Great Ziggurat of Ur belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 2100 BCE at Ur, Iraq. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
Ur-Nammu raised a mud-brick mountain for Nanna the moon god, with baked-brick armour against the rain.
How it was made
Three stairways meet at a gate. The core is sun-dried brick; the skin is the technology that made height possible in alluvium.
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.
Woolley’s restoration and a 20th-century rebuild are visible. The idea — a staged stair to heaven — is older than Babylon’s fame.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 2100 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 24 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.