earth and capped with mud-plaster.
While mud was the most widely available
building material, the date palm ofsouthern Mesopotamia
and poplar and other trees elsewhere
provided a source of timber that could be used
for roofing normal-sized rooms. Palms provided
the building material for huts (sarifa or barasti),
which were made of palm fronds tied together
with cord also derived from the palm. Stone,
found in most areas except those covered by
alluvial silt, could be used for building. In the
marshes of southern Iraq abundant thickets of
reeds (Phragmites australis) gave rise to an alternative
architectural tradition. Spectacular reception
halls known as mudhifs are built (in the
twentieth century AD ) almost entirely from reeds
(see fig. 1). Similarly constructed buildings appear
on cylinder seals of the Uruk period from
more than five thousand years ago (see fig. 2).
Mud was readily available and labor was
cheap. For prestige buildings more expensive
materials were often used, such as baked brick
with bitumen mortar, timber imported from the
Lebanon and Amanus mountains, and stones often
transported a considerable distance, and the
rooms were decorated with expensive fittings,
such as wall paintings, geometric mosaics,
carved-stone orthostats, or paneling in rare or
aromatic wood or in ivory