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Cities: Ur
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Known today as Tell el-Muqayyar, the "Mound of Pitch," the site was occupied from around 5000 B.C. to 300 B.C. In antiquity the city was known as Urim. The main excavations at Ur were undertaken from 1922–34 by a joint expedition of The British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, led by Leonard Woolley. At the center of the settlement were mud-brick temples dating back to the fourth millennium B.C. At the edge of the sacred area a cemetery grew up, which included burials known today as the Royal Graves. An area of ordinary people's houses was excavated in which a number of street corners have small shrines. The largest surviving religious buildings, dedicated to the moon god Nanna, also include one of the best preserved ziggurats, and were founded in the period 2100–1800 B.C. For some of this time Ur was the capital of an empire stretching across southern Mesopotamia. Although Ur is famous as the home of the Old Testament patriarch Abraham (Genesis 11:29–32), there is no actual proof that Tell el-Muqayyar was identical with "Ur of the Chaldees."
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