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The Royal Cemetery of Ur and Sumerian Kingship in Ancient Mesopotamia*
Avary Taylor Marian Feldman
This work is produced by OpenStax-CNX and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0
Abstract This module serves as an introduction to the Royal Cemetery of Ur, one of the greatest archaeological nds in Near Eastern Studies. The archaeological and art historical evidence found within the Royal Cemetery is this module's primary focus, with emphasis placed on the Cemetery's social signi cance, especially in relation to early kingship in ancient Mesopotamia.
1 The Early Dynastic Period of Ancient Mesopotamia The Early Dynastic (ED) Period (c. 29002350 BCE) designates a time of major social, cultural, and political changes in southern Mesopotamia (what is today southern Iraq). The period is divided into four sub-periods:
EDI (c. 29002700 BCE) EDII (c. 27002600 BCE) EDIIIa (c. 26002450 BCE) EDIIIb (c. 24502350 BCE)
Table 1
The Early Dynastic Period saw the development of several major innovations. Fully developed writing is just one example that emerged during this period (its earliest stages 1 having started around 35003100 BCE during the Late Uruk Period). By the end of the Early Dynastic Period, historical documents and written narratives, such as the Stele of the Vultures2 (c. 2450 BCE, g. 1), which commemorates the victory of the king of Lagash, Eannatum, over the neighboring city-state of Umma, were being created in southern
*Version 1.3: Sep 1, 2017 10:22 am -0500 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 1https://tinyurl.com/y8lcjxx3 2http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/stele-vultures
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Mesopotamia. An introduction to the development of the monument in Mesopotamia from the Uruk Period (c. 3500 BCE) to the Akkadian Period (c. 2250 BCE) can be read here3 .
Figure 1: Stele of the Vultures. Obverse and reverse. Paris, Musée du Louvre, AO 16109, AO 50, AO 2346, AO 2348 4. ©RMN/Hervé Lewandowski.
The Early Dynastic Period is named after yet another innovation: dynastic rule. This period provides the earliest evidence for dynastic kingship (although whether dynastic kingship rst occurred in the Early Dynastic Period or a previous period, namely during the Uruk or Jemdet-Nasr periods, is still a matter of debate among scholars). The Early Dynastic Period is characterized by competing city-states ruled by kings. These rulers controlled territories consisting of major cities and surrounding towns and villages that, due to the unde ned borders separating them, often came in con ict with one another. These leaders who ruled over city-states such as Umma, Lagash, Ur, and Uruk ( g. 2) shared a common identity, Sumerian, named after the primary language of the period.
3https://cnx.org/contents/YUbLWN2X@1/The-Victory-Stele-of-Naram-Sin 4http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/stele-vultures
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Figure 2: Map of the Near East during the Early Dynastic period. (Created by A. Taylor.)
Despite years of scholarship on Sumerian culture, many aspects of the culture remain unclear to us today. Textual evidence, though appearing in this period for the rst time, is scarce, particularly in the periods before 2450 BCE. As a result, to better understand the Early Dynastic Period, scholars heavily rely upon archaeological and art historical evidence, as well as textual evidence from later periods such as the Sumerian King List5 , which describes the movement of kingship from one city-state to another in early Mesopotamiathe latest version of which dates to the Old Babylonian Period, ca. 20001600 BCE. The Royal Cemetery, located in the city of Ur, oers a major contribution to the understanding of Sumerian culture and the Early Dynastic Period. Although the majority of what we know today about cultural and social changes in the Early Dynastic Period comes from the archaeological and art historical evidence found at the cemetery, the same evidence also raises numerous questions about the period. One of the greatest discoveries of Near Eastern studies, the excavations, led by the early 20th-century archaeologist Leonard Woolley6 ( g. 3), revealed a large cemetery with thousands of graves, some of which he deemed royal due to their more elaborate construction, wealthy grave goods, and associated death pits. Who exactly the people buried in these tombs were, why they died, and what the signi cance of the cemetery was are questions that continue to puzzle scholars.
5http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr211.htm 6https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/sir-leonard-woolley/
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Figure 3: Leonard Woolley excavating at Ur. He holds in his hands the bull head of the "Great Lyre" (see below). ©The Trustees of the British Museum.
