2.5 Aims of the study
3.1.2 Connectionism
Ur is the most extensively explored of the great Sumerian cities, revealed notably by the excava-tions conducted in 1922–34 by the British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley on behalf of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum. Modern interest in this ancient city has been sparked not only by Woolley’s discoveries, but also by the site’s apoc-ryphal identification with Ur of the Chaldees, the home of the biblical patriarch Abraham.
Like so many cities of southern Mesopotamia, Ur was inhabited for several thousand years, from the fifth well into the first millennia BC. Here we shall examine the most famous part of the ED city, the Royal Tombs. In the next chapter our attention will focus on aspects of Ur in a later period, during the reign of the city’s greatest ruler, Ur-Nammu: the city walls, the city center with its ziggurat, and the private houses (Figure 2.15).
Figure 2.15 City plan, Ur
The sixteen Royal Tombs of the ED III period were among the earlier burials in a centrally located cemetery containing some 2,000 interments ranging in date from Ubaid to Neo-Sume-rian times. The names of some of the persons buried here are known, written on objects found in the tombs: a queen or priestess Pu-abi (called Shubad by Woolley), and two kings of Ur, Akalamdug and Meskalamdug. The unknown may well include high-ranking administrators or religious figures.
The Royal Tombs, unique to Ur, are striking not only for the splendor of the grave offer-ings and for the tomb construction, but also for the traces of the elaborate mortuary ritual that included human sacrifice. In each tomb, the important person, on occasion with companions, and a magnificent array of objects were placed in one or more burial chambers at the foot of a steep ramp. The participants in the funerary procession lay neatly arranged on the ramp: the remains of the draft animals in front of the wheeled vehicles they pulled and the skeletons of soldiers and female attendants. Although their clothes had disintegrated, adornments of precious metal survived. Tomb no. 1237, whose occupant remains anonymous, contained the largest number of bodies: seventy-four, including sixty-eight women still wearing their finest gold jew-elry. Did these attendants meet death willingly, with resigned acceptance? What purpose did they believe they were serving? Such practices have been attested at no other city. Textual evidence offers no convincing explanation.
Grave goods: a bull’s headed lyre and the Royal Standard
Although Sumerian thieves had cleared out some of the graves, many funerary gifts remained in situ, such as jewelry, vessels of gold and silver, musical instruments, weapons, game boards.
Shown here are two of the finds, a lyre decorated with a bull’s head and inlay on the sound box and the so-called Royal Standard of Ur.
This lyre, the finest of several examples from the tombs, was discovered in the tomb of King Meskalamdug (Figure 2.16). Although the wooden parts had rotted away, the shape of the lyre was preserved in the ground. By pouring liquid plaster into the cavity, the excavators could accurately reas-semble the form and the non-perishable decorations.
Measuring 1.22m in height, the instrument consists of a wooden sounding box on the bottom and an upright section on either end, all inlaid with colored materials.
A horizontal bar across the top would have held the strings running up from the sounding box, and tuning pegs. The golden head of a bearded bull decorated the front, perhaps an apotropaic image to ward off evil.
Such lyres were not just for show, for on one side of the Royal Standard of Ur, a priest can be seen pluck-ing happily on a virtually identical instrument.
The Royal Standard may itself have been an elabo-rate sounding box for a harp or lyre, or, as originally thought, a standard placed on a pole and carried before the king in ceremonial processions (Figure 2.17). The wooden core measures ca. 20cm × 45cm.
After preparing the surface with bitumen, a tar used in antiquity as a sealant and glue, the artisan applied
Figure 2.16 Lyre (reconstructed), from Ur. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia
the mosaic, figures and borders of bits of shell against a blue background made of pieces of lapis lazuli. The Royal Standard is notable not only for the fine preservation of its inlay, one of the favorite crafts of the Sumerians, but also for its figural scenes, expressions of royal imagery. Each side has three registers; the scenes are read as a continuous story from the lowest register to the uppermost. The reverse, “War,” depicts the king, his infantry, and his chariots, with enemies trampled, whereas the obverse, sometimes called “Peace,” shows banqueting, and the transport of animals, agricultural products, and booty. Wheeled vehicles are first depicted earlier, in ED I, typically as war chariots. The animals pulling the ungainly four-wheeled chariots shown in the scene of “War” on the Royal Standard were thought to be onagers (wild asses). Recent research in Syria and Palestine suggests they may instead be mules, a hybrid between donkeys and very small horses. The horse was long considered to have been introduced into Mesopotamia in the mid-second millennium BC, an import from Central Asia. The issue is now open for discussion.
