White Temple of Uruk belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 3510 BCE at Uruk, Iraq. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
On the Anu ziggurat, a whitewashed shrine sat above the first true city, when writing and the temple economy were being invented together.
How it was made
Niched façades, a bent-axis approach, and gypsum plaster made the temple glow. Uruk’s Eanna district was the other sacred machine.
Why it still counts as a wonder
It never needed a Greek list to be a wonder: the labour, the alignment, or the survival is enough.
It is older than the Seven Wonders by two millennia. The “wonder” is the invention of monumental religion.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 3510 BCE may have been founded earlier, rebuilt later, or famous only in one phase. Where ancient writers disagree — as they do for Babylon’s gardens — we say so.
This is story 33 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.