2 The Royal Tombs of Ur Ur ( g. 4) (modern-day Tell el-Muqayyar) was a prominent city for ve millennia, from around 5500 BCE to about 400 BCE, when the course of the Euphrates River changed and the city lost its main water supply. The site was excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley in the 1920s and 30s on behalf of the British Museum7 and the University of Pennsylvania8 . Woolley's large-scale excavations typically focused on major architectural monuments, such as the stepped pyramid, or ziggurat9 , ( g. 5) built during the Third Dynasty of Ur10 (c. 2100 BCE2004 BCE). When Woolley began excavations in the southeastern end of the precinct of the moon god Nanna, he did not have any expectations of what he may nd. Over a series of four excavation seasons, he would uncover what has become known as the Royal Cemetery of Ur (Woolley 1955). The discoveries from the tombsthe magni cent artifacts and evidence of human sacri ceshocked both archaeologists and the general public in the 1920s and have continued to intrigue scholars today.
7http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/research_projects/all_current_projects/ur_project.aspx 8https://www.penn.museum/sites/iraq/?page_id=26 9http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/ziggurats/explore/zig.html 10https://cnx.org/contents/MPG7vGNB@3/Ur-III-Continuity-and-Erasure
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Figure 4: Plan of the precinct of Nanna. The Royal Cemetery is located on the southeastern end, "site of early royal graves." From Woolley 1934. Courtesy of the Penn Museum.
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Figure 5: The restored remains (constructed by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s) of the ziggurat of Ur-Nammu at Ur. Image courtesy of user "Tla2006" via Wikimedia Commons.
The Royal Cemetery ( g. 6), the stratigraphy and plans of which can be explored at Ur Online11 , was a large cemetery complex in use from around 2600 to 2100 BCE and that contained around 2,000 simple shaft grave inhumations. In addition to these graves, Woolley distinguished sixteen so-called royal tombs 12 by their rich grave goods, stone chambers with associated large pits, and evidence of human sacri ce or self-immolation. These royal tombs are dated more closely to 2600 BCE (EDIIIa) and spanned about 100 to 150 years. The royal tombs have been extensively studied and have engendered signi cant archaeological and art historical scholarship, some of which will be discussed below in relation to several speci c burials. A review of the interpretations of the tombs concludes this module.
11http://www.ur-online.org/location/25/ 12http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/tombs/explore/exp_set.html
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Figure 6: Royal Cemetery at Ur. From Woolley 1934. Courtesy of the Penn Museum.
The most extravagant tomband the tomb associated with one of the largest death pitswas PG 800, which belonged to a woman named Pu-abi ( g. 7). Pu-abi is identi ed by a cylinder seal associated with the skeletal remains ( g. 8). Cylinder seals13 are small, cylindrical objects carved with an inscription or design (or both) that, when rolled across wet clay, create a continuous frieze. These objects had many uses throughout time, functions such as the authentication of transactions (like a modern-day signature), the sealed restriction of access to containers and rooms, amuletic or aesthetic uses, or as a marker of personal identity or professional a liation. Pu-abi's cylinder seal depicts a banquet scene (see below for more on scene types) and contains the inscription Pu-abi, NIN. The Sumerian logogram NIN has been translated as lady or queen (Marchesi 2004). Queen Pu-abi was buried with three attendants in her stone chamber and was likely associated with a death pit containing another nineteen attendants and the remains of two oxen (though Paul Zimmerman challenged Woolley's reconstruction14 in a 1998 University of Pennsylvania master's thesis). Elaborate gold and stone objects, such as headdresses, musical instruments, a sledge chariot, and a game board were found associated with the remains (see below for more on some of the objects). Aside from the Royal Cemetery, the only other example of attendants buried alongside a deceased individual occurs at the site of Kish ( g. 2) to the north. The Y cemetery at Kish, contemporaneous with the royal tombs,
13https://cnx.org/contents/hj0fKLrZ@5/Cylinder-Seals-and-the-Develop 14https://www.penn.museum/sites/iraq/?page_id=225
http://cnx.org/content/m64912/1.3/ OpenStax-CNX module: m64912 8 contained at least four burials with chariots and the remains of bovines and equids in pits. In one pit, at least ve people were found. The grave goods and overall sizes of the pits are signi cantly smaller than those found in the royal tombs at Ur.
