Editing Lagash (section)

====Level I architecture====
[[File:3-D reconstruction of Area A.png|thumb|381x381px|3-D reconstruction of Area A by Keifuhui (Front)]]
Level I of Area A was occupied from [[Early Dynastic Period (Mesopotamia)|Early Dynastic]] (ED I) to Ur III.<ref name="Ashby 2017 86" /> It was used for both daily worship activities and festive celebrations, particularly for the queen of Lagash during the Barley and Malt-eating festivals of [[Nanshe|Nanše]].<ref name="Ashby 2017 86" /><ref>Beld, S. G., "The queen of Lagash: ritual economy in a Sumerian State", Ph.D Dissertation, Near East Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2002</ref>

Level I consists of an oval wall on the Northeast end, surrounding an extensive courtyard. The fragments, together comparison to another Sumerian temple at [[Khafajah]], show that the wall should originally be approximately 130m long.<ref name="Hansen1970" >{{Cite journal |last=Hansen |first=Donald P. |date=1970 |title=Al-Hiba, 1968-1969, a Preliminary Report |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3249506 |journal=Artibus Asiae |volume=32 |issue=4 |pages=243–258 |doi=10.2307/3249506 |jstor=3249506 |issn=0004-3648}}</ref>

For the temple-building, it is connected to the courtyard with steps. Twenty-five rooms have been excavated inside the building, in which the western ones would open up to the outside of the temple with corridors and form a tripartite entrance.<ref name="Ashby 2017 86" /> Both the temple-building and the oval wall were built with plano-convex mud bricks, which was a very common material up to the late Early Dynastic III period. Additionally, foundations are found under the temple-building. They are composed of rectangular areas of various sizes, some as solid mud bricks and some as cavities of broken pieces of alluvial mud and layers of sand, then capped again with mud bricks.<ref name="Hansen1970" />
[[File:3-D reconstruction of Area A by Keifuhui.png|thumb|365x365px|3-D reconstruction of Area A by Keifuhui]]