It is as a builder of gigantic works that Urukh is chiefly known to us.  The basement platforms of his temples are of an enormous size; and though they cannot seriously be compared with the Egyptian pyramids, yet indicate the employment for many years of a vast amount of human labor in a very unproductive sort of industry.  The Bowariyeh mound at Warka is 200 feet square, and about 100 feet high.  Its cubic contents, as originally built, can have been little, if at all, under 3,000,000 feet; and above 30,000,000 of bricks must have been used in its construction.  Constructions of a similar character, and not very different in their dimensions, are proved by the bricks composing them to have been raised by the same monarch at Ur, Calneh or Nipur, and Larancha or Larsa, which is perhaps Ellasar.  It is evident, from the size and number of these works, that their erector had the command of a vast amount of “naked human strength,” and did not scruple to employ that strength in constructions from which no material benefit was derivable, but which were probably designed chiefly to extend his own fame and perpetuate his glory.  We may gather from this that he was either an oppressor of his people, like some of the Pyramid Kings in Egypt, or else a conqueror, who thus employed the numerous captives carried off in his expeditions.  Perhaps the latter is the more probable supposition; for the builders of the great fabrics in Babylonia and Chaldaea do not seem to have left behind them any character of oppressiveness, such as attaches commonly to those monarchs who have ground down their own people by servile labor.

The great buildings of Urukh appear to have been all designed for temples.  They are carefully placed with their angles facing the cardinal points, and are dedicated to the Sun, the Moon, to Belus (Bel-Nimrod), or to Beltis.  The temple at Mugheir was built in honor of the Moon-god, Sin or Hiuki, who was the tutelary deity of the city.  The Warka temple was dedicated to Beltis.  At Calneh or Nipur, Urukh erected two temples, one to Beltis and one to Belus.  At Larsa or Ellasar the object of his worship was the Sun-god, San or Sansi.  He would thus seem to have been no special devotee of a single god, but to have divided out his favors very fairly among the chief personages of the Pantheon.

It has been observed that both the inscriptions of this king, and his architecture, are of a rude and primitive type.  Still in neither case do we seem to be brought to the earliest dawn of civilization or of art.  The writing of Urukh has passed out of the first or hieroglyphic stage, and entered the second or transition one, when pictures are no longer attempted, but the lines or wedges follow roughly the old outline of the objects in his architecture, again, though there is much that is rude and simple, there is also a good deal which indicates knowledge and experience.  The use of the buttress is understood; and the buttress is varied according to the material.