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http://cnx.org/content/m64912/1.3/Figure 7: The tomb of Pu-abi, PG 800. From Woolley 1934. Courtesy of the Penn Museum. OpenStax-CNX module: m64912 10
Figure 8: A lapis lazuli cylinder seal (seen on the right) inscribed with the name "Pu-abi." The modern impression on the left shows the image when rolled on a malleable surface. The British Museum, BM 12154415. ©The Trustees of the British Museum.
In the Great Death Pit, PG 1237 ( g. 9), sixty-eight female attendants wearing headdresses and six men were arranged with several musical instruments and a variety of luxurious items. Unlike the death pit of Pu-abi, Woolley did not nd an associated tomb chamber for the Great Death Pit. Small metal, stone, or clay cups were often associated with the attendants, leading Woolley to conclude that the men and women buried there had willingly consumed poison and died calmly in an elaborate ceremony ( g. 10). The explanation of who these attendants were and why they would have willingly sacri ced their own lives has engendered a signi cant amount of debate (see interpretations below). Recently, however, new scienti c examinations of two preserved skulls of sacri ced individuals, one from PG 789 and one from the Great Death Pit, have revealed that these two attendants did not die peacefully after willingly consuming poison, but rather were killed by means of blunt force trauma (Baadsgaard et al. 2012). The skeletal remains also showed evidence of having been heated and treated with chemicals to aid in the preservation of the bodies. This new evidence calls into question the willingness on the part of the attendants to be a part of the ceremony, as well as the processes of internment. The need to preserve the bodies as well as the many markers of banqueting found throughout the room indicates that the attendants were probably killed and brought into the burial area after the primary burial, which may have involved a massive feast (Porter 2007).
15https://tinyurl.com/y9rxepnt
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Figure 9: PG 1237, the "Great Death Pit." From Woolley 1934. Courtesy of the Penn Museum.
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http://cnx.org/content/m64912/1.3/Figure 10: Leonard Woolley's reconstruction of the events in the "Great Death Pit" before and after "sacri ce." Illustrated London News , June 23, 1928, pp. 117174. OpenStax-CNX module: m64912 13
Burial PG 755 ( g. 11) was wealthy but not considered a royal tomb by Woolley since there was no built tomb chamber and no retainers or death pit. The grave contained the remains of a male who was found holding a gold bowl inscribed with the name Meskalamdug. A cylinder seal inscribed Meskalamdug, LUGAL (king or warrior-king) was found elsewhere in the cemetery. A Meskalamdug, king of Kish, is recorded on a bead found at the ancient city of Mari ( g. 2) and is known to be the father of the rst ruler of the First Dynasty of Ur, Mesannepada, whose name appears on the Sumerian King List. Marchesi (2004) and Reade (2003) have argued that the Meskalamdug from PG 755 was a prince, perhaps the grandson of King Meskalamdug. The helmet ( g. 12) found near the remains of Meskalamdug would suggest a similar conclusion. The gold helmet in the form of an elaborate hairstyle is seen worn by other kings in contemporary and slightly later Near Eastern objects such as the Stele of the Vultures ( g. 1) and a statue of Ishqi-Mari, king of Mari (Aruz, et al. 2003: 148), suggesting its association with royal status.
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http://cnx.org/content/m64912/1.3/Figure 11: PG 755, the tomb of Meskalamdug. From Woolley 1934. Courtesy of the Penn Museum. OpenStax-CNX module: m64912 15
Figure 12: Electrotype of Meskalamdug's helmet. The British Museum, ACa.55 16. ©The Trustees of the British Museum. The original is in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad, IM.8629.
During the Early Dynastic Period, there were three terms for rulers: EN, ENSI, and LUGAL. It is still unclear how these terms related to each other, though it is generally accepted that LUGAL refers to the military aspect of a ruler (and later becomes the sole word for king), while EN and ENSI may concern a more religious aspect. If the Meskalamdug from PG 755 was actually a LUGAL, then it may be signi cant that his burial is strikingly dierent from that of Pu-abi's and others buried with death pits in built tombs. Perhaps the cemetery was a place where competing institutions (the palace and the temple) could enact their dierent roles. Indeed, scholars such as Hans Nissen (1966) see the development of a major tension between city state authority (in the hands of the temple) and a push to unify and centralize the area, incorporating multiple cities into one unit (perhaps associated with palaces and kingship). Though the relationship between temple and kingship during the Early Dynastic Period is not entirely understood, it is clear that there was some level of competition and balance to be struck between the two, which became a driving theme throughout the rest of the third millennium. The cemetery may in fact be a place where we see the two institutions (temple and palace) side by side.
