Ancient+Tombs+Of+Ur

__ Introduction __

Charles Leonard Woolley was born in London in 1880 and during college decided he wanted to become an archaeologist. His first excavation was in 1908 in a place called Nubia. (Nubia is a term that refers to land that lays directly south of ancient Egypt.) He was trained by some of the best archaeologists in Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Between 1922 to 1934 C. Leonard Woolley excavated the ancient Sumerian city of Ur. Many great discoveries were made about the people who lived there. The ancient city of Ur was located in the region of Sumer in southern Mesopotamia. It was near the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers on the Persion Gulf. Ur was one of twenty city-states flourishing in the valley between the two rivers between 2,350 and 2,900 B.C. The remains of the city can be found inland in present-day Iraq, south of Baghdad near the city of Nasiriyah. __ The Discovery __

The royal tombs were discovered in 1920 by C.Leonard Woolley. (This was around the same time that Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tut). C. Leonard Woolley boarded a steamship to Basrah in southern Iraq to lead the excavation. He discovered 1800 tombs!! Sixteen of these tombs had very special and very valuable objects in them. He named these the "Royal tombs". They learned alot about the people and daily life in ancient Ur, but wondered why so many people would lay down together and die in a grave. There was no sign of a struggle and the graves had ordinary pots, jugs, tools and trinkets in them. They also discovered a collection of weapons made of precious gold and lapis lazuli. They also found the floor was made of limestone. Common people rarely owned such beautiful things and the florr would have to be specially created?? They dug some more and found a flat rooftop and when they dug through that they found the Royal tombs of Ur - the graves of royalty! These had cylinder seals next to some of the bodies which helped indentify them by name. Then they found rings, necklaces, earrings and a headdress made of gold!! They also found bodies of soldiers and ladies in waiting. They thought that in ancient civilization, when royalty died, so did their attendants. You can find most of these treasurers at the Museum of Pennsylvania and the McClung Museum.

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__ Critical Thinking __ The connections between Mesopotamian history and present day lives are found through agriculture, writing, law and government. Their culture thrived because of farming and growing crops. They changed from a nomadic life to settling in one place. This is similar to present day life. The Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia are said to have invented the earliest form of writing (around ca. 3,500 BC). The writings discovered were on tablets with simple pictures and pictograms. The clay was to hard to draw lines and curves on so they started using a series of wedge-shaped signs. Their laws and government they believed came from the gods. The law collection is mostly legal verdicts from specific olffences and the penalties that were to be enforced.

Bibliography i got my information form [|www.mesopotamia.co.uk] mesopotamia.mrdon.org

By Tyler