UR

modern Tall Al-muqayyar, or Tell El-muqayyar important city of ancient southern Mesopotamia (Sumer), situated about 140 miles (225 km) southeast of the site of Babylon and about 10 miles (16 km) west of the present bed of the Euphrates River. In antiquity the river ran much closer to the city; the change in its course has left the ruins in a desert that once was irrigated and fertile land. The first serious excavations at Ur were made after World War I by H.R. Hall of the British Museum, and as a result a joint expedition was formed by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania that carried on the excavations under Leonard Woolley's directorship from 1922 until 1934. Almost every period of the city's lifetime has been illustrated by the discoveries, and knowledge of Mesopotamian history has been greatly enlarged. Additional reading J.E. Taylor, Notes on the Ruins of Muqeyer, Jl. R. Asiat. Soc., 15:260276 (1855)the ruins of Muqeyer (Tall al-Muqayyar) were later identified as the site of Ur of the Chaldees. H.R. Hall, A Season's Work at Ur (1930); C.J. Gadd, History and Monuments of Ur (1929); C. Leonard Wooley, Excavations at Ur (1954 and 1964) and Ur of the Chaldees (1938); C. Leonard Wooley et al., Ur Excavations, vol. 15 and 810 (192765); C.J. Gadd and L. Legrain et al., Ur Excavations: Texts, vol. 15 (192853). The Ur excavation volumes include reports on the excavations at al-'Ubayd (near Ur), the Royal Cemetery (the predynastic and Sargonid graves excavated between 1926 and 1931), archaic seal impressions, the sites and objects prior in date to the 3rd dynasty of Ur, the ziggurat and its surroundings, the Kassite period and the period of the Assyrian kings, the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods, and seal cylinders.