Ur is the most extensively explored of the great Sumerian cities, revealed notably by the excavations conducted in 1922—34 by the British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley on behalf of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum. Modern interest in this ancient city has been sparked not only by Woolley’s discoveries, but also by the site’s apocryphal identification with Ur of the Chaldees, the home of the biblical patriarch Abraham.
Like so many cities of southern Mesopotamia, Ur was inhabited for several thousand years, from the fifth well into the first millennia BC. Here we shall examine the most famous part of the ED city, the Royal Tombs. In the next chapter our attention will focus on aspects of Ur in a later period, during the reign of the city’s greatest ruler, Ur-Nammu: the city walls, the city center with its ziggurat, and the private houses (Figure 2.15).
Figure 2.15 City plan, Ur
The sixteen Royal Tombs of the ED III period were among the earher burials in a centrally located cemetery containing some 2,000 interments ranging in date from Ubaid to Neo-Sumerian times. The names of some of the persons buried here are known, written on objects found in the tombs: a queen or priestess Pu-abi (called Shubad by Woolley), and two kings of Ur, Akalamdug and Meskalamdug. The unknown may well include high-ranking administrators or religious figures.
The Royal Tombs, unique to Ur, are striking not only for the splendor of the grave offerings and for the tomb construction, but also for the traces of the elaborate mortuary ritual that included human sacrifice. In each tomb, the important person, on occasion with companions, and a magnificent array of objects were placed in one or more burial chambers at the foot of a steep ramp. The participants in the funerary procession lay neatly arranged on the ramp: the remains of the draft animals in front of the wheeled vehicles they pulled and the skeletons of soldiers and female attendants. Although their clothes had disintegrated, adornments of precious metal survived. Tomb no. 1237, whose occupant remains anonymous, contained the largest number of bodies: seventy-four, including sixty-eight women still wearing their finest gold jewelry. Did these attendants meet death willingly, with resigned acceptance? What purpose did they believe they were serving? Such practices have been attested at no other city. Textual evidence offers no convincing explanation.
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