The Site Of Ur Or Tell El Mukayyar - 1601 Words

The site of Ur or Tell el-Mukayyar is located in southern Iraq between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. The location of Ur in modern times is far more inland then I would have been at the time of the Early Dynastic. The city of Ur was an important city state in Mesopotamia due to its proximity to the Euphrates, Tigris and Persian Gulf. The site at Ur was occupied for four thousand years from the Ubaid period to the Iron Age when it was abandoned. The Early Dynastic was a period was a period of Sumerian dominance. In this period there is an increase of urban settlement and population density. (Kuhrt 1995: 31-32) There were large city centres which had walls and were surrounded by villages and hamlets. (Kramer 1963:73) These cities each had a†¦show more content†¦Hall excavated at Ur during 1918-1919 he discovered the remains of early architectural decoration. In 1922 the British Museum and the University Museum of Pennsylvania participated in a joint expedition to Ur. (Woolley 1954:12) The excavations were led by archaeologist Charles Leonard Woolley. In this excavations that took place from 1922-1934 an enormous amount of material was excavated. Most of the material excavated at Ur was taken from the Early Dynastic period. The site attracted interest from scholars as well as the public. The artifacts discovered at Ur showed the population depended on agriculture. They discovered stone hoes, sledges for slashing grain, stone querns and pounders, and clay sickles. Other items showed evidence of domesticated animals as well as the consumption of fish. (Woolley 1954:24) Many pieces of pottery was found from the layers of stratification belonging to different periods. One of the most important parts of the site is the Royal Cemetery. The royal tombs in the Royal Cemetery belonged to a period prior to the First Dynasty at Ur. The kings and queens discovered in these tombs are not on the Sumerian Kings List. They were kings of prior to the first dynasty of Ur. (Woolley 1946:19) They were the kings of the city of Ur but not of Sumer and Akkad therefore they did not control the whole country. These royal tombs shared some common characteristics. The tombs all had human sacrifice where people numbering from six to seventy/eighty