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The meaning of the excavation area abbreviation CLW is not precisely clear. Some references to it state that it is the central portion of the northeastern city wall, thus it might mean Central Long Wall. Field notes with the abbreviation, however, refer to excavation squares along the entirety of the edge of the mound where the outer city wall once stood and thus it more likely to refer to the City Long Wall as a whole.
H.R. Hall dug a 12 meter trench across the city wall in 1919, but Woolley began his investigations of it in February of 1929. In a period of a few days he exposed 100 meters of the length of the wall behind his dig house. In the next season he set his workers to tracing the entirety of the wall, which ran approximately 2.5 miles around the city. To uncover it they simply followed the outer line of the wall to no great depth and made cross cut trenches to assess the width of the wall at intervals. Despite the great extent, the tracing of the wall took only one month. In a report sent from the field in February of 1930, Woolley said, "...the wall is a complete ruin; not a vestige of the burnt-brick wall proper has been discovered and in few places does more survive than the weathered stump of the huge mud-brick rampart along which the wall originally ran."
The investigations showed the original wall to be between 25 and 34 meters wide and Woolley estimated that it once stood to a height of 8 meters. On the central portion of the east side, he found and excavated partial houses. Woolley believed that for portions of Ur's history, the backs of these houses formed the defensive wall itself. Many of the objects marked as CLW come from this specific area of houses along the wall, and this is likely the reason that CLW in abbreviation lists is said to be the central portion of the northeast city wall.
The sloping revetment that was often found in CLW squares was evidence of the bank of a canal running along the east side of the city. Some of the CLW squares also contained other excavation areas, such as the North and West harbors, the so-called Kassite Fort, the Rim Sin temple (RS), and the Nin-Ezen Temple (NT).:
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Area EH is located within the Neo-Babylonian temenos wall south of the giparu. There are many other area designations given to parts of this space (such as DP and LR), but EH overall refers to the interior extent of the SW temenos wall from the south corner almost to the Nebuchadnezzar gate and extending east to the line of Pit F. Walls in the area were scattered and difficult to follow, so Woolley established a grid covering at least 55x100 meters in 5x5 squares. The grid is not well documented but publication shows that Woolley began numbers to the east, increasing to the west, and letters to the south, increasing to the north; square 1,A therefore sits in the SE corner -- 11,T in the NW.
The abbreviation EH stands for E-Hur-sag but the building of that name does not lie within this excavation zone. Woolley did not believe that the building to the east of this area (partially dug by H.R. Hall in 1919) was the e-hur-sag, the palace of Shulgi, despite bricks with the inscription of the building being found there. Instead he called that building Hall's Temple (HT) and sought the palace in many other places inside the temenos. He eventually conceded that HT was indeed the e-hur-sag and published EH without reference to the abbreviation's original meaning.
The area Woolley called EH was the area Hall called the 'tomb mound' because it was relatively high ground in which he found a number of graves. Woolley showed that these were the remains of graves beneath the floors of houses dating from the Isin-Larsa to Kassite periods. EH in this time was likely an extension of the domestic area EM. In the Ur III period there appear to have been larger public buildings here, but their remains were spotty at best. Tablets from this area and area EM show that the residents of the domestic quarter in the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian period were likely temple workers.:
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The excavation area abbreviation EM stands for Extra-Mural because this area lies outside of the southwest Temenos Wall. H.R. Hall investigated a portion of the high ground at this site (his Area A) in 1919, finding the remains of domestic structures. Taylor had also cut a trench here in 1853. Woolley first tested the ground early in 1926 (season 4) and then dug more completely in season 5, concentrating on about 60x40 meters of space and excavating to a depth of approximately 5 meters from the surface. He dug through Kassite and other late remains that were particularly fragmentary. He reported two Kassite houses (which he dubbed High House and Hill House) that were complete enough to map, and eventually uncovered twelve houses of the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian period. There were many graves beneath the floors and tablets were also relatively common. Most of the tablets have to do with the business of the temple, so the houses here probably belonged to temple workers.
Woolley named the streets he found in areas EM and AH. He felt that by naming the streets he could more easily identify any particular house, giving them numbers along the street with odd numbers on one side and even on the other. Many of the street names recur in the English city of Bath, where Woolley owned a house.
