Ur : The Rise and Fall of the Ancient Sumerian City State

welcome to the history of the world podcast my name is Chris Haslam and you're listening to volume 2 the ancient world this is episode 3 or leonard woolley was a British archaeologist born in London in the United Kingdom in 1880 from a young age Wooley knew that he was interested in archaeology and worked at British sites of Roman occupation before travelling abroad to work on sites along the Nile Valley and the Levant Woolley would ultimately end up working at a site which he is most well known for working it and that site is in Mesopotamia from the 1920s onwards Woolley would utilize hundreds of workmen to exhume thousands of bodies and discovered tens of thousands of artifacts it was thanks to the work of a man called William Loftus that Willie was posted to this site in Mesopotamia some seventy years previously Loftus had shown a keen interest in the site that had been known to have been the home of some very old bricks with some very strange symbols on them so when Willie was asked to go there he jumped at the opportunity one of the things that he identified at the site was a flood stratum which is a layer of sedimentary material which demonstrates that a flood had occurred in the past and this flood stratum was huge such was the size of it that wooly would compare it to the Genesis flood narrative of Tanakh also known as the hebrew bible this is not the first time that we have spoken of the flood from the biblical book of Genesis as we mentioned it before when speaking of the epic of gilgamesh an epic story written in ancient times about ancient Mesopotamia the Epic of Gilgamesh also makes notes of a significant and catastrophic flood now this is all quite significant in the story of the history of the world certainly biblical writings were to some degree unquestionable right up until the 19th century when all day scientists stopped and made people think about whether there was a completely different story of human history based on many millenniums of evolution this could render the book of Genesis as completely unbelievable rubbish however the fact that we can see mention of significant floods in contemporary texts such as the epic of gilgamesh and the fact that Leonard Woolley was identifying a huge flood stratum in Mesopotamia may suggest that biblical stories may well be based on events that we can all agree actually happened the sites where Leonard Woolley was working when he identified the flood stratum was tel l McKay R as the name suggests it is the location of a tell which is a mound most often created in these cases by the remnants of a city which once thrived there some believe that this is the site of or Kasdan mentioned in the book of Genesis also as the birthplace of Abraham Abraham is the common patriarch of Judaism Christianity and Islam the three Abrahamic religions therefore today we call this site of an ancient city or possibly the birthplace of Abraham and possibly a city which witnessed a great flood or was built on an ancient coastline long since gone after hundreds of years of silting it now sits inland excavation suggests to us that the site may have been occupied from around 3,800 BCE a time when Mesopotamia was moving from the ube adir ëadd into the her experience it II that was humbly growing and developing throughout the 4th millennium BCE and into the third millennium BCE 8 where the city began to flourish well the year is 2,800 BCE and the Bronze Age has arrived at or the Sumerian city-state on the banks of the Euphrates River near the Persian Gulf the residents of or would have been creating caste artifacts made from bronze however we do know that all was a place of amazing diversity of precious materials for a start it was one of the many succeeding city-states which seemed to have developed a very healthy trade network between them but not only that but with the wider world we know this because we see evidence of this through the excavations at all in order to acquire metals the people of all had to capitalize on their strength which was the prosperous agricultural industry made possible by the fertile marshlands which surrounded the city in fact canals in and around or were much more useful for transport other than crop irrigation therefore or could trade via land or sea with relative ease so we could describe or as a port city one place that we do believe that all was able to trade with is modern-day India and people's such as the Harappans it looks like this could have been a source of metals textiles and precious stones but also of another material that we are yet to mention lamely lapis lazuli lapis lazuli was definitely been imported to Sumer it is mentioned multiple times in the epic of gilgamesh it is an attractive metamorphic stone which was popular due to its vivid and eye catching attractive blue color which was highly sought-after for decorative purposes such as jewelry items we can also feel confident about the transport links of ore being made easier by the use of wheeled transport we already recognize that Sumerians had made the most of wills to build farming vehicles in order to multiply their production ability with the use of oxen we also know that those wills were coming in handy for those army commanders who needed to keep a close eye on battle developments by riding on adjure drawn chariots so we can also be confident that traders were carrying goods on wheeled vehicles too we know from the evidence of seals excavated in Mesopotamia that there was terrestrial trade routes with the lands east of the Caspian Sea which would have been supported by the occupants of the towns of the Iranian plateau in between in terms of the evidence for maritime trade there is written evidence of shipping and sailing in contemporary documents we can also see cuneiform tablets on the Dillman islands of the Persian Gulf what we know today is Bahrain and fail occur which is now a Kuwaiti island