricks.

They describe the king's name.

The walls are covered with these inscriptions.

This building could be a funeral chapel.

The victims were sacrificed here during a ritual ceremony.

This one is very clear.

We can see the king.

The ceremony began here.

Offerings were made for the dead.

Funeral rites were performed.

Then the bodies were taken down to the tombs.

These people were sacrificed for the king.

When the king or queen dies,

banquets and festivities are held in his honor for several days.

Then the massacre begins.

All the staff of the royal house is sacrificed.

The bodies are watered with mercury to slow down the decomposition.

They are then dressed according to the roles they will play in the other world.

The musicians are embroidered with their lyre.

The origins with their mummified boots.

Armed soldiers go up to the entrance.

Why does the king order the death of so many of his closest servants?

Georges White is a specialist in Sumer.

He is a member of the University of Cambridge.

He examines a small engraved cylinder decorated with a royal figure.

These cylinders were used to seal or authenticate documents

as we do today with a signature.

We found cylinders like this one in the whole city.

The seal bears the name of its owner and is often an illustration.

For centuries, the Mesopotamian elite called on skilled craftsmen

to create seals with unique patterns,

the mark of their owner.

They would get the image very delicately in reverse.

It was incredibly difficult.

Then they would drill a hole through the hole

so that a string could pass around the neck.

This is a very sophisticated one.

It belonged to one of the highest dignitaries in the country.

The original was probably made of a very nice stone

and the engraving was of a great finesse.

This cylinder belonged to the governor of a city-state near Ur.

But its owner is not the most important subject of the pattern.

George is going to show the mark that the cylinder allows to trace.

He rolls the seal on a wet clay plate,

just like the Sumerians did 4,000 years ago.

We see two goddesses leading the seal owner to this seated person.

And this seated figure is the king, Ur-Nammu.

And here, Ur-Nammu is represented as the equal of the moon god.

He's saying, I am a god, venerate me.

That's exactly what the goddesses are doing in this scene.

Ur-Nammu is one of the most powerful kings known in Mesopotamia.

Behind him, we see symbols.

This cuneiform text allows to decipher the hidden message of the scene.

It is written, Ur-Nammu, Nita Kalaga, Lugal Urema.

Which means, to Ur-Nammu, powerful man, king of Ur,

the governor of Ishkunsin, your servant.

It's really a tool of royal propaganda.

Thanks to this type of pattern,

each sealed document affirms the hegemony of Ur-Nammu across the land.

The Sumerian rulers exercised a tyrannical authority over their subject.

No one was allowed to leave the right path.

Hundreds of thousands of tablets show precisely how the Sumerian kings ruled the land.

Every province had to give a large part of its production to the king.

The tribe took the form of cattle, cereals or stock.

The king exercised total control over the population.

This cylinder shows the image the king wants to project.

That of a powerful ruler.

This type of text could have had the same function as the sacrifices perpetrated in honour of the deceased kings.

Both could have been a way to control the population.

It's an immense display of power.

When the king dies, one can be offered as a sacrifice.

So it's better to obey him.

These macabre rites allow the divinized king of Ur

to suffocate all the velocity of revolt.

The sovereign reigns in an absolute way.

But another question arises.

How could the Sumerians have built such a flourishing city?

The region does not have any natural building materials.

The secret is hidden inside the ziggurat.

Originally, the temple is a modest building made of raw bricks.

It is exposed to bad weather and collapses after a few decades.

These sacred ruins serve as the foundation of a new temple.

It is a little bigger and higher than the previous one.

Over the centuries, the constructions have been successive and superimposed

until a colossal building of more than 30 meters high was formed.

It is guarded by a magnificent door tower and decorated with a sanctuary.

How did this huge monument of raw bricks cross the millennia?

Abdou Lamer examines the old bricks of 4,000 years of the original ziggurat.

It is a huge structure of earth.

It is very solid and requires a very advanced construction technique.

The core of the ziggurat is made of simple bricks of raw earth.

But the monument owes its longevity to another type of brick.

We can clearly see that the core of raw earth was entirely made of baked bricks.

The Sumerian builders made thousands of baked bricks.

To make them last as long, they had to be baked in an oven.

The Sumerians would be the first to have produced large-scale.

Their varied shades probably testify to a very elaborate manufacturing process.

Depending on the mode of cooking, we will get different types of bricks.

To validate his hypothesis, Abdou Lamer will explore the outskirts of the city.

There must have been very large-capacity brickworks here.

We see here remains of baked bricks.

These are waste that were no longer useful.

Baked or burnt bricks are too brittle.

The Freemasons leave them aside.

All these relics are the mark of an important construction site.

In antiquity, this space was clearly occupied by an atelier with ovens.

4,000 years ago, workers milled thousands of bricks here.

Hundreds of them have an inscription.

It bears the name of the sovereign and moon god to whom the monument is dedicated.

But they are not meant to be read.

Once baked, they are inserted into the outer walls of the ziggurat.

But the baking of the bricks alone cannot guarantee the permanence of a structure of this size.

The Sumerians have developed innovative processes to link these huge pieces of earth.

What we see here is a layer of bitumen.

We have raw earth bricks, then bitumen.

This is the structure of the whole.

Bitumen is a mixture of hydrocarbons that looks like tar.

A substance that naturally rises to the surface.

The Sumerians bring in huge quantities of deposits located hundreds of kilometers away.

They use it as a mortar to seal the walls of baked bricks.

Part of the walls have been raised according to this process.

In the same way, we have arranged the seats of sealed bricks with waterproof cement.

We have even reproduced the ingenious device invented by the Sumerians to avoid the infiltration of rainwater.

We see that there are rectangular openings in the walls of the ziggurat.

Their function is to evacuate the rain that could accumulate at the heart of the monument.

This device is still in use in modern brick constructions.

But one last innovation guarantees the solidity of the structure.

Abdou Lamer will show us another material inserted into the thicknesses of the bricks.

So here I'm looking for a layer of bitumen.

This organic material has been decomposing for a long time.

But Abdou Lamer finds traces of it on fragments of bitumen.

We can still see the impression of rose buds on the bitumen.

This is the only example we have of this process in Oure.

No one had done it before the Sumerians.

These innovative techniques have allowed the ziggurat to resist the test of time.

Without these rose buds, the walls would have deformed under their own weight and would have ended up collapsing.

The rose bud plays the same role as steel in reinforced concrete.

It offers an increased strength to the structure.

This is what allowed the Sumerians to build buildings from scratch.

When it rains, the bitumen makes the exterior walls impermeable.

But the raw earth core may suck up the water from the ground and turn into a real water bomb.

So hundreds of holes in the walls act as ventilation systems.

They allow the water to evaporate instead of accumulating in the structure.

The technique of the rose buds inside the structure allows it to be consolidated.

That's what allowed it to stand for millennia.