The northern portion of area EM ('Quality Lane' on Woolley's map) was excavated as area DP in season 4. This was higher ground than much of the rest of EM and is mapped with only partial houses that are not published in any detail. The houses of EM are more completely published, but their various phases of construction and rebuilding are not detailed. The domestic space represented by these houses likely continued eastward into area EH in the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian and Kassite periods, then was cut through and partly destroyed by the foundations of the Neo-Babylonian temenos wall.:
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The excavation area given the abbreviation KP was eventually found to be the site of the ancient building known as the giparu (alternatively e-gig-par or gig-par-ku). Mostly dedicated to the goddess Nin-gal, Nanna's consort, it was also in various periods the residence of the entu priestess. The abbreviation KP, however, stands for King's Palace because Woolley initially thought this might be the site of Shulgi's palace, the ehursag.
The giparu was a very long-lived building, though it underwent many changes over many centuries. Most striking were the changes in the Neo-Babylonian period when Woolley shows it combining with the dublalmah to the east. He believed that by this point the building was not sufficient to house the Ningal temple and the entu priestess together, and thus the so-called Palace of Belshaltinannar was constructed outside the temenos specifically to house the priestess herself.
At times Woolley refers to the giparu as the Great Ningal Temple, which can be confusing as the Kassite and Neo-Bablyonian Ningal temples had moved onto the ziggurat terrace to the north of the giparu (Area HD). Furthermore, parts of the giparu were excavated under area abbreviations other than KP in season 3 when the full extents of the building were only just coming to light. The northern portion originally carried the abbreviation HDB and the southeastern portion, SF.:
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This excavation area was designated Kings Palace South (KPS) because it explored walls that were south of the main giparu building (KP). Some of these late walls cut into earlier levels of the giparu in its southern portion. The walls were found to be of patchwork domestic structures, two houses (A to the south and B to the north) separated by a street (scanty remains of a House C were also found). They were formed mostly of broken and reused bricks of the Larsa/Old Babylonian period and probably dated to the Kassite period, repaired and reused into the Neo-Babylonian. Beneath these walls were found indications of the earlier Temenos wall and various artifacts of the Early Dynastic period.
The excavation area overall included part of the Neo-Babylonian temenos wall to the west, the part that contained the Nebuchadnezzar gate where inscribed bricks of this king were uncovered in foundation boxes. It stretched southward to the edge of the excavation areas called EH and DP.:
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The excavation area abbreviation NCF refers to the Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort excavated in seasons 10 and 11. This building was located at the west corner of the temenos where it meets the ziggurat terrace and turns to the south. Publication UE9 refers to this specific structure as the West Corner Fort, built by Nebuchadnezzar at the corner of his temenos wall. An earlier fortification had been uncovered in season 3, which Woolley called the Bastion of Warad Sin. This structure sits at the north corner of the ziggurat terrace, approximately mid-way along the northwest temenos wall and may have functioned as a kind of sally port gate. It was sometimes called the north corner fort in early seasons but artifacts were not catalogued with this abbreviation in those seasons. Any artifacts from the Warad Sin building were likely catalogued instead with the abbreviation PDW. Nebuchadnezzar's Corner Fort may also have been defensive, but it contained in its later phase a large mixing basin filled with bitumen. In the time of Nabonidus it may well have been in use in repairing the ziggurat.
Woolley dug beneath the Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort, still using the abbreviation NCF, and uncovered what he believed was a temple or shrine.:
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The excavation area abbreviation NH refers to the better-preserved Neo-Babyloninan Housing immediately southwest of area AH (though at one point Legrain mistakenly listed it as North Harbour). Woolley excavated in area NH for a short time in season 9 and again for an even shorter time ("a few days at the end of the season" according to field reports) in season 12. He did not dig below the level of Neo-Babylonian housing as his goal was to expose the layout of a portion of the Neo-Babylonian town. Across much of the site, the Neo-Babylonian domestic remains were badly preserved and even here there were only the stubs of walls and some evidence of later, Persian, occupation. The houses used no baked brick and they were close to the surface, thus they had often disappeared almost completely. Nonetheless, Woolley recovered outlines of two streets and seven houses along with a number of late artifacts, including two pots filled with tablets dating from the reign of Nabopolassar up to that of Alexander the Great.
Neo-Babylonian houses were much more spacious in ground plan than Old Babylonian and were typically built with a saw-toothed outer plan that Woolley had difficulty explaining. The streets were much more linear than earlier layouts and this implies developments in centralized town planning. Woolley attributed this entire domestic quarter, which he believed had been built on ground cleared of all other remains, to the time of Nebuchadnezzar.