if Sumerians were sailing to Dillman they would have been sailing to Meghan which we believe is a culture that lived around the area of the Strait of Hormuz which is what connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman it has been difficult to identify direct trade links between or and Egypt from this particular period however nonetheless these developed trade links enabled or to become a key center of trade in the known world and as such the prosperity of the city-state was enhanced significantly the canals of or would have more likely have been shipping canals as opposed to irrigation can now symbolize in the shear significance of or as a trading post and the successful management of all Indies economies the wealth of or can be identified through some of the excavations from the burial sites royal cemetery at it was during the 1920s that Leonard Woolley would stumble across an extremely significant burial site artifacts uncovered from this site are absolutely astonishing and it is also impart down to the pioneering archaeological techniques of Leonard Woolley that we have learned so much about what has been uncovered the cemetery that Woolley discovered at all was the site of over 2,000 burials so it was very significant in size some of the burials appeared to be quite ordinary others on the other hand are considerable an example of this would have been the of poor be so who was poor be well poor be is a very interesting character who are be is in fact an Acadian name and cylinder seals found inside her tomb suggests that she may have been a queen or a priestess Queen puabi 's grave is something of great wonder her headdress or crown is an ornate floral adornment made from gold but much more wonderful than this is the incredibly diverse collection of jewelry gold and silver were present among the jewelry as well as the previously mentioned lapis lazuli the vividly blue rock that would have likely reached or through long distance trading we also see the brownish red silica mineral carnelian and the crypto crystalline silica rock agates in use within the jewellery items also if that wasn't astonishing enough in itself the surrounding pit of her tomb is even more dumbfounding and poignant here we find the remains of five armed men four grooms for a pair of oxen three attendants and twelve other female attendants these people must have been part of a ritual sacrifice for the Queen we cannot establish whether they gave their lives deliberately or whether they were given no choice small cups were found near to the bodies suggesting self-sacrifice through poisoning but also some skulls show signs of blunt force trauma which suggests that murder was necessary before carefully positioning the bodies within burial pit either way it is thought that these additional bodies may have been offered to Queen puabi to guide her on her journey to the afterlife another tomb belongs to a man called mescal and ugh we may assume that he was a king he certainly was a ruler of or according to the artifacts within his tomb not least of all the gold helmet on which his name is inscribed his name is not to be found on those all-important sumerian king list s-- a contemporary list of kings excavated in various Mesopotamian sites but we do know that the man referred to as his son Masonic pada does appear on the list suggesting a royal connection however unlike per Abbie mescaline Doug is buried without a retinue of attendants deciphering what this can tell us about Sumerian society as a whole is a very difficult thing maybe Bobby's lavish burial ceremony suggests that she had been elevated to a goddess status whereas mescal and Doug had not explained in the absence of a retinue the presence of such objects made of precious material so carefully and elaborately created signifies an extreme amount of effort which points towards a stratified society where the elite were absolutely elite over the everyday workers there are some other interesting artifacts recovered from what we can refer to as the royal cemetery of all one very important artifacts was identified thanks to the archaeological for thoughts of Leonard Woolley previous to bully's age many archaeologists just excavated things picked them up and put them in boxes Woolley was a more thoughtful and observant he recognized that some of the artifacts have been made from wood and that the original piece had decayed leaving a void in which Willie would pour wax and plaster in order to cast a replica it is through this technique that we would discover Liars in the tombs liars are actually stringed musical instruments not completely unlike harps another artifact recovered is an ornately decorated wooden box which has been named the standard of all we do not know what the purpose of this wooden box is but we do know that it was deliberately buried in a man's tomb at the royal cemetery we can determine things from the box even though we don't know his purpose the box is decorated with lapis lazuli and Reds limestone which would have had to have been imported the box depicts events that can give us clues about the Society of or on one side we can see the clear notion of a stratified society clearly there is a ruler an elite class a servant class and royal court entertainers we see one individual possibly playing the lyre that was found in one of the other burial chambers on the other side of the box we can see images of war with that organized and disciplined army depicted and most likely well trained in phalanx formations that were likely exercised against the Akkadian invaders who were becoming at some point in the future not only did leonard woolley uncover items evident of great trade and wealth and evident of trade both terrestrial and maritime not only did he uncover these incredible tombs filled with grave goods and human and animal sacrifice alongside ornately decorated objects of wonder such as the standard of all but he also uncovered another