3 The art objects of the Royal Tombs The objects from the Royal Cemetery of Ur, like the archaeological evidence, can provide interesting insights into the society of Ur during the Early Dynastic Period. They are made of gold, silver, and precious stones such as lapis lazulimaterials that are not local to southern Mesopotamia. The objects therefore attest to extensive long-distance trade: gold came from Afghanistan, Iran, Anatolia, Egypt, or Nubia; silver from Anatolia; lapis lazuli from Afghanistan; ostrich eggs from Africa; and carnelian and other beads likely came from the Indus Valley. These materials were used to craft elaborate jewelry, vessels, clothing, musical instruments, cylinder seals, and other elite objects. A brief survey of some of these objects follows. As objects that are closely associated with personal identity, many cylinder seals were found in the Royal Cemetery. Two distinct scene types dominated the Early Dynastic corpus of seals: banquet scenes ( g. 13) and contest scenes ( g. 14). There are two primary theories about how to interpret these two scene types. Moorey (1977) argued that the scene types are divided by gender, with women (their sex identi ed,
16https://tinyurl.com/ybj24uvu
http://cnx.org/content/m64912/1.3/ OpenStax-CNX module: m64912 16 somewhat problematically, by their associated jewelry) paired with banquet scenes and men (identi ed by their weapons) with combat scenes. On the other hand, William Rathje (1977) has argued that scenes were not assigned to a particular sex, but rather that the banquet scenes, which are primarily carved on lapis lazuli seals, are associated with burials of the highest status. Contest scenes, usually depicted on lapis lazuli or shell seals were, he argued, more commonly employed and popular, and thus re ected a lower social status. There may, then, be some correlation between material, imagery, status, and/or gender evident in the distribution of the cylinder seals.
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Figure 13: Banquet scene seals from the Royal Cemetery. The British Museum, BM 12283017 (top) and BM 12154518 (bottom). ©The Trustees of the British Museum.
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Figure 14: Contest scene seals from the Royal Cemetery. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, B1674719 (top). Courtesy of the Penn Museum. The British Museum, BM 12253820 (bottom). ©The Trustees of the British Museum.
17https://tinyurl.com/yacjjune 18https://tinyurl.com/yaxu3857
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In addition to three cylinder seals buried with Pu-abi, a selection of other very ne objects were found near her remains, including an elaborate headdress ( g. 15) made of gold, lapis lazuli, and carnelian. Head adornments across the world are typically important identity and status markers. Pu-abi's headdress is no exception: the tall oral motifs in gold, lapis lazuli, and carnelian would have shimmered and tinkled, creating visual and auditory sensations. Paired with the beaded cape ( g. 16) and jewelry found on her remains, the sight of Pu-abi would have been quite magni cent.
Figure 15: The reconstructed headdress of Pu-abi. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archae- ology and Anthropology, B17711A21. Courtesy of the Penn Museum.
19https://www.penn.museum/collections/object/260314 20https://tinyurl.com/ybfbwq3t 21https://www.penn.museum/collections/object/1138
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http://cnx.org/content/m64912/1.3/Figure 16: The reconstructed beaded cape of Pu-abi. The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, B1669422, 83-7-123, and B1706324. Courtesy of the Penn Museum. OpenStax-CNX module: m64912 21
The Standard of Ur ( g. 17) is an enigmatic, four-sided, trapezoid-shaped item from the tomb of a man named E-zi in PG 779. Woolley believed that this object was held on the end of a pole and carried into battle, thus calling it a standarda moniker that has stuck despite the improbability of this identi cation. It was more likely used as some kind of furniture or the sound box of a musical instrument. Two long rectangular side panels, made of shell, lapis, and limestone set into bitumen on a wooden frame, depict two complementary themeswar and peace. Each panel has three registers that can be read from bottom to top. On the military side, the bottom and middle scenes depict the military action itself and the gathering of captives. On the top register, the king is represented as the tallest gure. He stands in the middle awaiting the arrival of captured enemy troops. The peace side depicts the gathering of produce and livestock leading toward the top scene of a banquet headed by the same royal gure as on the war side. The two end panels ( g. 18) have three registers depicting scenes of mythic nature. Whether the two main panels should be read sequentially (banquet then war or war then banquet) or dualistically (war as opposed to banqueting) is unclear, as is the relationship between the side and end panels.
