Temple of the White Thunderbird
More than 4,000 years ago, Gudea, the ruler of the Sumerian city of Girsu, had a dream. Before him, flanked by lions, appeared a man as large as the heavens and the earth, with the head of a god, the wings of a thunderbird, and a lower body in the form of a flood wave. The man uttered something about building a house. A woman consulted a tablet depicting heavenly stars. On a lapis lazuli plate, a warrior outlined the plans of a building. Birds in a poplar tree twittered away, and a stallion pawed at the ground. Unsure what to make of his vision, Gudea traveled by canal to the temple of Nanshe, a goddess known to interpret dreams for other gods. She explained it to him thus: The man flanked by lions was Ningirsu, the chief god of Girsu, and he wanted Gudea to build his temple, called the Eninnu. The woman with the tablet was a goddess indicating that a bright star augured well for the endeavor. The warrior was a god laying out the temple’s design. The noisy birds suggested the ruler would not be able to sleep until he had completed the project. And the stallion was Gudea himself, anxious to lay the first brick.
In a second dream, Ningirsu was more direct. “Laying the foundations of my temple will bring immediate abundance,” the god told Gudea. “The great fields will grow rich for you, the levees and ditches will be full to the brim for you, the water will rise for you to heights never reached by the water before. Under you more oil than ever will be poured and more wool than ever will be weighed in Sumer.” Upon waking, Gudea mobilized his people to build Ningirsu’s temple.
IN 1877, ERNEST DE SARZEC, a French diplomat posted to Basra in the southeastern corner of present-day Iraq, then part of the Ottoman Empire, began excavating at a site known in modern Arabic as Tello. Over the next half century, de
