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Excavations at Ur, 1928–9

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

C. Leonard Woolley
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Extract

The seventh campaign of the Joint Expedition of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania at Ur started on October 24 1928, and continued until the end of February 1929. The Staff consisted of my wife, Mr. M. E. L. Mallowan, general assistant, and the Rev. E. Burrows, S.J., as epigraphist. Mr. Mallowan was detained in England by illness and did not join us in the field until early in December, up to which time my wife, in addition to doing all the drawings, was my sole field assistant, and subsequently continued to share with me the whole of the cemetery work of the season. The excavation of the graveyard area kept us busy during the greater part of the winter, and we dug 454 graves in all. By the end of January the area proposed for the current year had been exhausted, and attention was devoted to the strata underlying and bordering on the graveyard. It was this work that led to the discoveries connected with the Flood. On Mr. Mallowan's arrival more men were enrolled and set to work on the courtyard of the great Nannar Temple. By the middle of February this task also was completed, and finally, for the last ten days of the season, both gangs were drafted off for experimental work on the city walls of Ur. The results of the season therefore fall under four headings:

I. The Cemetery.

II. The buildings and rubbish-mounds of the pre-cemetery town and the evidence for the Flood.

III. The Nannar Temple.

IV. The Town Walls.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , October 1929 , pp. 305 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1929

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References

page 309 note 1 If this reading be adopted: v. Burrows, p. 341.

page 309 note 2 My suggestion that the royal tombs are contemporary with the dynasty of Erech is alternative to the view of Burrows, p. 341.

page 322 note 1 Though the silver lyre with the stag must not be forgotten.

page 325 note 1 In a preliminary report such as this it is impossible to give in detail all the evidence on which my conclusions are based, and I have contented myself with summarizing it. To show that detailed evidence is not lacking I quote here the full account of this particular pit in which at the bottom of the slope the clay deposit has been largely eroded by the watercourse.

The bottom of the pit comes at 1-55 m. above sea-level: measuring up from this we have:

0–0·15 m. stiff damp water-laid mud, gritty and full of sand, in which are a few potsherds. The mud was dark grey, distinctly blacker at the top, more the type found on the bank of a stream than in its bed, unless the current be extremely sluggish.

0·15–0·6om. Similar but blacker, with a slightly greater proportion of potsherds: at the top a narrow band of stiff yellow clay.

0·60–0·75 m. Almost entirely composed of potsherds in light rubbishy soil, with some bone fragments: the pots all wheel-made.

0·75–1·20 m. Black rubbish, burnt or carbonized stuff mixed with mud : it was broken by two thin irregular strata of red burnt earth and grey ash which did not present any clear horizontal line.

1·20–1·35 m. A very definite break. Hard clay containing lumps of brick clay burnt red (not bricks), very clean below but getting more mixed with black rubbish above.

1·35–1·50m. Black and grey ash alternating in very fine strata.

1·50–2·10 m. A regular alternation of black or grey ash with yellowish clay strata, all water-laid and from the fineness of the strata appearing to be a deposit very slowly formed. Pottery very scarce indeed. From 2·OO–2·10 m. there is a particularly marked black band with a streak of white down the middle.

2·10–3·15 m. A uniform bed of clean sandy yellow clay, water-laid. In the lower part there is no pottery, higher up a very little.

3·15–3·25 m. Broken pottery lying in dark grey muddy soil looking like a surface.

3·25–3·30 m. A yellow clay band fading off to a black surface.

3·30–3·40 m. A yellow clay band fading off to a black surface. In this as in the last two strata the potsherds are lying horizontally just under the black surface.

3·40–3·55 m. Another similar stratum.

3·55–3·65 m. Another similar, the surface less clearly defined.

3·65–4·10 m. Uniform light brown clayey soil, not very stiff, clean and practically free of pottery.

4·10–4·60 m. Alternating thin strata of grey, dark grey, and brown, looking like the result of a very slow deposit; all very clean.

4·60–5·00 m. Mixed soil with a moderate amount of pottery.

5·00 m. From here upwards is the normal rubbish formation, the strata disturbed by the lowest of the graves.

page 334 note 1 This explains the terribly ruined state of the Third Dynasty building as shown by the ground-plan. The Larsa builders not only razed the old walls to belowfloor-levelbut in making the deep trenches for the foundations of their own work cut away all of the old brickwork which they encountered. All that survive of Ur-Engur's foundations are sections in the middle of the later chambers, cut across by cross-walls and with the wall-faces hacked away, and, for the inner wall, the footings of which were not nearly so deeply set, the inner face and so much of the width as did not interfere with the Larsa trenches.

page 340 note 1 A report of the comparatively few inscriptions found in 1927–8 was not published. Reference was made to some of the seal-inscriptions. Complementary observations on these will be relevant to the present report.

page 342 note 1 An explanation of the absence of a king's tomb is suggested by an analogy from India. Widow-sacrifice (Suttee) took place in the absence of the husband's corpse if he had died away from home.