Archaeologist Leonard Woolley made amazing discoveries during his life, he directed with T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) the excavations of Carchemish, he found the statue-biography of King Idrimi, and the geological evidence of the flood told in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Woolley is most renowned for his excavations in the ancient Sumerian city of Ur […]
Sumer
Posted inAntiquity
Eridu, the First City in History According to Mesopotamian Sources
Near the present-day city of Basra in Iraq, and about 12 kilometers southwest of the site of ancient Ur, is the site of Eridu (Eridug in Sumerian), the southernmost of all the great Mesopotamian cities and, according to the Sumerian King List, the oldest city in history. The mound that housed ancient Eridu was identified […]
Posted inAntiquity
How Sumerians named substitute kings during eclipses and the custom survived even in Alexander’s time
Between 1805 and 1799 B.C. (according to short chronology) or 1868 and 1861 B.C. (according to medium chronology) King Erra-Imitti ruled in the Sumerian city-state of Isin in present-day Iraq (about 20 miles south of Nippur). His name comes to mean something as a follower of Erra, who was a god of war, riots and […]
Posted inAntiquity, Archaeology
Luxury Mansion of a 4,000-year-old Priest, with Bathroom and Toilet, Uncovered at Ur
Ur is one of the oldest cities in the world. What was life like for its inhabitants about 4000 years ago? A team led by Adelheid Otto, director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Near East at LMU (Ludwig Maximilian University Munich), is conducting excavations in Ur that may provide some answers to this […]
Posted inArchaeology
The oldest bridge in the world, in the Sumerian city of Ngirsu
In the present Tel Telloh of the Iraqi province of Dhi Qar is the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Ngirsu (sometimes transcribed as Girsu). It is about 25 kilometers northwest of Lagash, one of the two main Sumerian city-states, to which it was connected by one of the branches of the Euphrates. Ngirsu, […]