Despite the fact that there were many artifacts recovered here and there were many graves excavated, there are only four field notecards extant and only cursory publication. When reporting graves, Woolley listed only house number, not room. Even the house numbers were assigned late, as evidenced by publication in UE9, which discusses House A and B while its map numbers 1-7. Houses 6 and 7 were certainly dug in 1931 when Woolley intended to extend area AH, but he changed his mind and only later went back to uncover the outlines of a few more houses south of these in the final season, including House 1, dug in 1934.:
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This area lies beyond (north/northwest of) Nebuchadnezzar's corner fort (NCF) at the west corner of the temenos wall. In seasons 10 and 11 the area was somewhat systematically excavated, initially creating a shallow trench from the northwest terrace and temenos wall almost to the city wall some 100 meters away. According to the 1932 reports, it was "enlarged into a regular excavation covering the area of a number of houses," and this expansion was continued in season 11. Excavations were taken through Persian (mostly surface) level down only a small depth to relatively well preserved house remains of the late Kassite and Neo-Babylonian periods. Many of the houses had graves under their floors. Woolley did not map or record the houses or graves, saying in his Antiquaries Journal report for 1932 (p.390): "They produced no objects of importance, but the graves did yield a certain number of glazed vases, beads and seals."
Publication does not do justice to the extent of this excavation area. Only XNCF, a smaller excavation of domestic space along the NW temenos is published in UE8 and that in only a few paragraphs.:
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The excavation area abbreviation NT refers to a successive series of small temples built very near the city wall in the southwestern portion of Ur. The temple nearest the surface was that built in the Neo-Babylonian period and attributable to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. The excavation area abbreviation NT actually stands for Nebuchadnezzar's temple. No Persian period temple was found here but Persian burials infringed on the building (see area NTB).
Beneath the Neo-Babylonian temple Woolley discovered another, similar temple of the Kassite period. This one seemed to have two phases of construction, one phase attributable to the reign of Kurigalzu. Beneath this sat another temple of the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian period, also with two phases. One of these dated to the reign of Rim Sin and the other to that of Sin-Iddinam. Yet another temple sat beneath, but this one was very fragmentary and difficult to map. It likely belonged to the Ur III period but little could be discerned.
Inscribed clay cones found in the Larsa levels give the name of the building as E-ni-gi-na and state that Rim-Sin restored this temple dedicated to Nin-gish-zida. Inscriptions in other levels show that this deity was honored here throughout the time periods but that Nin-Ezen (Ningizzida's consort) was also honored here in a kind of double shrine. Woolley suggested that another temple to Nin-Ezen appeared in the temenos area (see area SM) and that Ningizzida was the primary deity for this smaller temple in the southern city.:
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This area lies along the edge of northwest temenos wall east of the Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort (NCF). It was partly explored in season 1 when late graves were found in what at that time were called Cemeteries X, Y, and Z. In seasons 10 and 11 the larger area of late domestic space, or mostly that to the northwest, was more systematically excavated as area NNCF and the 'cemeteries' were found to be graves beneath heavily deteriorated late houses.
Publication of area XNCF in UE8 discusses the remains of domestic buildings found east of NCF and Warad Sin's Bastion along the temenos wall and the northern extent of the Nanna Courtyard (PD). XNCF as a whole, however, appears to have included the long range of Kassite magazines extending under and somewhat beyond the Neo-Babylonian temenos wall. These were broken into rows A, B, and C, and field catalogue cards referring to XNCF often record one of these letters and a room number in the contextual notes. Thus XNCF contained public buildings between the ziggurat terrace and the temenos wall (including a clear reference to the Kuriglazu addition to the Warad Sin Bastion), and domestic buildings and burials somewhat beyond (north of) the northwest temenos wall.:
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The excavation area abbreviation PG grew to refer to a large region, at least 60x80 meters, in the southeastern portion of the Neo-Babylonian temenos but below the level of that wall. The area is most often referred to as the Royal Cemetery. The abbreviation PG, however, was initially used to designate individual graves: PG1422, for example, refers to Private Grave number 1422. The first PG numbers were assigned in season 5 when a series of trial trenches (see TTD, TTE, TTF, and TTG) were excavated in the area. These trenches were expanded to uncover more and more graves over the next few seasons. The last number assigned in the PG sequence was around 1850 but numbers were often reassigned for publication and even in the field some numbers were combined as they were recognized to come from one large grave rather than two separate ones. Others were deemed to fragmentary to publish; furthermore, several hundred additional graves were found in Pit X, an expansion of the PG area dug in 1934. The total number of graves excavated in the Royal Cemetery is thus extremely difficult to determine. Woolley reports that there may once have been as many as three times the total number of graves he recorded, as he found many plundered and almost completely destroyed.
