By STAN PARCHIN 
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Standard of Ur. Mesopotamian, Sumerian, Early Dynastic IIIA, ca. 2550-2400 B.C. Shell, lapis lazuli and red limestone. H. 20 cm (7 7/8 in.); L: 47 cm (18 1/2 in.). © The Trustees of the British Museum. |
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Ram in a Thicket. Mesopotamian, Sumerian, ca. 2650-2550 B.C. Gold, silver, lapis lazuli, copper, shell, red limestone and bitumen. H. 45.7 cm (18 in.); W. 30.48 cm (12 in.). Found in the Great Death Pit at Ur. © The Trustees of the British Museum. |
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Spouted Gold Cup. Mesopotamian, Sumerian, ca. 2550-2400 B.C. Gold. H. 12.4 cm (4 7/8 in.). Found in the Queen's Grave at Ur. © The Trustees of the British Museum. |
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Game Board and Playing Pieces. Mesopotamian, Sumerian, ca. 2550-2400 B.C. Shell, red limestone, lapis lazuli and black shale. Board: L. 30.1 cm (11 7/8 in.); W. 11 cm (4 3/8 in.); H. 2.4 cm (1 in.). Playing pieces: Diam.: 2.2 cm (7/8 in.). © The Trustees of the British Museum. |
July 12, 2009
In the Third Millennium B.C., Ur, Larsa, Uruk, Lagash and other city-states defined Sumer. Situated between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in the Fertile Crescent's southeastern region, the ancient Near Eastern civilization's remains were uncovered in modern-day Iraq, an arid land with little stone and wood.
Sumer's architecture was comprised mainly of mud brick. Central to its political and social organization was the ziggurat, a massive stepped temple dedicated to a single deity. The structure's main purpose was religious as well as administrative.
Sumer's largely agricultural society produced writing for record-keeping and taxation. Its culture invented cuneiform or wedge-shaped characters to do so. Documents were created with a stylus that made impressions in small, wet clay tablets. These forms were also employed in the writing of Sumerian religious and literary texts, chief amongst them the heroic Epic of Gilgamesh. Once inscribed, the moist surfaces were baked at a high temperature, their hardened contents preserved for generations of scribes and priests to study.
Woolley's Excavations
The Sumerians created some of antiquity's most exquisite funerary artworks. Extraordinary artifacts from Ur's Early Dynastic period (ca. 2900 to 2350 B.C.), the height of Sumerian culture, were uncovered by renowned British archaeologist Sir C. Leonard Woolley (1880-1960) during a joint 1922-34 expedition of the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Both institutions shared the site's magnificent objects with Iraq's National Museum.
Woolley excavated Ur's Royal Cemetery and uncovered brilliant treasures of Queen or Lady Puabi. Previously known only through Biblical accounts as the home of the patriarch Abraham, Ur became a historical reality with the scholar's astonishing finds. The British Museum's Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gallery (Room 56) exhibits many of the well-preserved Mesopotamian artifacts Woolley retrieved from Ur's necropolis.
Standard of Ur
Discovered crushed in one of the Royal Cemetery's largest graves, the exact function of the restored Standard of Ur remains elusive. Woolley imagined it was carried on a pole in ancient times, although other scholars suggested it was a musical instrument's soundbox.
The mysterious artifact's two rectangular panels are each decorated with three narrative registers. One side illustrates a Sumerian army, four-wheeled chariots drawn by onagers or wild asses, cloaked infantrymen carrying spears and vanquished naked enemies positioned before a ruler. The other depicts the presentation of fish, animals and tribute at a religious banquet. Bald seated figures, attired in woolen fleeces or fringed skirts, imbibe while enjoying a lyre-playing musician's tunes. The dichotomous nature of Sumerian kingship, military and beneficent, is revealed in the War and Peace panels.
Ram in a Thicket
The British Museum's Ram in a Thicket (ca. 2650-2550 B.C.), actually a goat, is one of two almost identical statues discovered in a crushed state by Woolley in the Royal Cemetery's Great Death Pit. The other one resides at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Fond of biblical references, the archaeologist's name for the sculpture was inspired by Genesis 22:13, in which Abraham freed a male sheep entangled in a bush and sacrificed it instead of his son Isaac to God.
Gold leaf covers the ram's head, legs and genitals as well as the tree and its flowers. While its ears are copper, the beast's eyes, horns and shoulder fleece are made of lapis lazuli. The remainder of its coat is composed of white shell. The ram and tree stand on a rectangular base decorated with a shell, red limestone and lapis lazuli mosaic. Scholars theorize that the work was used as a bowl or table support.
Spouted Gold Cup
A gold biconvex cup with fluted sides and a curved spout was one of four vessels discovered alongside sacrificial victims' remains in the Queen's Grave at Ur's Royal Cemetery. Its upper and lower rims exhibit hammered herringbone and double zigzag patterns. Since Mesopotamia had no gold deposits, the metal was probably imported from Iran or Anatolia. Vessels of this type were used to consume beer and wine at banquets such as the one depicted on the Peace panel of the Standard of Ur.
Game Board and Playing Pieces
Leonard Woolley recovered several game boards with similar layouts and playing pieces from Ur's Royal Cemetery. Although its original wood decayed, the shell, red limestone and lapis lazuli inlays of one set in the British Museum are authentic and positioned according to how they were found. The object's 20 shell squares display flower rosettes, eyelike shapes, circled dots and various five-dot designs. Ancient cuneiform texts reveal that the gaming pieces were used by two players in a race from one end of the board to the other. Their initial movement was determined by the throw of either stick or tetrahedral dice. Rosette spaces were lucky. The so-called Game of 20 Squares dates from ca. 3000 B.C.