Roofing techniques: arches and vaults
The roofing of the tomb chambers is of particular interest, because evidence for the roofs of Sumerian buildings is rare. Stout timbers, reed or palm frond matting, and a sealing of clay would have created a sturdy roof for a house, strong enough to hold the weight of a person. The same system could have been used for larger buildings, if interior columns divided the span of a room into manageable dimensions. In certain cases a more elaborate roofing of mud bricks was attempted. In the Royal Tombs of Ur, the chambers were vaulted or, rarely, domed with brick or limestone rubble, using the technique of corbelling (see below). Valuable evidence for vaulting techniques has come from excavations conducted in the 1960s at the second millennium BC site of Tell al Rimah, in north-west Iraq; well-preserved mud brick arches and vaults, some in the pitched-brick technique, are essential components of a large temple of the early second mil-lennium BC.
The progression to the true arch and domical vault (= the dome) is one of the important archi-tectural developments in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East and will be examined later in
Figure 2.17 “Peace,” the obverse of the “Royal Standard,” inlaid panel, from Ur. British Museum, London
this book. The early techniques just mentioned, corbelling and pitched-brick, merit explanation.
But first, the distinction between an arch and a vault needs to be appreciated: an arch is a two-dimensional span, covering a doorway or window, whereas a vault is three-two-dimensional, covering a room. The principles of arch construction can often be applied to vaults.
In a corbelled arch, on each of the two sides each successive block projects further inward until finally the two sides touch at the top (Figure 2.18d). If left by itself, the corbelled arch will even-tually collapse: the weight pressing down toward the empty center of the arched space is not sufficiently counterbalanced by the weight of one brick on top of another. To solve this prob-lem, a counterweight needs to be placed on the outside, to press the outer edges of the bricks downwards, to direct pressure toward the brick just below. If well incorporated into a sturdy wall, a corbelled arch could stand. In contrast, vaults made in the corbelling technique never stand alone, without counterweight, unless the space they cover is small (as in a small room of a house). Good-sized corbelled vaults are underground, with a packing of earth around and above the structure to provide the necessary counterpressure.
In the true arch as distinct from the corbelled, stones are specially cut in wedge shapes to fit into one continuous curve (Figure 2.18a). The form and placement of the keystone, the wedge
Figure 2.18 Diagram: (a) true arch; (b) barrel vault; (c) groin vault; and (d) corbelled arch
at the top of the arch, illustrates how the pressure from each stone is not directed exclusively downwards, but also to the side. The vertical struts that support the arch need to be reinforced in order not to buckle outwards, but the arch itself should not collapse. As with corbelling, the principles of true arch construction can be extended to three-dimensional forms, the vault (two are important in Mediterranean antiquity, the barrel vault and the groin vault: Figures 2.18b and c, respectively) and the dome (a hemispherical vault).
The pitched-brick technique of roofing falls somewhere between the above two methods (Figure 2.19a–b). The bricks are not specially cut into wedge shapes, nor are they placed flat one on top of the other. Instead, each successive brick is tilted slightly in order to form a curved line.
The extra space at the top is filled with fragments. Although much more fragile than a true dome, such a structure can stand on its own.
Figure 2.19 Diagram: The pitched brick vault: (a) view from below; and (b) in cross section
SUMMARY
By 2350 BC, the city was already firmly established in southern Mesopotamia as the center of social, economic, and political life. Owned by the gods, administered for them by kings, Sumerian cities controlled their regional agriculture and water supplies, promoted industries, and participated in the long-distance trade that ensured provisions of raw materials unavailable locally. The cities themselves were fortified nuclei located on agricultural land and their life-giving watercourses.
Dominating the city, the temple of the tutelary deity was the city’s original religious, economic, and administrative center. During the ED period the royal palace first appeared, the focus of the rising rival power of the earthly ruler. The town would be further divided into neighborhoods by canals, streets, and walls, but not according to any general pattern repeated from one Sumerian city to the next. Social and economic aspects of the early Sumerian city include – and here we can remind ourselves of Childe’s list of ten criteria for the true city – a hierarchical society; a variety of non-agricultural occupations; the development of scientific observation, especially to assist agricultural practice; an expanded range of monumental architecture; figural art with extensive royal and religious imagery; and writing, by 2350 BC recording not only the economic data that inspired its initial development but also myth, ritual, and historical and contemporary events. If the Neolithic period gave rise to the embryonic city, in southern Mesopotamia in the fourth and third millennia BC the full-fledged city was born.