The pact seems to have held fast during that dig. In the three seasons that followed, not one of the sites was entered without authorization from Woolley, and none of the magnificent finds were taken. On finding an underground chamber made of stone, expectations ran high. Woolley suspected it could be the tomb of a royal figure. As they continued to excavate, the team uncovered a tunnel dating to a later time.
The tunnel ran almost from surface level down to the ceiling. It was a sign that someone, perhaps thieves, had entered the tomb centuries before. It was a major disappointment to the team, which had hoped to find the grave unmolested. The discoveries came fast and furious. Digging in the so-called Death Pit area of the tomb, the archaeologists discovered five bodies, adorned with grave goods, lying together on rush matting.
A few yards away, they found ten more bodies. These were women wearing ornaments of gold and precious stones. These carefully arranged cadavers also held musical instruments. Beside them were the remains of a musician who held a stunning lyre. The sound box of the instrument was incrusted with carnelian, lapis lazuli, and mother-of-pearl. On its wooden frontpiece was mounted the stunning golden head of a bull with eyes and beard of lapis lazuli.
Also in the tomb were the remains of a wooden carriage decorated with gold, precious stones, and mother-of-pearl, and sculpted heads of lions and bulls. Beside it were the skeletons of two men who had presumably accompanied the vehicle and the two oxen, whose remains lay on the floor nearby. As the dig progressed, Woolley came upon yet more treasures in the tomb: weapons, tools, numerous vessels of bronze, silver, gold, lapis lazuli, and alabaster—even a gaming table.
In the center of the space lay an enormous wooden chest, several yards long, which had probably been used to store garments and other offerings that had long since rotted away. Inside the burial chamber itself lay the body of a woman on top of a funeral bier. She was covered with amulets and jewelry made of gold and precious stones. Her elaborate headdress was made of 20 gold leaves, lapis lazuli and carnelian beads, as well as a large golden comb. Near the body lay a cylinder seal that bore an inscription from which the archaeologists were able to identify the woman: Queen Puabi in his notes, Woolley referred to her as Shubad because of a mistranslation.
The seal made no mention of her husband, which led some to believe she could have been a queen in her own right. Alongside Puabi lay the bodies of two of her servants. In addition to her treasures and servants, Puabi was interred with her makeup, including a silver box that contained kohl, a black pigment used as eyeliner.
Leonard Woolley excavated 16 tombs that he identified as royal because of their contents: lavish grave goods and evidence of mass human sacrifice. In most cases, the names of the royal figures are unknown except for two. One is Queen Puabi in tomb PG, who was identified by the seal found near her body. Various inscriptions identified King Ur-Pabilsag who reigned around the period — B.
But these names have not been matched to specific tombs. When the archaeologists pulled back the heavy wooden chest inside the tomb, they found a large hole. Amid huge anticipation they climbed through and dropped down into a large chamber below. On the ramp leading into the chamber, they passed the bodies of six soldiers, laid out in two rows. Inside the chamber itself were two carriages, each pulled by three oxen, and beside them the bodies of the carriage drivers.
At the back of the chamber the bodies of nine women lay, all richly ornamented, with their heads resting against the wall. In a gallery running parallel to the burial chamber were more women, along with numerous armed soldiers arranged in rows.
Woolley deduced that PG and the tomb below it, which he called PG, housed the bodies of Queen Puabi and her husband, respectively. The man must have died first and been buried in the lower chamber. Then, when his consort Puabi died, it seems that the workers who constructed her tomb robbed the one below, concealing the hole they had made with the heavy chest.
The quantity of treasure uncovered in these tombs was so great that when Woolley informed his colleagues of the finds by telegram, he did so in Latin, hoping that his erudite encryption would keep the secret safe. There could be no doubt that the Sumerians practiced human sacrifice: Twenty-five sacrificed bodies were found in the tomb of Queen Puabi and 75 in the tomb of her husband.
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The lengthy occupation at Ur generated archaeological deposits up to 20 meters in depth over an area of 96 hectares. He noted its massive ziggurat as well as a strange form of wedge-shaped writing on objects he found there.
Later, British explorer J. Fraser passed the site in and called the ziggurat "one of the most interesting relics of antiquity I have seen in this country" , Travels in Koordistan, Mesopotamia, etc. More than 15 years later, William Kennett Loftus, a member of the Turko-Persian Frontier Commission and a pioneer excavator of southern Mesopotamian ruin mounds, visited Tell al-Muquayyar and published a measured description and early illustration of the ziggurat.
By the s, the wedge-shaped writing had been discovered at other Mesopotamian sites and come to be known as "cuneiform.
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