Despite being called the Royal Cemetery, there were only 16 graves that Woolley actually dubbed 'royal.' He believed that these formed the core of the burial ground and that many other people wanted to be buried nearby. The cemetery lay outside of the original temenos, the core of the city, and was apparently a dumping ground through much of its history. Stratigraphic layers of sealings (see SIS) help to date the main period of the Royal Cemetery to the Early Dynastic III, though there are also graves of the Akkadian and perhaps some of the early Ur III period here. Well beneath the main PG area are also graves of the Uruk and Ubaid periods, but these were mainly uncovered in pits dug within or adjacent to area PG (see PJ, Pit W, Pit X, Pit Y and Pit Z).
Most burials in area PG were simple inhumations with few artifacts, but the ones Woolley called royal were much more elaborate. Apart from having rich artifacts, they also showed evidence of human sacrifice -- many bodies were found in 'death pits' outside the main 'royal' burial. The people found in these death pits may have been attendants who went into the afterlife with their king or queen, yet no other indication of this practice is found elsewhere in Mesopotamia. Nor do we know who these 'kings and queens' were. The dating of the graves makes it difficult to associate them with a known dynasty at Ur and there were very few names found with any of the bodies. Only the burial of Puabi, the Queen, can be directly identified by her cylinder seal and she does not appear on any king list. References to Mesannepada and his wife Ninbanda, a king and queen of the first dynasty of Ur, were found but not in specific graves. Instead, they were found in material above the main graves and would imply that the royal tombs pre-date the first dynasty.
Woolley spent a great deal of time and energy excavating the Royal Cemetery and the majority of his field notes concern it. Recording of contexts here, then, is better than anywhere else at Ur. Nonetheless, not all of the graves were mapped and photographs were often difficult to obtain.:
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The excavation area abbreviation ZT stands for Ziggurat Terrace. It was used for any portion of the terrace on which the ziggurat stood, though other more specific abbreviations were also used. For example, the abbreviation PDW refers to the northern side of the terrace, west of the Great Nannar Courtyard (PD), and HD refers to the southern part of the terrace. Early references using the abbreviation ZT refer specifically to excavations along the terrace retaining wall itself. Later references, however, mention specific areas on top the terrace such as the so-called 'boat shrine.' The abbreviation also refers to deep clearing of the terrace fill, particularly on the north side in later excavation seasons, though the abbreviation Zig.31 was most often used for this.
Woolley uncovered large areas of the retaining wall that supported the platform known as the ziggurat terrace. He found that it was decorated with large wall cones. These cones bore an inscription of Urnamma but there is evidence that the terrace in some form existed in the Early Dynastic period as well. The Urnamma retaining wall was slanted to support the terrace, was 1.7 meters high, 34 meters wide, and was decorated with 5-meter-wide buttresses about 4 meters apart. The inscribed cones dedicate the terrace to the moon god, Nanna, and show that it was called e-temen-ni-gur, which translates as, "house, foundation platform clad in terror." (Woolley read this e-temen-ni-il).:
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The northeast part of Nebuchadnezzar's Fort in the western angle of the Temenos:
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The excavation area abbreviation NTB refers to that space beyond (northeast of, toward the central portion of the mound of Ur) the Ningizzida temple on the southwest city wall. Woolley often used the suffix letter B to indicate an extension of an excavation area, particularly one that went beyond the confines of a visible building he was excavating. He rarely explains, however, just how far away from the building the extended excavation was carried out. In this case, Woolley explored late remains that surrounded the Ningizzida temple, noting that there were Neo-Babylonian and Persian house remains and burials nearby. Most of these are likely from area NTB, though Woolley only preceded the grave number with NT and some late graves did infringe upon the temple building itself.
There are very few artifacts that actually display the NTB designation and these are all from season 8. The excavation area outside the temple space may not have been large, though it is impossible to tell on current evidence.:
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Pit F stands apart from the Royal Cemetery pits dug in the preceding year, despite its letter 'F' falling inside the sequence of those pits. The sequence of pit letters was assigned after most had been dug, probably in season 8 as confusion arose over pits I and J. Pit F was originally called PFT to distinguish it from pits in the Royal Cemetery area. The suffix T probably stood for Temenos to show that Pit F was dug in the area inside the early temenos wall. The abbreviation became confusing and Legrain reports PF as 'Flood Pit' and PFT as 'Shaft in town area,' but the two designations are actually identical.
The term 'Flood Pit' was often used to refer to Pit F because of the deep layers of silt found near its deepest extent. As much as 3 meters thickness of fine water-lain soil was encountered here, evidence of a great flood. In his books and talks for the general public, Woolley often made the equation of this flood with the biblical flood, but in his academic discussions he never did. Instead, here he referred to the frequent flooding of the Euphrates and how this particular flood must have been large and may have spawned Sumerian legends.
