Excavations commenced at Tel el-Muqayyar—ancient Ur—in 1922 as a joint venture between the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania and directed by the British archaeologist, Sir Leonard Woolley. Within the first week of excavations, the expedition stumbled upon an ancient cemetery. Woolley knew the area held great promise since tombs tended to produce the greatest number of artifacts, but he decided not to excavate the cemetery immediately. There were several factors that went into his decision. Firstly, tombs are notoriously difficult to date, even when the stratigraphy of the site is well understood—and Ur’s was completely unknown. Secondly, Woolley and his staff were new to the region and their workforce was untested.¹Woolley 1934, 5-6 Thus Woolley chose to focus his efforts on clearing the debris from around the famous ziggurat of Ur and excavating the courtyards and temples next to it.

Woolley, Ur Excavations: The Royal Cemetery (Plates), Plate II. Link

It wasn’t until five years later that Woolley and his team finally returned to the cemetery area. They began the dig season with great expectations but these steadily diminished as one week rolled into another and almost nothing of real importance was found. It wasn’t until the very end of the season that they finally found a significant tomb (PG 580) and next to it, a cache of objects that included two beautiful gold daggers of outstanding craftsmanship.

The knives generated a great deal of excitement but they also presented Woolley with a dilemma. That he had discovered a large and richly furnished tomb, none could deny. Woolley noted in his diary that “the earth face had only to be scratched for more gold objects to appear.” But Woolley did not have time to excavate the tomb. He decided, therefore, to ask Sheikh Munshid, the head of the Ghazzi tribe, who controlled the land around Tell el-Muqayyar, if he would secure the site until the next season. The old sheikh agreed and made good on his promise. Woolley would later recall how, “the site was religiously respected through the six summer months.”

Woolley and his foreman, Sheikh Hamoudi Ibn Ibrahim, would excavate 1,850 tombs over the next three seasons. Of these, only sixteen could be classified as royal. They were larger than the others in the cemetery and deeper, approximately 20 to 36 feet down. They were also exceptionally rich in grave goods. Indeed, the treasure recovered from the royal tombs of Ur would surpass anything found in the ancient world, before or since, with the exception of Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt. Among the objects recovered from the tombs was jewelry fashioned from carnelian, agate, mother of pearl, and lapis lazuli; giant harps covered in silver and gold; boxes inlaid with precious stones; weapons made of copper and bronze; vessels of alabaster, chlorite, obsidian, silver, electrum, and gold; and several ornately decorated ostrich eggs.

To the Bottom of Mesopotamia

As noted previously, the royal tombs were found in the lowest levels of the cemetery. But nowhere did Woolley and his team hit virgin soil. Wishing to discover just how deep the layers of occupation at Ur went, Woolley decided to dig a probe (Trial Pit B) at the bottom of the deepest tomb in the cemetery (PG 1054). Almost immediately Woolley struck a level of pure sand completely devoid of pottery. It would have been easy at this point to declare victory and call it a day, but Woolley thought that he was still too high above the level of the ancient marsh to have reached the lowest levels of occupation. So they continued digging. They would dig through eight feet of pure sandy clay before they struck levels containing pottery again. The pottery in these lower levels was of a type known as Ubaid Ware. As you may recall from our discussion of a similar probe dug on the Eanna of Uruk, Ubaid pottery is typically found beneath the Uruk period levels at sites in Mesopotamia. It is named after the place where it was first discovered—Tell al-Ubaid, only a mile distant from Ur. Ubaid ware was found above and below the 8 foot thick layer of sterile clay. The presence of so much clay interposed between layers bearing the same type of pottery raises some interesting questions to which we will return in a moment.

‘Trial Pit B’ was not the only probe Woolley dug at Ur. As you may recall from our discussion of Solid-footed Goblets, Woolley dug another probe nearer to the sacred precinct of the city, which he designated ‘Trial Pit F’. This probe was more informative since it penetrated through the heart of the city rather than through the layers of debris which accumulated on the outskirts of the city. Woolley used the information he gathered from ‘Pit F’ to create the following succession of cultures at Ur (from latest to earliest).

