Methodological procedures

The city of Ur reached its apogee in the late third and early second millennia ^BC, first as the seat of the kingdom of Ur-Nammu and his successors. After the demise of the Ur III kingdom, follow-ing an invasion of Elamites, the city rebounded durfollow-ing the succeedfollow-ing Isin-Larsa period, enjoyfollow-ing economic prosperity and continuing as a prestigious religious center. In Chapter 2, we looked at the Royal Tombs from ED III. More extensive information about the appearance of the city comes from the later Ur III, Isin-Larsa, and Neo-Babylonian periods and will be examined here:

the fortification walls, the religious center, and the residential neighborhoods (for the city plan, see Figure 2.15).

At its greatest extent during the Isin-Larsa period, the city measured ca. 60ha, with additional settlement outside its walls. Population of the city proper may have been approximately 12,000, using one standard benchmark of 200 persons per hectare, calculated according to an estimated number of houses per hectare, and of persons per house. But it should be kept in mind that ancient populations are extremely difficult to determine, and the figures proposed by modern specialists can vary significantly.

The extant city walls were built in the sixth century ^BC by Neo-Babylonian monarchs. The dating of the walls and indeed other construction is much helped by the ancient use of bricks stamped with the insignia of rulers. Because he did not find in the walls any bricks stamped with the name of Ur-Nammu, Woolley assumed that the Ur III fortifications were deliber-ately dismantled by the Elamite conquerors. However, the impressive Neo-Babylonian walls may well have resembled the Ur III fortifications in both location and appearance. Situated on a promontory between an arm of the Euphrates and a navigable canal, the city could be approached by land only from the south. Despite the protection of water on three sides, an imposing wall 27m thick was built all around. The lower part consisted of a steeply sloping mud brick rampart, or glacis. This section enclosed and capped the edge of the already existing mound. On this stood the upper section of baked brick, the wall proper. Defended by water and such massive walls, the city must have seemed impregnable. But as history has witnessed time and time again, fortifications and the weapons of war are only as strong as the men and women who use them.

The religious center of Ur

The religious center, devoted to the cult of Nanna, the moon god and patron deity of Ur, and his wife, Ningal, was a focus of Woolley’s excavations; as a result, much is known about it (Figure 3.4). This temenos, or sacred area, lay in the north-west, the traditional site of the important build-ings of a Sumerian city. The propitious north-west sector had the healthiest air, it was believed.

Figure 3.4 Plan, the religious center, Ur

Such an attitude may lie behind the frequent orientation of buildings throughout the site toward the cardinal points: one side would normally face the north-west and its soothing breezes.

Its corners oriented toward the cardinal points of the compass, the entire temenos measured some 400m × 200m. Buildings were preserved in foundations only, the upper parts having been destroyed during the Elamite invasion at the end of the Ur III period. The precinct contained temples, courtyards, and rooms to house the religious personnel and store offerings and cult para-phernalia, and an enormous ziggurat (see below). In ground plan, the area looks quite forbidding, with its many thick and reduplicated walls protecting courts and labyrinthine buildings such as the Giparu, a complex of shrines dedicated principally to Ningal and a residence for high priestesses.

Closely linked to the sacred compound and probably in greater need of the security provided by the walls was the royal center. The king held audience in the small rooms of the gateway into the compound for the ziggurat. His palace, the Ehursag, stood close by, just to the east, and immediately beyond that lay the Royal Cemetery. The tombs of the kings of the Third Dynasty were not as well hidden as the earlier ED Royal Tombs. Looted in antiquity, only their archi-tecture has survived, mortuary chapels at ground level with stairs down to vaulted tombs below – construction on a scale much grander than in the ED tombs.

The best-known building of the temenos is the ziggurat, the best-preserved example in Meso-potamia (Figure 3.5). Erected under Ur-Nammu and his son Shulgi, the ziggurat was restored by successive generations of kings in Mesopotamia for 1500 years after its initial construction, and again in modern times by the Iraqi government.

A ziggurat is a tower built of successively smaller platforms one on top of the other, with a small shrine on the summit. The name may come from Akkadian words for “summit” or

“mountain top” (ziqquratu) and “to be high” (ziqaru). It serves as an artificial mountain in flat land, reaching up to heaven and the gods, an elaboration of the tall platform which had held up the Mesopotamian “high temple” ever since the fifth millennium ^BC.

