 | Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort | NCF | The excavation area abbreviation NCF refers to the Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort excavated in seasons 10 and 11. This building was located at the west corner of the temenos where it meets the ziggurat terrace and turns to the south. Publication UE9 refers to this specific structure as the West Corner Fort, built by Nebuchadnezzar at the corner of his temenos wall. An earlier fortification had been uncovered in season 3, which Woolley called the Bastion of Warad Sin. This structure sits at the north corner of the ziggurat terrace, approximately mid-way along the northwest temenos wall and may have functioned as a kind of sally port gate. It was sometimes called the north corner fort in early seasons but artifacts were not catalogued with this abbreviation in those seasons. Any artifacts from the Warad Sin building were likely catalogued instead with the abbreviation PDW. Nebuchadnezzar's Corner Fort may also have been defensive, but it contained in its later phase a large mixing basin filled with bitumen. In the time of Nabonidus it may well have been in use in repairing the ziggurat.
Woolley dug beneath the Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort, still using the abbreviation NCF, and uncovered what he believed was a temple or shrine. | (none) |
 | Ziggurat Terrace | ZT | The excavation area abbreviation ZT stands for Ziggurat Terrace. It was used for any portion of the terrace on which the ziggurat stood, though other more specific abbreviations were also used. For example, the abbreviation PDW refers to the northern side of the terrace, west of the Great Nannar Courtyard (PD), and HD refers to the southern part of the terrace. Early references using the abbreviation ZT refer specifically to excavations along the terrace retaining wall itself. Later references, however, mention specific areas on top the terrace such as the so-called 'boat shrine.' The abbreviation also refers to deep clearing of the terrace fill, particularly on the north side in later excavation seasons, though the abbreviation Zig.31 was most often used for this.
Woolley uncovered large areas of the retaining wall that supported the platform known as the ziggurat terrace. He found that it was decorated with large wall cones. These cones bore an inscription of Urnamma but there is evidence that the terrace in some form existed in the Early Dynastic period as well. The Urnamma retaining wall was slanted to support the terrace, was 1.7 meters high, 34 meters wide, and was decorated with 5-meter-wide buttresses about 4 meters apart. The inscribed cones dedicate the terrace to the moon god, Nanna, and show that it was called e-temen-ni-gur, which translates as, "house, foundation platform clad in terror." (Woolley read this e-temen-ni-il). | (none) |