July 7, 1923] 



NA TURE 



15 



Mesopotamian sites are often on a very large scale, 

 and though Ur cannot compare in this respect with 

 Babylon, yet the mounds of the ancient city, spreading 

 in length for some three and a half miles, afford a 

 rather bewildering scope to the excavator. At Babylon, 

 in the course of their eleven years of work, the Germans 

 excavated a number of the most prominent mounds, 

 with excellent results ; but there is 

 this drawback to the system, that 

 we have in consequence a number 

 of important buildings or groups of 

 buildings isolated from one another, 

 and can deduce from them very 

 little regarding the lay-out of the 

 town plan. At Ur it will take many 

 seasons to obtain anything like a 

 plan of the whole city, but luckily 

 we are, even thus early in the day, 

 able to learn a great deal about the 

 most important element in the city 

 — the " temenos " or sacred area 

 wherein lay the principal temples 

 and the palace of the king. 



Dr. Hall had dug one section 

 of the wall which enclosed this 

 temenos. Last season we traced it 

 for nearly its whole circuit and 

 cleared four out of the six gates by 

 which it was pierced. Inside it 

 the great ziggurat or storied tower 

 of brick is unmistakable, forming, 

 even in its ruined state, a landmark 

 \'isible for many miles. Dr. Hall 

 excavated part of a building which 

 we have identified as the sanctuary 

 of the great temple of the Moon-god 

 Nannar (the greater part of it has 

 still to be dug). We have completely 

 cleared a smaller temple dedicated 

 to the Moon-god and his consort ; 

 and we have been able to fix with 

 tolerable certainty the position of 

 two other temples and of the royal 

 palace. Already, therefore, we 

 know not a little about the topo- 

 graphy of the temenos ; and as by 

 means of air-photographs we have 

 been enabled to trace, without 

 digging, much of the main outer 

 wall of the city, the problem of 

 where work can most fruitfully be 

 done is simplified to an unusual 

 extent. 



The temenos wall was built, as 

 numerous clay dedication-cones in- 

 form us, by Ur-Engur, the king who 

 founded the Third Dynasty of Ur about 2300 B.C. It 

 is a hollow or compartment-wall, each wall being over 



9 feet thick with 13-foot chambers in the interior. 

 Built of unbaked mud brick, its face relieved by vertical 

 double-rebated grooves, it still stands in places nearly 



10 feet high (Figs, i and 2). But the existing brickwork 

 is by no means all of the founder's date. Often in its 

 long history it was patched or rebuilt, and in the gateways 

 (where of course repairs were most frequently required) 



NO. 2801, VOL. I 12] 



we find records of later restorers dating from Ur-Engur's 

 own grandson, Bur-Sin, to Nebuchadrezzar, king of 

 Babylon (600 B.C.), and Cyrus of Persia {c. 535 b.c). 

 Soon after Cyrus's time, perhaps in the middle of the 5th 

 century, the temenos wall, with all the temples which 

 it enclosed, was destroyed by Zoroastrian iconoclasts. 

 In one of the gateways, last restored by Nabonidus, 



Fio. I. — Part of the buttressed outer wall of E-nun-makh, the temple of the Moon-god and his 

 consort. The lower part was built by Bur-Sin (2250 h.c), the upper part by Kudur-Mabug 

 (2000 B.C.) : the interior brickwork seen above is by Nabonidus, last king of Babylon {c. 550 B.C.)- 

 By courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum and the Board cjf the University Museum, 

 Philadelphia. 



Fig. 2. — Room in the sanctuary of E-nun-makh, the temple of the Moi>n-god and his consort, 

 showing the old walls, the new floor of bricks laid by Nebuchadrezzar, the side altar with its 

 offering-table, and the groove in the floor for the "chancel screen." By courtesy of the trustees 

 of the British Museum and the Board of the University Museum, Philadelphia. 



Cyrus's predecessor, the scorched brickwork and the 

 charred beams of the gate-chamber roof survived as 

 a testimony to religious intolerance. It was just 

 inside this gateway that we found a headless diorite 

 statue of Entemena, king of Lagash and of Ur about 

 2900 B.C. ; it is probable that this ancient and already 

 mutilated figure was unearthed by Nabonidus, who had 

 a passion for archaeology, and set up on the ziggurat in 

 front of the gate. 



