Ur

[Minimalist]

http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/eng ... 86750.html

(ANSA) - Rome, March 28 - Italian archeologists working in Iraq have found a trove of ancient stone tablets from the fabled civilisation of Ur .

The tablets bear around 500 engravings of a literary and historical nature, according to team leader Silvia Chiodi .

[stan]

for some reason the link to this story causes my internet explorer to crash.

[Minimalist]

Well, that's ODD. I just clicked it to bring the story up and it worked fine. Might be something with your cookies.

Anyway, here's the whole story.

Italians find ancient Ur tablets
Writings could lead to buried library
(ANSA) - Rome, March 28 - Italian archeologists working in Iraq have found a trove of ancient stone tablets from the fabled civilisation of Ur .

The tablets bear around 500 engravings of a literary and historical nature, according to team leader Silvia Chiodi .

"This is an an exceptional find," she said, noting that the area in question had previously only yielded prehistoric artefacts .

She said the tablets, made of clay and bitumen, were discovered by chance at an archaeological site not far from the location of the ancient city .

"I was looking for a wall structure spotted by an airborne photo when I spotted a small inscription on bitumen and then realised it wasn't the only one" .

An expert on Sumerian civilisation, Giovanni Pettinato, said the finds probably dated back to one of Ur's most prosperous periods .

"The most surprising thing is the time span the tablets cover, ranging from 2,700 BCE, the First Dynasty of Ur, to 2,100 BCE, the Third Dynasty," Pettinato said .

"The place where the tablets were found, not far from the surface, leads one to suppose they contain information from a library," he said .

"There could be thousands of them down there" .

Chiodi said the tablets would probably occupy a prominent place in a new Virtual Museum of Iraq which Italy is building to show people what Baghdad's celebrated museum of antiquities looked like before it was looted in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq .

About a half of 40 star attractions of the museum have yet to be retrieved .

Of the 15,000 items taken from storeooms, 8,000 have not been returned despite an amnesty .

Ur, near the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya, is cited in the Bible as the birthplace of the prophet Abraham .

It was the religious hub of Sumerian civilisation at the start of a series of dynasties that ruled Mesopotamia from around 4000 BCE .

Long before the Egyptians, the Sumerians invented the wheel and developed the first mathematical system .

The most famous classic of ancient literature, Gilgamesh, was written at Ur .

The most prominent monument at the site is the best preserved ziggurat, or stepped pyramid, in the Arab world .

It was built by the Sumerians around 4000 BCE and restored by Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century BCE .

[Rokcet Scientist]

for some reason the link to this story causes my internet explorer to crash.

Try Firefox, stan. Much more stable. And a lot safer!
http://www.firefox.com/

[Der Lange]

Hey wait a minute.

THIS yarn claims the ziggurat at Ur was first erected in about 4,000 BCE. That would of course make it lots older than the famous Egyptian pyramids, but about contemporary with the earliest Egyptian step pyramids.

Of course, the REASON this matters is a recent debate in another post topic about the age of these things.

Danged atlas of archaeology just doesn't give enough detailed information!

But how reliable is this claim? I sure have learned not to trust journalists (and I should know - once I WERE one!).

[Minimalist]

Dates are all over the map for Ur. We need someone to do some C14 dating on seeds in the earliest levels and see what they come up with.

[Leona Conner]

I remember that in one of the sites I looked at for "that other thread" it mentioned someone held a date of 4000 bce, but followed it with the comment that it was probably not nearly that old. Aren't ziggurats just step pyramids?

[Beagle]

Leonna - a ziggurat is indeed basically a step pyramid, usually described as a temple tower. Like a Mayan step pyramid it has staircases on one or more sides. The most famous one, the Tower of Babel on the plains of Shinar (where the ruins of Babylon now stand), has not yet been discovered. The base of a ziggurat was broader than other step pyramids. Someone may pop up a picture for us. R/S? If not I'll go find one.

[Leona Conner]

Aren't the majority of pyramids step? Except for the ones at Giza and the one in China, all the ones I've seen (either in person, on tv or pictures) are step. India, Indonesia, the Americas all have step pyramids. I'm not including the one in Bosnia because it has not been proven to be a pyramid, yet.

[Minimalist]

A Ziggurat, like a Central American pyramid, had a temple at the top where the priests could tell the arch's of the day what to think.

A step pyramid




had no such temple because it was designed as a tomb and the pharoahs did not want the arch's around disturbing them.

[Leona Conner]

True, one was a temple and the other a tomb, but they were both one box on top of another decreasing in size as it grew. I was talking about how they were made not what they were for, jeeze.

[Minimalist]

Then, yes, in that sense.

I think the only other true pyramids are in the Sudan but those were much later.

[Minimalist]

BTW, found this picture of the actual ruins of Ur with Ziggurat....which seems to be a hybrid sort of thing.

[Guest]

Look at that parched desolate landscape of the Ur region, it must have been much rainier there during its heyday, probably at least four times as much rain then, sounds like the Ice Age, when it was much rainier in the middle latitudes, as the snow fell fast and deep in the extreme latitudes, with all that cloud-cover, from paradoxically warmer ocean waters.

[Beagle]

http://ragz-international.com/ur.htm

Ur (biblical, Ur of the Chaldees), ancient city of Mesopotamia. Its ruins are approximately midway between the modern city of Baghdâd, Iraq, and the head of the Persian Gulf, south of the Euphrates River, on the edge of the Al Ḩajarah Desert. The site of Ur is known today as Tall al Muqayyar, Iraq. In antiquity the Euphrates River flowed near the city walls. Controlling this outlet to the sea, Ur was favorably located for the development of commerce and for attaining political dominance.

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