Muthanna

Where writing began, and a lake of salt

Southern Iraq · BEST SEASON: November – March

Ruined mud-brick mounds in desert foreground with large modern building atop a palm-dotted hill in background. — MUTHANNA · FEB 2026 · 16 TRAVELERS

Most travellers to Iraq never reach Muthanna, and that is rather the point. Thirty-nine kilometres east of Samawah, where the Euphrates once ran and no longer does, the mound of Uruk stands up out of flat desert — six square kilometres of it. Around 3100 BC this was the largest city on earth, perhaps 50,000 people, and the place where writing was invented: the oldest tablets here are not poetry but tallies of barley, one signed by an accountant named Kushim. You climb the Anu ziggurat on your own; there is no ticket booth, no railing, no shade, so bring water and a hat. In the Eanna precinct nearby, temple columns were once sheathed in thousands of small coloured clay cones. The Warka Vase and the Mask of Warka came out of this ground and now sit in Baghdad. West of Samawah, Sawa — a closed salt lake held in by its own gypsum rim — dried to a bare crust in 2022; go for the strangeness, not the water.

FROM OUR TRIP JOURNAL

We reached Uruk in the last hour of light, when the whole mound turns the colour of the brick it is made from. The guard at the gate walked our group up the Anu ziggurat without a word and left us at the top; for a while nobody spoke, because there was nothing to hear and no one else for kilometres. On the drive back to Samawah we crossed the dry bed of Sawa, pale as bone in the headlights, and someone finally asked how a lake could just leave.

WHAT WE SHOW YOU

Uruk (Warka)

heritage

Six square kilometres of mounded mud-brick, 39 km east of Samawah. Around 3100 BC it held some 50,000 people — the largest city on earth, and today almost yours alone.

The Anu Ziggurat and White Temple

heritage

You climb the terrace itself — no railing, no ticket. The White Temple once crowned it; the earlier Stone Temple below was built of limestone set in bitumen, unusual in a land of mud.

Where writing was invented

culture

The earliest writing began here as bookkeeping — clay tablets tallying barley, one marked with the name Kushim. The Warka Vase and the Mask of Warka came out of this mound; both are in Baghdad now.

Sawa Lake

nature

A closed salt lake west of Samawah, walled by its own hard gypsum rim and fed by no river. Over-pumped and drought-struck, it dried to a bare salt crust in 2022.

Samawah on the Euphrates

culture

The governorate's capital and your base for the day, set on both banks with four bridges between. Tea by the river at dusk; from here the desert road runs southwest toward Saudi Arabia.

PROOF, NOT PROMISES