The ziggurat at Ur consists of three platforms. The temple on top did not survive, so its appear-ance is conjectural. The lowest platform measures 61m × 45.7m × 15m. A majestic triple staircase leads up to it and then on to the upper two stages and the shrine on top. Sun-dried mud bricks and periodic layers of woven reeds make up the solid core of the structure. The exterior was faced with a thick (2.4m) layer of more durable baked bricks, set in bitumen. Drainage holes pierced the facade of the lowest platform, a detail that has intrigued observers. Noting finds of carbonized tree-trunks,

Figure 3.5 Ziggurat of Ur-Nammu (reconstruction), Ur

Woolley proposed that the tops of the terraces were planted with trees. The holes would have helped drain the specially watered garden. This appealing vision of the ziggurat as a forested mountain peak has not been confirmed else-where.

The Stele of Ur-Nammu

The building projects of Ur-Nammu in the temenos at Ur are honored in relief sculpture on the Stele of Ur-Nammu, a fragmentary stele discovered during Woolley’s excava-tions (Figure 3.6). As did other Mesopota-mian rulers, Ur-Nammu wished to record his piety in sculptural form. Like the art of Gudea, the Stele stresses the king’s adora-tion of the gods rather than his considerable military achievements. Not only does its mes-sage about kingship contrast with that of the Stele of Naram-Sin (Figure 3.2), the composi-tion of the relief also differs from the earlier work, divided as it is into horizontal bands in traditional Sumerian fashion. In the best-preserved register, the king appears twice, in audience with two different divinities, a god-dess (left) and a god (right). In each scene, the deity, seated on a platform, watches as the king pours a libation into a plant or small tree growing in a tall conical pot. Behind the king stands a woman, her hands upraised; also a goddess, she has the responsibility of presenting the king to the seated gods. Lower, damaged zones depict a good work of the king, the construction of a temple. Ur-Nammu carries builder’s tools, assisted by a clean-shaven priest. Nanna, wearing the horned hat reserved for gods, accompanies them in procession to the building site.

Private houses

Woolley excavated several residential neighborhoods within the city. The best examples, found south-east of the temenos, date to the Isin-Larsa period, in the twentieth century ^BC. The plan with its curving streets and massing of houses contrasts with the regular layout of Protoliter-ate Habuba Kabira of some 1,200 years before. There was no attempt to place straight, wide streets at regular intervals. The paths granting access to pedestrians and pack animals never received much consideration from home owners or municipal authorities, and their courses must have weaved back and forth as the buildings that lined them were demolished and rebuilt.

Further, trash would be randomly discarded into the streets. In the ancient city, as indeed in the Middle East today, the interior of the home, one’s private space, was the focus of respect and attention, not the public streets outside. Even so, the need for some regulation of public streets was recognized, as this omen text indicates:

Figure 3.6 Stele of Ur-Nammu, Ur. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia

If a house blocks the main street in its building, the owner of the house will die; if a house overshadows (overhangs) or obstructs the side of the main street, the heart of the dweller in that house will not be glad.

(Frankfort 1950: 111) The grandest houses at Ur surpass their counterparts at Habuba Kabira. They con-sist of two stories of rooms arranged around an open air court (Figures 3.7 and 3.8). This design differs from house plans at Habuba Kabira, in which a single story and set of rooms lay at the rear of a court. As typical in all periods, the walls as seen from the street are completely unadorned. What lies inside belongs strictly to the family and their friends. In addition, the dead were often bur-ied in the house beneath the ground floor, a practice reminiscent of Neolithic Çatalhöyük.

But burial practices could vary. Cities would often have separate areas for cemeteries.

Simpler house plans also exist. These evidently belonged to shops, distributed throughout the residential quarters with heavier concentrations in the southern part of the city. In addition to houses and shops, the city plan also contained small shrines, located at street crossings.

Figure 3.7 House plan, Isin-Larsa period, Ur

Figure 3.8 House interior (reconstruction), Ur

HAMMURABI OF BABYLON AND THE OLD