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Some remarks on Mesopotamian metrology during the Old Babylonian period: The evidence from Graves LG/23 and LG/45 at Ur

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Luca Peyronel
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Extract

The excavations carried out during the 1926–7 and 1930–1 seasons at Ur by C. L. Woolley brought to light two large sectors (AH and EM) of the Old Babylonian city characterized by private dwellings dating from the Larsa domination but partly re-used until the Kassite period after the destruction of the city by King Samsu-iluna of Babylon, in the eleventh year of his reign (1729 BC) (Woolley 1955: 163–94; Woolley and Mallowan 1976; see also Pinnock 1995: 101–11). These sectors offer important documentation about daily life in lower Mesopotamia at the beginning of the second millennium BC and meaningful data concerning architecture and urbanism in the Middle Bronze Age, as well as hundreds of cuneiform tablets discovered in the archives of private citizens. The presence of several graves below the floors and in particular the existence of corbel-vaulted family tombs in baked brick, built with sophisticated technique beneath what seem to be domestic chapels (Woolley and Mallowan 1976: 29–30, 33–9, Pls. 43–8), usually placed at the back of the houses, led Woolley to identify cultic activities linked to ancestors, suggesting close kinship between the persons living in a house and the dead buried beneath it. In spite of the criticism raised by M.-Th. Barrelet a few years after the publication of the final report, it seems very probable that Woolley's hypothesis is correct, as confirmed at other Mesopotamian sites (e.g. the tombs related to private residences found at Larsa; see Calvet 1996).

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 62 , 2000 , pp. 177 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2000

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