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The tombs of Ur reveal treasures
Artifacts from burial sites shine light on an ancient culture
By EILEEN MCCLELLAND
Houston Chronicle 
What in the world is Ur?
It's got pageantry, art, gold-studded costumes, royalty and
human sacrifice to recommend it as drama.
It's got history, too. Known as the cradle of civilization,
it's the probable source of everything from writing, math and
the wheel to board games and beer.
Best of all, it's a true story.
Royal Tombs of Ur: Ancient Treasures From Modern Iraq is a
timely, traveling sample of artifacts discovered in the 1920s
and '30s at the Sumerian site of ancient Ur, the traditional
home of the biblical prophet Abraham, which is now southern Iraq.
The Ur exhibit is on loan from the University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Houston Museum
of Natural Science, Friday-Aug. 13.
"Excavating royal tombs always brings up cool stuff,"
said Dirk Van Tuerenhout, curator of anthropology at HMNS. Van
Tuerenhout said the discovery of the royal tombs was the archaeological
find of the 20th century, even though the Egyptian tomb of Tutankhamen
(King Tut), found at roughly the same time, stole a lot of Ur's
thunder.
Southern Mesopotamia has long been identified as the cradle
of civilization. By 3000 B.C., the flood plain between the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers contained a system of cities with temples
and palaces. In this land that was fabled to be the site of the
Garden of Eden, the first examples of complex urban systems were
developed.
British archaeologist C. Leonard Woolley found 1,850 intact
burial sites filled with jewelry made of gold, lapis lazuli and
carnelian; cups of gold and silver and bowls of alabaster; and
what are known in art history circles as some of the finest objects
of art ever created - the Ram-in-the-Thicket, the Great Lyre
and the golden headdress of Puabi, an important Sumerian queen
who stood just under 5 feet and died at about the age of 40.
"The burial itself was the culmination of a feast and
procession into the tomb, where royal attendants, as many as
73 in Queen Puabi's tomb alone, either committed suicide or were
ritually killed," Van Tuerenhout said. They apparently went
willingly, he said, since royals were thought to represent the
gods.
"The bones can tell us even more stories than the artifacts,"
he said. "Dead people do tell tales."
The excavation of the 4,500-year-old burial site drew a crowd,
including European royalty and Agatha Christie, who used it as
a setting for the novel, Murder in Mesopotamia.
Because the tombs of Ur belonged to the royal and wealthy,
they held rare treasures that represented long-distance trade.
"People with power and money had access to art and fancy
objects and unusual materials," Van Tuerenhout said.
Lapis lazuli did not naturally occur in the area, for example,
and would have been imported from what now is Afghanistan.
The excavation was made more difficult by the sheer volume
of tombs and skeletons. "You cannot get to one skeleton
by stepping on another," Van Tuerenhout said. So scaffoldings
would have had to be built in order to preserve the site.
Ancient Ur treasures found permanent homes in the University
of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the British
Museum and the Baghdad Museum.
These days, archaeologists have different kinds of challenges
in Iraq as war and looting continue to threaten ongoing excavation
sites.
"Now it's a free-for-all," Van Tuerenhout said.
"A lot of sites have been totally ransacked. It looks like
they are bombed." Looters looking for gold with spades or
bulldozers have shattered pottery in their wake.
On the other hand, many of the artifacts stolen from Baghdad
museums have since been recovered.
Col. Matthew Bogdanos, U.S. Marines Corps, led a task force
across the desert to track stolen antiquities from the Iraq Museum.
The mission resulted in the recovery of more than 5,000 artifacts.
Bogdanos will present a lecture on March 14, and Richard Zettler,
one of the leading authorities on Mesopotamian culture, will
speak April 4.
The effect of this region on modern life cannot be overemphasized,
Van Tuerenhout said. Once civilization took hold, there was no
turning back.
"Ur represents the roots of civilization," Van Tuerenhout
said. "So if you hate traffic, shake your fist at these
guys, because they invented the wheel."
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