1. Akkadian
2. Early Dynastic
3. Jemdet Nasr
4. Uruk
5. Ubaid

Woolley found a considerable amount of overlap between the Ubaid, Uruk, and Jemdet Nasr cultures. The Ubaid, he thought, belonged to the earliest inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia, followed by the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr cultures. But Woolley admitted that he had a difficult time distinguishing the Uruk period from the Jemdet Nasr based on pottery alone since the two pottery styles were intermixed.

Ubaid

Uruk

Jemdet Nasr

Woolley considered Jemdet Nasr Ware to be a foreign import and that its appearance at Ur belonged to a period when “foreign influence was paramount.” Woolley also noted that the “red and black wares” which began to appear in the Uruk period (see Four-Lugged Pot), and thus predates the Jemdet Nasr, continued in use well into the Early Dynastic period.²Woolley writes, “We are justified in speaking of a Jamdat Nasr Period, the well-defined phase during which this foreign influence was paramount; similarly we may call the preceding period when the red and black wares stood alone Uruk Period, but we must remember that the Uruk pottery continues in use long after the “Uruk Period” has come to an end.” (Woolley 1955, 27-28)

Woolley recorded his observations with reference to “meters above sea level.” In Pit F, for example, Woolley noted that he began to find sherds of Jemdet Nasr pottery at the 11 meter mark. (Keep in mind that Woolley is measuring from sea level, so the deeper her digs, the lower the number. See image above for reference.) Between 10 and 9 meters Jemdet Nasr Ware was common; between 9 and 8.5 meters it was less so; and below 8.5 meters it disappeared altogether. Through all these levels Woolley found the wheel-made undecorated red and black pottery typical of the Uruk period. At 8.5 meters he began to encounter handmade and painted Ubaid Ware mixed with the Uruk period pottery. It wasn’t until the 6 meter mark that Uruk period pottery began to disappear. Below 5.5 meters the pottery is exclusively Ubaid.³Woolley 1955, 4

The primary takeaway from this survey of the pottery sequence at Ur is that what often appears to be definite chronological breaks, such as between the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, or between the Uruk and Ubaid, is not so clearly defined in the ground. This does not render periodization invalid, but some allowance must be made for overlap, otherwise there will be a tendency to allot more time too them than is necessary.

The Kings and Queens of Ur

According to the Tummal Inscription, Mesannepada reigned after Agga and before Gilgamesh. This presents some difficulties since, according to other Sumerian texts, Agga and Gilgamesh were contemporaries. Kramer thought the texts might be reconciled if Gilgamesh outlived the other two kings, and did not capture Nippur until he was an old man. In any case, despite the difficulties involved, the Tummal Inscription represents the only literary tradition independent of the Sumerian King List which places Agga, Mesannepada, and Gilgamesh in relation to each other.

Woolley was convinced that the most important tombs actually predated the First Dynasty of Ur since he found a stratum of debris covering the cemetery which contained seal impressions bearing the name “Mesannepada.” If the reign of Mesannepada is tentatively dated to the first half of the Early Dynastic III period, then this provides a terminus ante quem (“no later than”) for dating the cemetery. (The cemetery cannot be later than the stratum which covers it.)

The royal tombs cut through distinctive layers of debris which contained archaic seals of the Jemdet Nasr period. Woolley designated these layers S.I.S. IV and V (Seal Impression Stratum). These levels also contained archaic cuneiform texts which have since been dated orthographically (“style of writing”) to the Early Dynastic I period.⁵Lecompte and Benati 2017 This makes them roughly contemporary with the Ushumgal Stele which we looked at in a previous entry. S.I.S. IV and V therefore provide us with a terminus ante quem (“no earlier than”). (The tombs cannot predate a stratum they cut through.)

It seems, therefore, that the royal tombs in the cemetery at Ur belong to the Early Dynastic II and the beginning of the Early Dynastic III (ED IIIa).⁶Hamblin 2006, 48 That is c. 2500 – 2400 BC in the short chronology.

The Royal Cemetery of Ur reveals the great wealth enjoyed by the city and the high level of skill attained by its craftsmen. The wealth of Ur may be attributed, in part, to its strategic position near the mouth of the Euphrates which gave it control over maritime trade that passed from the Persian Gulf up the Euphrates. Standing atop the mound today, it is hard to believe that the city could have functioned as a port city, since the coastline has shifted more than 20 miles south of the city, and the river, which once flowed nearby, is now a distant band of green on the eastern horizon.