Excavations at Ur, 1933–34

Abstract

DR. C. L. WOOLLEY'S lecture on “The Year's Work at Ur”, given at the Royal Institution on May 11, afforded his audience a more favourable opportunity of appraising the results of this brief season's excavations than has been possible from the summary reports which have appeared in the Press. The elucidation and study of the earlier phases of the occupation of the site have been carried down through pre-flood strata to the bottom of the marsh before man appears on the scene. The history of the ziggurat, dating in its present form from 2300 B.C., of the attendant temples of the First Dynasty (3000 B.C.) and of the antecedent buildings which they replaced, has been brought back to the very beginning of the ‘plano-convex’ period, while beneath have been found still earlier periods of which the later must belong to the ‘Jemdet Nasr’ age. It was not possible at this point in the excavation area to carry the work to its logical conclusion by deeper digging; but Dr. Woolley traced the course of excavations at the south-eastern end of the Temenos area from the modern ground-level right down to virgin soil, through deposits of the age of Nebuchadnezzar, the Kassite age (1400-1000 B.C.), the Sargonid period (2600 B.C.) and through a continuation of the Royal Cemeteries of the fourth millennium. It was at this point, in what was evidently a soldiers' burial ground, that the unique discovery of a female statue deposited as a funerary offering was made. Below this were the archaic written tablets and seal impressions and at a still greater depth the graves, extending over a considerable period of time, which have proved so amazingly rich in stone vases of varied form and material. In the mixed soil in which, as well as in the sandy flood deposit, were found the earlier graves yielding Jemdet Nasr ware, there were abundant sherds of Al'Ubaid ware, thus completing a remarkable record which covers the complete range of Mesopotamian history from the middle of the first millennium B.C. to man's earliest occupation of the site, a period of not less than three millennia, possibly more.