astonishing discovery which has since been called the Royal game of or the Royal game of all is the earliest board game ever found however it would be easier to assume that it would be quite basic and bland on the contrary rules of this game have been discovered on cuneiform tablets and when played it is absolutely enjoyable if you don't believe me I challenge you to watch again without wanting to have a go yourself afterwards I will post a video where you can enjoy the drama of a game in action the actual board itself is an amazing creation in itself it is inlaid with shell and lapis lazuli it is a race game where players move their tokens around the board in accordance to the number thrown with the dice some tablets explain in rows suggests that the fortune of the game can directly correlate to the players fortune in life with some of the squares having a special meaning such as the ornate beauty of the game board that I wouldn't expect that every household had one of these games it was probably quite a precious thing to own and was likely played by the elites who had the time on their hands for such things and like the less fortunate members of society who would have been more concerned with cultivating crops for a payout of grain rather than playing games it is incredibly difficult to ascertain the true stratification of society at all and the true definition of what we might refer to in the modern age as slavery warfare was clearly a factor in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC a.m. we can see this from the artifacts discovered depicting war circumstances such as on the standard of all so the question would be whether power was stolen from neighboring city-states as the spoils of war and whether slavery was an oppressive act or whether it was an accepted part of everyday life if we look at things realistically the ruler of all is not going to be building his own palace so it is necessary to accept that society would have been completely stratified and there was very likely to be an understanding within the population of all that you would even need to live by the law of the city or face the consequences the success of or would have relied on the day-to-day running of society being as smooth as the day-to-day running of society in neighboring city-states if all had fallen behind in its progress then that would have left it vulnerable to the prying eyes of other city-states looking to possibly take advantage of the wealth of the city when we consider whether slavery in or would have been a bad thing we have to consider that the slave would have been looked after and we have to consider that the number of slaves would have outnumbered the number of masters if slaves were generally kept and fed well and if they believed that the deities of the city would want them to be a good worker for the sake of the city then there may have been no need for us to judge the existence of slavery by modern standards if there had been a mass revolt then would the higher classes have been able to suppress it and if not then they would have had to have been some mutual respect between all parties involved there would have been many jobs to be completed in a city state such as or creation of mud bricks for the construction of building tanning of animal hides for the creation of material the milling of cultivated cereal to create flour for bread in order for a large stratified society such as the city of ore to operate effectively there would have been dozens of jobs of this nature to be carried out by many workers and indeed slaves so we have established that all was throughout the third millennium BCE a wealthy Sumerian city state that had a stratified society headed by royal leadership which oversaw the city's trade and industry by guiding and controlling the population by utilizing an elite class of Governors to manage the day-to-day running of each of the city's main aspects and an elite class of priests to consolidate the spiritual ethos of the city in respect of its deities the history of during the early dynastic period of Mesopotamia or was one of the major city-states of Sumer and as such it would become the capital city of Sumer on more than one occasion to pre Akkadian dynasties are mentioned on the Sumerian king list although both of them do appear to be comparatively brief when compared to the dynasties of other city-states such as Eric and Kish for example it was around 2300 BCE that Sargon of Akkad marched into Sumer and conquered all of the city-states one by one or was included in this invasion and subsequently fell under the rule of the Acadians Sargon would in-state his own daughter in head o Anna as the High Priestess of the goddess in Anna and the moon-god Nana which were the deities of all and as such she lived in or and her image is portrayed on a calcite disk which was excavated at or in 1927 by Leonard Woolley you can find out more about n head o Anna in volume 2 episode 2 of this podcast as we also discovered in the last podcast the Acadians were in turn conquered by the city states that they invaded and Outsiders who invaded the area most notably the GU Tian's from the Northwest who were suggested to be ruling Sumer even though there doesn't appear to be any real effort to socially reform or rule from within like the Acadians did this appears to have given the Sumerian city-states a chance to rebuild and consolidate their societies and this was occurring in awe as well as any way it could have been an alliance of Sumerian city-states that chase the glutens out of Sumer once and for all who to Hengel appears to be one of the governors of the neighboring city-state of Eric and it appears that he was the one accredited with the success of driving tiragon the last godean King mentioned on any sumerian king list out of power who to Hengel had a daughter and that daughter married a man who is vital to our chronological story of Mesopotamia that men was all namu and