Text B. Mesopotamia cities

The growing of grain meant that, after harvest the surplus of seeds had to be stored, necessitating the development of clay vessels that resisted moisture and attack by insects and rodents. Even more important was the need for some permanent way of recording communal decisions and the tallies of stored grain. In the broad valley watered by the meandering Tigris and Euphrates rivers writing was developed. By 6000 B.C. primitive villages were scattered across the lower Tigris-Euphrates valley and by 3500 B.C. larger cities were being built. The first of the large cities in Mesopotamia were near the mouths of the two rivers. Wood was scarce here so the developing urban architecture consisted of mud brick masses covered with a protective layer of fired brick laid in a bitumen mortar. What remains of the period are the great pyramid like mounds, the ziggurats, which served as artificial mountains on which temples were built. The White Temple at Uruk with its whitewashed brick walls built between 3500 B.C. and 3100 B.C. is among the first examples of a ziggurat surmounted by a temple. The ziggurat of the moon god Nannar in the city of Ur was built of earth and soft brick with an outer facing of hard-fired brick laid in bitumen rising in a series of terraces ascended by long straight stairs and surmounted by a temple.

ziggurat – зиггурат (ступенчатая культовая башня в архитектуре древней Месопотамии)

water (v.) – поливать

facing – облицовка

mortar – раствор

bitumen – битум

scatter – рассеивать

rodent – грызун

meander – извиваться, уклон

Exercise 11. Translate the words:

храм, наклонять, радиальный, изогнутая стена, полукруглый, каменная опора, желобчатый, опора, наращивать, задняя часть.

Exercise 12. Note in the texts of this unit:

a. Passive voice

b. Degrees of comparison (adj., adv.)

c. Noun-groups

d. To be-function

e. One-function