Royal tombs of Ur
Lecture Notes
The Royal Tombs of Ur: was excavated in the site of Tell All Mugayyer, a large oval mound, the ancient city of Ur. We are still in the Erly Dynastic period and this city was the capital of one of the ED city states in the region, a very powerful one as it turns out later. Unfortunately the amount of information we have about the ED period in Ur is limited to the royal tombs, but no architecture, we are not sure of the limits of the city, or residential neighborhoods or its monumental buildings. It was excavated by Leonard Woolley and his team in 1922-1934 right after the first WW and as a joint project of the british Museum and UPenn Museum. Much of the excavation work concentrated on the monumental buildings of the 3rd dynasty of Ur from the end of the 2nd millennium which we will discuss intwo weeks time after the exam. But these buildings were not taken down to investigate what is underneath.
The Nanna temple complex with several buildings excavated first, Woolley running tet trenches ran across some burials in the area immediately SE of the complex. This was some sloping ground and very difficult to excavate. He excavated some 2000 burials in this complex and an additional 4000 that he did not record and all of these burials spanned the Early Dynastic Period from 2600-2100 BC. Most of the burials were simple inhumations with the individuals wrapped in reed matting or in a coffin with a few pots. But some were extraordinarily wealthy including objects in silver, bronz, gold, lapis lazuli, carnelian and other precious stones in the form of skillfully crafted artifacts. 16 of these tombs, actually were associated with built chambers in stone or stone and brick constructions, which often had multiple burials. based on seals and seal impressions Woolley was able to date this complex archaeological stratigraphy, “seal impression strata”.
These 16 royal tombs had evidence of a major funerary ritual that took place during the burial including musical instruments, ceremonial cups used in faesting etc. but also evidence of human sacrifice. Now I will contradict myself what I had said a few weeks ago about human sacrifice. Accompanying the deceased 4-5 up to 75 individuals were buried, they had ritual garments on them, holding ritual paraphernalia and small cups from which they probably consumed a small amount of poison at the height of the ceremony. Woolley interpretted this as the retinue of the deceased elite were also being killed during the funeral ceremony, along with a number of sacrificial animals. Pollock argued that these people must have been related to some kind of public institution, whether they were from the ruling class or they were dependants of this institution.
Let’s look at some of the fascinating objects buried in these graves. The musical instruments, the lyres, one with the bull’s head and inlaid pictorial front panel. From PG 789 death pit, one of the richest tombs from ED IIIA extraordinarily composite objects including gold sheeting, lapis lazuli beard, a panel of shell inlayed on bitumen. Found associated with a woman. The registered scenes depict a hero mastering some mythological semi-anthropomorphized bulls with similar beards, then a series of animals are involved with festive activity, a hyena as a butcher, a lion carrying feasting paraphernalia, on the third register the same lyre is played by an ass, a fox playing sistrum, then a scorpion man dancing. Must be related to the myths related to underworld.
Another is a representation of a goat hanging onto a flowering plant, also gold silver lapis lazuli shell red limestone copper alloy and bitumen. Probably as a table or ceremonial tray support. PG 1237 great death pit. The standard of Ur, a wooden box unknown function with bitumen and lapis lazuli covered shell inlayed surfaces on four sides. On the two main scenes, 3-register narratives following some spatial and narrative continuity one that is involved with military conflict and victory afterwards, and the other feasting and food offerings. Another important monument in the development of pictorial narrative. The chariot is depicted as moving.
Powerpoint presentation
Royal Tombs of Ur.ppt