he would take the kingship back to all in what would become the notable third dynasty of all as we mentioned in the previous podcast Oh to hegau the king of burg who is accredited with running the Guti out of Sumer lost his life by drowning or namo the king of all was there to fill the vacuum and the third dynasty of all was underway or namu appears to have picked up a tough job the Guti were not as cultured as the Sumerians and the Acadians before them and as such it does appear that society seems to have and down somewhat organized society was suffering agricultural production was not under control cities have become comparatively lawless it required a strong hand to get things back on track and by all accounts it does appear that all namu was the man to get things back under control it may have been while or namu was king that a particular law code was brought into effect and we know this from some recovered stone tablets it has been hard to date these tablets and as such we don't really know who exactly was the king but we can be quite confident when stating that they are laws that are attributable to the third dynasty of all criminals during these periods would have had to have been made to pay a fine in silver and the amount of silver was apportioned to the seriousness of the crime the head of the court of law was the king and he would have the final decree in all things however such was the size of the city of ore that it would require mares or judges to preside over proceedings and sometimes this might have been done in a public place fortunately tablet's exists that give us an indication of the types of punishments one could expect for being a criminal in or in the year 2100 BCE if a man commits a murder that man must be killed this is not a surprising law if a man commits a robbery he will be killed this one seems quite harsh but perhaps considering as necessary to prevent such an action if a man commits a kidnapping he is to be imprisoned and pay 15 shekels of silver now I'm not sure where a man would be imprisoned but we do know that 15 shekels of silver is around a hundred and twenty five grams of silver so this would also indicate that silver was being used as a type of currency to represent something like an amount of barley which would have been of real purpose to the owner if a slave married a native person he or she is to hand the firstborn son over to his owner so there is a clear definition of human rights that are particular to the slave class this is also highlighted by the fact that if a man de flowers the virgin wife of a young man they shall kill that male however if a man preceded by force and deflowered the virgin female slave of another man that man must pay five shekels the slave class were clearly limited in their rights and limited in their individual importance if a man divorces his first-time wife he shall pay her one minor of silver a minor being the equivalent of 60 shekels or half a kilogram so there was some compensation for disparaged women in this society if a man is accused of sorcery he must undergo ordeal by water if he is proven innocent his accuser must pay three shekels so this is quite enlightening There is obviously a fear of the mysterious where Witchcraft and Wizardry will not be tolerated however it seems that the judgment of someone's capabilities will simply come down to their ability to survive being submerged in water which to our modern minds will probably seem ridiculous I'm related but to the people of or it may have seemed like the only way to find out the truth it also highlights the danger of going around casting criminal accusations there is a fine if you are wrong so slander will not be tolerated if a slave escapes from the city limits and someone returns him the owner shall pay two shekels to the one who returned him so we can see how controlled the slave class was and how this control was encouraged violent injury of somebody else is subject to fines if a man's slave woman comparing herself to her mistress speaks insolently to her her mouth shall be scoured with one quart of salt this sounds like a very unpleasant experience certainly a very good deterrent now there are also compensations for farmland owners who have in some way been inconvenienced for a crop yield such as through deliberate or accidental flooding of the field so we can determine that there were some serious efforts made to control the population by law however as we have discussed previously it is fundamental the society understands that the law is almighty which is why the deities of the cities are used to enforce the law the population must understand that they have a duty to their city their King and their city's deity or namo would take the initiative in awe by building the great ziggurat leonard woolley excavated the remains of the ziggurat of or during his work there it does appear that most of the remains were of the reconstructed ziggurat of the 6th century BCE but the foundation certainly died back to the 3rd dynasty of all the cigarette was part of a temple complex which was built in honor of the moon god Nana Nana was traditionally the deity of war but we know this because two hundred years earlier Sal Khan the great who established the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia made his daughter in head o Anna the High Priestess of the moon god Nana and she was based in or such was the scale of the project that it may well have been completed by or namu Sun shogi but we do know that this was one of a number of cigarettes built in varying city-states of soma which was under the influence of or previous to the cigarettes of the third dynasty of all these central buildings of temple complexes were thought to be quite humbled by comparison shogi all namu died in battle and his death and ascent to the nether world has been recorded in poetry form on cuneiform tablets the crown passed to his son shogi who throughout his own long reign