Chogha zanbil shrine is one of the UNESCO World Heritage that belong to Iran. this
shrine was built about 1250 B.C in Elamite civilization.

Where is the Chogha zanbil?

If you want see this structure you should travel to south of Iran. This huge shrine is
located in Khuzestan province between the two ancient city of Susa and Shooshtar.

About this shrine:
This shrine was built in 5 floor with 52 meter of high but nowadays 2 floors of 25 meters of this building remain and other portion was destroyed.

This shrine built under the command of Untash-Napirisha because of praise the ancient god that protect the Susa that named Inshushinak.

Chogha-Zanbil was discovered in 1935 when companies look for oil and they founded an Inscription because of that Archaeologist figure out that there is an ancient place. Between 1951 and 1962 Roman Ghirshman excavated Chogha-Zanbil ziggurat.

Maybe you ask why this shrine some times called ziggurat?

The answer is type of construction that people used . so what meaning of ziggurat?Ziggurat meaning a place with a grate high that use for worship this building were built with mud brick and construction type make a perspective that you see this building like stairs.

So why is this building “chogha-Zanbil”?
This ancient name is a complex name. in this name “Chogha” mean hill and “zanbil” mean basket thus this complex name mean that this ziggurat like a upside down basket.

In the main area there are 3 little mud brick structure and it was so that one of them did not get destroyed and some researchers claimed that this structure was foundation for a statue but some others said this structure use like a calendar.

With a little care you can find that Elamite people had an observatory and use it to calculate the date. One of the most impressive feature that exist in Chogha zanbil is that there are a row of bricks all around the ziggurat that were written on them in ancient written language other thing that interesting in this ziggurat is how water supplied.

There are a 45km kennel that used to perverted water from Dez river and digging by and but there was a problem the water that passed this kennel was muddy so the king ordered to make a filter that clean the water for drink so they made big tanker and save muddy water there then passed that water from several layer that consist rocks, coils, sand, rig and other things so they have fresh water to drink