The temple founded by Ur Gur at Ur, was originally of great size. It rose in three receding stages to a vast height, where, upon the final platform, the temple was placed, containing the statue of the Moon God, which was thus visible to a great distance from the surrounding plain.
The lower stages of this structure were built of large bricks laid with bitumen. In the upper stages the masonry is cemented with mortar.
It appears that this was the work of two monarchs, Ur Gur, and his son, Dungi, who as his successor, completed here, as elsewhere, the buildings unfinished by his father. The names of both kings are inscribed upon the bricks in the structure, and on the signet and clay cylinders found in the ruins.
These kings, are, however, of later date than Gudea. In their day the priest kings of one city had become kings of many, gathering various localities in Sumir under their dominion.
Among the discoveries obtained during the explorations at Nippur, by the Babylonian expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, there are many relics of Dungi and Urea, or Ur Gur.
At this time, there are evidences of an organized priesthood in whose hands were placed the religious interests of the king and the people, who proclaimed to them the will of the gods as observed in the relations of the planets and the stars.
In more primitive times the religion of this people was pure Shamanism, a worship of demons and the evil influences of nature, a religion common to all Turanian people even at the present day.
Very early, however, in the history of this people, a recognition of the benign influences in nature is apparent, and while the older belief never became entirely extinct, yet the propitious influences were regarded as attributes of the higher gods.
The sorcerers and magicians held a power of their own, but they were subject to the greater divinities by whose influence their mischiefs could be averted.
Whether this religious development was brought about by contact with another race possessing nobler religious ideals, or was a development through their scientific applications of astronomy to astrology, it is impossible to say. However this may be, these higher religious conceptions had developed very early into a cult which became the inheritance of later races that came into contact with them.