22https://www.penn.museum/collections/object/38475 23https://tinyurl.com/ybxvvtqv 24https://www.penn.museum/collections/object/241027
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Figure 17: The war and peace panels of the Standard of Ur. BM12120125. ©The Trustees of the British Museum.
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Figure 18: The side panels of the Standard of Ur depicting mythic scenes. ©The Trustees of the British Museum.
The relationship between music and banqueting at the Royal Cemetery is explicitly shown on a number of large lyres, such as the "Queen's Lyre" from Puabi's burial ( g. 19). The reconstructed bull's head has skin of gold, eyes of lapis lazuli and shell, and a beard of lapis. On another lyre, the "Great Lyre," from PG 789, the front of the sound box depicts four registers of imagery ( g. 20): the top most scene depicts a contest, while the other three depict animals in human roles preparing a feast and playing music for the underworld. The origin of the iconographic motif of animals doing human tasks has strong ties to the Proto-Elamite culture in southwestern Iran, providing further evidence of long-distance exchange, although this time of ideas rather than materials. 25https://tinyurl.com/hsngxa9
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http://cnx.org/content/m64912/1.3/Figure 19: A reconstructed Lyre; the "Queen's Lyre" from Puabi's burial. BM121198,a26. ©The Trustees of the British Museum. OpenStax-CNX module: m64912 25
26https://tinyurl.com/yadw29sy
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http://cnx.org/content/m64912/1.3/Figure 20: Detail of the shell plaques from the "Great Lyre" from PG 789. The University of Pennsyl- vania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, B17694A27. Courtesy of the Penn Museum. OpenStax-CNX module: m64912 27
A nal item from this quick survey of some of the more famous nds from the Royal Cemetery is the so-called Ram in the Thicket ( g. 21), one of a pair found in the Great Death Pit. Woolley named the object after the biblical story from Genesis of Abraham sacri cing a ram in a thicket to God. However, the depicted herbivore is actually a goat, and the object illustrates a common iconographic scene depicting an herbivore standing on its hind legs to reach the new growth of the trees. The tree itself, as well as the act of nibbling upon its leaves, depicts concepts of fertility and virility. The function of this object remains uncertain, but it may have served as the base for a stand to hold incense or oerings.
27https://www.penn.museum/collections/object/4466
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http://cnx.org/content/m64912/1.3/Figure 21: The so-called "Ram in the Thicket." The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 30-12-70228. Courtesy of the Penn Museum. OpenStax-CNX module: m64912 29
Many of the objects found in the Royal Cemetery, and particularly the inlays, display close connections to items found in contemporary temples and palaces at the cities of nearby Kish, and, further away in Syria, at Mari and Ebla. These parallels suggest that the objects from the Royal Cemetery were part of a larger web of pan-Mesopotamian cultural expressions that were not restricted to Ur or to funerary practices. The question still remains how much of the material was made for deposition in the tombs and how much had use and meaning in daily life and only later was deposited in the tombs. Did the royal people buried in the tombs own and use the objects they were buried with during their lifetime? The lavish grave goods and death pits certainly indicate that the royal gures had access and control over elite objects and materials. But to what extent these materials re ect their daily life is hard to determine.
