The Mesopotamian city of Ur, known as Tell al-Muqayyar, was an important Sumerian city state between about 2025-1738 BC. Located near the modern town of Nasiriya in far southern Iraq, on a now-abandoned channel of the Euphrates river, Ur covered about 60 acres, surrounding by a city wall. When Woolley excavated in the 1920s and 1930s, the city was a tell, a great artificial hill over seven meters high composed of centuries of building and rebuilding mud brick structures, one stacked on top of another.
The earliest known occupations at Ur city date to the Ubaid period of the late 6th millennium BC. By about 3000 BC, Ur covered a total area of 37 acres including early temple sites. Ur reached its maximum size of 54 acres during the Early Dynastic Period of the early 3rd millennium, when Ur was one of the most important capitals of the Sumerian civilization. Ur continued as a minor capital for Sumer and succeeding civilizations, but during the 4th century BC, the Euphrates changed course, and the city was abandoned.
Living in Old Babylonian Ur
The city reached its heyday during the Old Babylonian or Early Dynastic period of 2025-1738 BC. Four main residential areas of the city included homes with baked mud brick foundations arranged along long, narrow winding streets and alleyways. Typical houses included an open central courtyard with two or more main living rooms in which the families resided. Each house had a domestic chapel where cult structures and the family burial-vault was kept. Kitchens, stairways, workrooms, lavatories were all part of the household structures.
The houses were packed in very tightly, with exterior walls of one household immediately abutting the next one. Although the cities appear very closed off, the interior courtyards and wide streets provided light, and the close-set houses protected the exposure of the exterior walls to heating especially during the hot summers.
Important discoveries at Ur included the Royal Cemetery, where rich Early Dynastic burials were found by Woolley in the 1920s; and thousands of clay tablets impressed with cuneiform writing which describe in detail the lives and thoughts of Ur's inhabitants.
Archaeology at the City of Ur
Archaeologists associated with Ur included J.E. Taylor, H.C. Rawlinson, Reginald Campbell Thompson, and, most importantly, C. Leonard Woolley. Woolley's investigations of Ur lasted 12 years from 1922 and 1934, including five years focusing on the Royal Cemetery of Ur, including the graves of Queen Puabi and King Meskalamdug. One of his assistants was Max Mallowan, then married to mystery writer Agatha Christie who visited Ur and based her Hercule Poirot novel Murder in Mesopotamia on the excavations there.
Sources
This glossary entry is part of the Guide to Mesopotamia and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Also see the article on the University of Pennsylvania's Royal Treasures of Ur, and the photo essay on the Royal Cemetery of Ur for further information.
Brusasco, Paolo 2004 Theory and practice in the study of Mesopotamian domestic space. Antiquity 78(299):142-157.
Reade, Julian 2001 Assyrian King-Lists, the Royal Tombs of Ur, and Indus Origins. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 60(1):1-29.
Shepperson, Mary 2009 Planning for the sun: urban forms as a Mesopotamian response to the sun. World Archaeology 41(3):363â€"378.
Tinney, Steve 1998 Texts, tablets, and teaching: Scribal education in Nippur and Ur. Expedition 40(2):40-50.
Zettler, Richard L. 1987 Sealings as Artifacts of Institutional Administration in Ancient Mesopotamia. Journal of Cuneiform Studies 39(2):197-240.
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