embarked on many a campaign to consolidate and expand this neo Sumerian Empire risen from the ashes of the destroyed Akkadian Empire which crushed Sumer in the first place Shuggie understood the importance of his own self-image and as such he would proclaim himself as a god during this time the city-state of Sumer were brought under the rule of the capital city of ore and the cities would be obliged to pay taxes to the state mari in the east of modern-day Syria on the shores of the Euphrates and Elam to the east of soma were under the influence of the 3rd dynasty of all so during the 21st century BCE Seema was once again stable strong influential and organized great centers of manufacturing existed where thousands of workers were created things like textiles for example and this would include a great many of the females within the Society's wealth was being used to fund the further construction of canals temples and palaces agricultural production was thriving with flour bread and beer being made with the produce silver was being used as a type of universal currency professional armies were being trained the state was well established so what went wrong before if we go back over the history of the region we know that nomadic people from the West had always been a nuisance to the Mesopotamian occupiers the Acadian king shark Kelly Cheri certainly had his fair share of problems with these people who were considered to be uncouth by the comparison to people of the organized societies of Akkad and Sumer these Western peoples were the Amorite who were still living a very nomadic way of life without the organized sedentary or agricultural lifestyle of the Mesopotamians however the amorite had always looked upon the Mesopotamian societies as fair pickings so if there were any spoils to be taken from the fringes and they would do so but the reality was that they were never really any kind of serious threat to the region as organized societies of Mesopotamia could easily chase them out however something seems to have gone dreadfully wrong for the Neo Sumerians during the 21st century BCE one of the sons of shogi who ruled as king whose name was Shu sin realize that the MRI threat was becoming more and more serious and had to construct a wall to specifically aid in repelling the amorite threat the amorite would continue their attacks and quite why the threat was growing larger than every before he's not totally clear perhaps the amorite have become more organized become larger in numbers or become more technologically advanced maybe a drought or famine had weakened this neo Sumerian state either way that the attacks continued into the reign of Shu sins son EB sin the amorite appeared to have penetrated the Shu sins wall prompting EB sin to hurriedly construct fortifications at nipple and the capital city of or however the Empire was fragmented under the pressure and those cities that had become a part of the area of influence under the great rulers of the Third Dynasty of war were now breaking away and opting to fend for themselves the neo Sumerian Empire was becoming even weaker and it was eventually the Elamites from the east who dealt the killer blow by taking advantage of the weakened city of ore and moving inwards despite EB sins desperate attempts to strike a deal with the amorite stew safety skin and the remnants of the once great Empire the Elamites were able to capture the king and take him back to Elim where he ultimately perished as for the city of all its demise was lamented as follows [Music] Oh father Nana that city into ruins was made its people not potsherds filled its sides its walls were breached the people grown in its lofty gates where they were want to promenade dead bodies were lying about in its boulevards where the feasts were celebrated scattered they lay in all its streets where they were wont to promenade dead bodies were lying about in its places where the festivities of the land took place the people lay in heaps or its weak and its strong perished through hunger mothers and fathers who did not leave their houses were overcome by fire the young lying on their mothers laps like fish were carried off by the waters in the city the wife was abandoned the son was abandoned the possessions were scattered about oh nana or has been destroyed its people have been dispersed in 1935 sir Leonard Woolley was knighted for his contributions to the discipline of archaeology and that concludes our podcast look at the city of or thanks very much for listening I've got a little bit carried away with that episode so it's been a bit of a long one this week I apologize for that lots of fascinating stuff with the first law codes that we've come across very interesting to read and then also the Royal game of all I would encourage you to visit our social media pages that's at Facebook it's all called history of the world podcast Facebook Twitter you'll find a video of the Royal game of or being brought to life by the Assyria logist from the British Museum mr. Irving Finkel who plays actually plays a game of the Royal game of Hornets he believes that he's discovered the rules of it and really it's a great strategy gabbeec is actually quite interesting watch the game unfold so I really do encourage you to watch it [Music] [Music]

Channel: Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Views: 273,863

Keywords: Ancient Mesopotamia, Ur, Sumerian, Sumer, Ancient History, Ancient Canaan, Bronze Age, sumerian records, sumerian empire, babylonian empire, leonard woolley ur excavations, Sumerian Language, Amorites, Gutians, Elamites, Ancient Canaanites, cuneiform writing, ancient writing, ancient slavery, mesopotamia documentary, Ancient Levant, Sumerian King List, Archaeology, mesopotamian civilization, mesopotamia sumerians, royal game of ur, Ur Nammu, History, Ancient, Forbidden Archaeology

Id: 8MiumMPqmMQ

Length: 44min 56sec (2696 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 17 2020