Ur, in southern Iraq, is the best known of the Sumerian
cities, thanks especially to the well published excavations of Leonard Woolley
(1922-1934).Ur is a `tell', an artificial mound consisting of the accumulated
remains of habitation. In the case of Ur, habitation here lasted c. 4000 years,
from the fifth to the mid-first millennium BC. Since mud brick was the main
building material, the mound rose higher when brick buildings went out of use
and new buildings were erected on top.
The city of Ur was thus constantly renewed over a long
period of time. It was large, too, occupying an area of c. 60 ha. How, then,
does an archaeologist investigate a city with such a long history?
Even in the nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, when
excavating was faster than it is now, the archaeologist could still only sample
such a site. Removing each habitation layer from such a vast area would be
impossible, even if the layers were neatly deposited - which in reality they
never are. One can only excavate where convenient, such as along the sides, or
in selected areas from the top, to descend and find representative sections of
the city at different periods in its long history. Thus Ur is quite different
from Amarna (a single-period site), Pompeii, and the Athenian agora (where
stone and baked bricks could be reused, and thus a high mound was not formed),
but very typical of the ancient cities of the Near East.
The buildings excavated at Near Eastern tell sites do not
survive well. If exposed to rain, the mud brick dissolves; a modern roofed
structure is needed for protection, rarely provided because of high costs and
practical problems. Further, the need to remove higher levels of habitation in
order to sample earlier periods necessitates destruction of architecture. As a
result, the modern tourist cannot expect to visit the site and step into an
environment that might evoke the ancient reality - a striking contrast with,
say, Pompeii. The ancient Near Eastern city typically lives on after excavation
not in its built environment, which has quickly disintegrated, but in books,
articles, photographs, plans, and any objects that might have been recovered
(clay tablets, seals, pottery, figurines, metal objects, etc.).
Woolley's excavations yielded much information about Ur,
especially about its city walls, religious center, tombs, and houses. Ur was
located on a promontory between an arm of the Euphrates River and a navigable
canal. Although approachable by land only from the south, the city was
encircled by a mud brick wall, 27m thick. These walls were built late in Ur's
history, in neo-Babylonian times (sixth century BC), but surely followed the
placement and appearance of earlier walls.
The religious center was dominated by a ziggurat, built by
king Ur-Nammu during the prosperous Ur III period, c. 2100-2000 BC. A
distinctively Mesopotamian construction, a ziggurat is a stepped pyramid made
of mud brick, a series of platforms one on top of the other, each smaller than
the one below, with a temple on top. In the flat landscape of southern
Mesopotamia, it resembled a mountain, and allowed people to reach up to the
gods. Unlike Egyptian pyramids, ziggurats were never tomb buildings.
Residential districts consisted of narrow, winding streets,
the sign of a city developing organically over a long period of time, not
planned at a single moment. Houses were plain from the outside. Inside, there
was a central court, with rooms around it. Woolley believed they had two
stories, but this has been doubted. Most rooms opened onto the courtyard. The
function of rooms is rarely certain. As at Pompeii, portable furniture must
have meant that functions were constantly changing. Burials were made below the
floors of the houses, in tombs of various types, with grave goods.
The most famous tombs are the 16 Royal Tombs of the Early
Dynastic period, c. 2600-2350 BC, part of a large cemetery containing some 2000
graves. These graves consisted of built chambers of brick and/or stone used for
multiple burials. In these tombs found intact, the deceased were accompanied by
wonderful objects. Striking here was the discovery, on the ramp leading down to
the chamber, of draft animals, the wheeled vehicles they pulled, and skeletons
of soldiers and female attendants. The greatest number of bodies was 74. It is
assumed these people were killed at the time of the burial. This practice is
unique to Ur in this period, and not explained in any texts.
No comments:
Post a Comment