John Peters on Nippur's Fuel Shortage and Construction Industry

[p. 289] In some regions [of Iraq], as at Nippur, tamarisk scrub and camel thorn are abundant, but in general dung has constituted the principal fuel because of the absence of wood. It was this lack of proper fuel which caused the ancient Babylonians to use so extensively sun-dried bricks and adobe as building material, and even to write the larger part of their contracts and similar documents on tablets of unbaked, rather than of baked clay. Only very great kings, who were able to draw their wood from other countries, could afford to make much use of baked clay.

The comparative rarity of bricks, again, caused kings to stamp those which they made with their names and titles, and bricks once made were used over and over again by successive builders. You may find in one and the same wall half a dozen inscribed bricks of different kings living hundreds of years apart, and this is equally true of the most ancient times and of the present day. I have found in the most ancient walls of the most ancient kings at Ur and Nippur still more ancient bricks used a second or third time. Similarly, in the grand palace of the Persian Chosroes at Ctesiphon, not a few Nebuchadrezzar bricks may be found, and I have lived in a modern house in Hillah built of bricks stamped with the name and titles of the same monarch.