4 Towards an understanding of the Royal Cemetery Many interpretations of the cemetery have been suggested and several are discussed here. Woolley saw the people buried in the royal tombs as kings and queens who attained a semi-divine status such that attendants were willing to sacri ce themselves in order to achieve better status in the next/after life. He attempted to link the cemetery to a sacred marriage ritual, but there is no documentation to support such a practice at the Royal Cemetery. P. R. S. Moorey suggested that the burials with death pits may belong to the high priests and priestesses of the temple of Nanna whose attendants willingly sacri ced themselves. In contrast, according to Moorey, the rich tomb of Meskalamdug, interpreted as the same Meskalamdug named as the LUGAL on the cylinder seal found elsewhere in the cemetery, was a royal tomb and did not deserve human sacri ce. Susan Pollock (1991, 2007) has argued that the burials in the cemetery, both "royal" and otherwise, belonged to members of great households of the Early Dynastic Period (with each tomb equating to one household). Pollock took a dierent approach to the (modern) bifurcation of the temple and the palace; she argued that both are competing institutions vying for power and both temple and palace can be understood as large, hierarchically organized socio-economic units with dependent workforces, managerial personnel, ocks of animals, elds, pastures, orchards, workshops, and artisans' facilities (Pollock 2007). Therefore, according to Pollock, dierences among the burials can be attributed to distinctions among dierent households, regardless of temple or palace institutional ties. The tombs then do not necessarily represent competition between temple and palace but rather intra-elite competition within society itself. As abundant and spectacular as they are, the discoveries from the Royal Cemetery leave a somewhat puzzling picture behind for scholars. Determining who was actually buried in the cemetery, and whether this cemetery and its associated artifacts and rituals are speci c to Ur or re ect more general Sumerian concepts of death has been an ongoing task in Mesopotamian studies. With the recent return of archaeologists to the site of Ur29 , perhaps new evidence and interpretations will emerge to illuminate the fantastic but mysterious Royal Cemetery.
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Bibliography and suggested readings
Aruz, Joan, and Ronald Wallenfels, eds. Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. From the Mediterranean to the Indus. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003. Baadsgaard, Aubrey, Janet Monge, and Richard Zettler. "Bludgeoned, Burned and Beauti ed: Reeval- uating Mortuary Practices in the Royal Cemetery of Ur. In Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacri ce in the Ancient Near East, edited by Anne Porter and Glenn M. Schwartz, 12558. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2012. Benzel, Kim. What Does Puabi Want (Today)? The Status of Puabi as Image. In From Ancient to Modern: Archaeology and Aesthetics, edited by Jennifer Y. Chi and Pedro Azara, 132-160. Princeton,
28https://www.penn.museum/collections/object/242250 29https://www.penn.museum/blog/?s=ur+project
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NJ: Princeton University Press for the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, 2015. Marchesi, Gianni. "Who was Buried in the Royal Tombs of Ur?: the Epigraphic and Textual Data." Orientalia 73, no. 2 (2004): 153197. Moorey, P. R. S. What Do We Know About the People Buried in the Royal Cemetery? Expedition 20, no. 1 (1977): 2440. Nissen, Hans Jo¤rg. Zur Datierung des Ko¤nigsfridhofes von Ur: unter besonderer Beru¤cksichtigung der Stratigraphie der Privatgra¤ber. Bonn: Habelt, 1966. Pollock, Susan. Of Priestesses, Princes and Poor Relations: The Dead in the Royal Cemetery of Ur. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1, no. 2 (1991): 171189. Pollock, Susan. The Royal Cemetery of Ur. Ritual, Tradition, and the Creation of Subjects. In Representations of Political Power: Case Histories from Times of Change and Dissolving Order in the Ancient Near East, edited by Marlies Heinz and Marian Feldman, 89110. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2007. Rathje, Willam L. "New Tricks for Old Seals." In Seals and Sealing In the Ancient Near East, edited by McGuire Gibson and Robert D. Biggs, 2532. Malibu, [Ca.]: Undena Publications, 1977. Winter, Irene J. "Reading Ritual in the Archaeological Record: Deposition Pattern and Function of Two Artifact Types from the Royal Cemetery of Ur." In Fluchtpunkt Uruk: Archa¤ologische Einheit aus methodischer Vielfalt; Schriften fu¤r Hans Jo¤rg Nissen, edited by Hartmut Ku¤hne, Reinhard Bernbeck, Karin Bartl, and Hans Jo¤rg Nissen, 229256. Rahden/Westf.: Leidorf, 1999. Woolley, C. L. Ur Excavations, vol. 2: The Royal Cemetery. London: Trustees of the British Museum and the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, 1934. Zettler, Richard, and Lee Horne. Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur. Philadelphia: University Museum, 1998.
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