Met 1983.314.1 Late Uruk temple façade seal

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cylinder seal and modern impression: ritual scene before a temple facade, object 1983.314.1. Bituminous limestone; Late Uruk, ca. 3500–3100 BCE; Gift of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky, 1983. (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Supports: Seal type-object: schematic temple elevation in a ritual scene, not a ground plan.

Frankfort 1939 on niched temple façades

Henri Frankfort, Cylinder Seals: A Documentary Essay on the Art and Religion of the Ancient Near East (London: Macmillan, 1939), on Late Uruk–Early Dynastic architectural façades in glyptic. (Macmillan)

Supports: Glyptic niched-façade type versus later monumental reconstructions.

Heinrich and Uruk excavation architecture

Ernst Heinrich, Kleinfunde aus den archaischen Tempelschichten in Uruk (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1936); Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft Uruk reports on niched-and-buttressed mudbrick in Eanna and the Anu precinct (White Temple). (Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft / Harrassowitz)

Supports: Actual niched temple architecture corresponding to the seal elevation, not a ziggurat reconstruction.

Aruz and Wallenfels 2003 Late Uruk temple imagery

Joan Aruz and Ronald Wallenfels, eds., Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003), Late Uruk temple imagery as object-type. (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Supports: Keeps the façade as a compact architectural motif, not a multi-stage tower.