Pit F was extremely large and extremely deep. Woolley's intent was to reach the earliest occupation of the site. He chose an already low-lying zone neighboring the excavation area EH and laid out a trench 15x25 meters, though in the southern half he only dug 10 meters width, making the final pit L shaped. He truncated the horizontal extent further as he dug down to avoid collapse and he eventually reached a depth of some 19 meters from the surface of the mound. The top of the pit had already been denuded to the Early Dynastic levels and thus late material was typically not found here. From the surface, Woolley found eight levels of early building remains going deeper and deeper. Beneath this he found pottery kilns and a deep layer of over-fired pottery fragments indicating manufacture. Near the bottom of this stratum he began finding Uruk period graves (that he called Jemdat Nasr period graves). He labeled these not with numbers, but with letters in the sequence PFG/A through PFG/XX. Below this he encountered the flood layer with Ubaid period graves cut into it. Beneath the flood layer he found evidence of Ubaid habitation near sea level and what he believed to be indications of the early marshlands in which Ur had originally been a very low mound.:
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The excavation area abbreviation SF refers to the southeastern portion of the giparu (KP). This building was very large and in season 3 its full extents were not yet known. It was being excavated from the north (HDB) and the south (SF) simultaneously, thus it initially received different abbreviations. SF may stand for South Face or South Front, though this is nowhere recorded. Legrain records "Gipar-ku, SE part" for this context. The shape of the giparu changed through the centuries and SF runs to join with the dublalmah to the east, as that building merged with the giparu in the Neo-Babylonian period.:
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This is a vertical distinction rather than a horizontal one. Located within the Area PG (the Royal Cemetery) these strata were noted sloping down and forming the material into which the graves were dug (mostly seen in the western portion of the cemetery area). They contained many early tablets and seal impressions, thus the name SIS (Seal Impression Strata).
They appear to be evidence of many dumping episodes of administrative material probably thrown out from an important building such as an early shrine.
There were eight separate strata noted, but not all could be traced over an extended area and there are conflations of several, such as SIS 4-5, where the exact stratum for an artifact could not be determined.:
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TTC is shorthand for Trial Trench C, a trench dug in season 4 to explore a low-lying part of the temenos zone not yet excavated (later extended as area FH). The trench was never mapped, few artifacts were recorded from it and it does not appear in publication. Locating it relies on the few catalog cards that mention it and on an aerial photo from 1926. Catalog card references mention the "back of Hall's excavation" and "alongside mud brick wall running NE by SW, S of EgigPar and parallel with Temenos wall." South of the giparu there is no good candidate for the wall mentioned, but south of the ehursag there is and it is likely that egigpar was written when ehursag was intended. Furthermore, the area known as FH shows that the 'Front of Hall's excavation' was north-northwest of this building. Therefore, TTC at the 'back of Hall's excavation' should be south-southeast. The aerial photo shows a trench about 3.5 meters wide and 30 meters long that sits east-southeast of the ehursag and is very likely to be TTC. The only other possible candidate is a trench almost exactly the same size located southwest of the giparu, north of area EM. This trench, however, is mentioned in a season three field report (not given any abbreviation) as an exploration of an area to be dug the following season (area EM). Since that trench was dug in the season before artifacts are recorded as coming from TTC, the only trench that could be TTC is the one near area HT (ehursag).:
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The NW corner/end of TTA:
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SE corner/end of TTA:
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South end of TTA:
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Open Court:
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Altar:
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Inner Sanctuary:
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Central court (2) with a drain in the middle which showed obvious signs of reconstruction; half of the west wall and all the south wall were destroyed, but the remainder contained a curious mixture of burnt and mud bricks, parts of the walls being of mud bricks throughout, but elsewhere there were patches of burnt bricks at different levels and one door-jamb in the east wall was of burnt brick for its full height; it could only mean that before the existing pavements were laid the house had been completely ruined and had then been rebuilt on the same lines, using the stumps of the old walls as foundations and using also a good deal of the old fallen material. It is probable that at this time the chapel was built on the site of rooms which had once opened off the south side of the court.:
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Room 3 had been paved but most of the bricks had been pulled up.:
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From the kitchen a doorway, narrowed at some time by having a veneer of bricks set on edge applied to its east jamb, led into Room 5, a paved room little larger than a cupboard, out of which again opened two doors.:
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On the north side of the central court lay Room 7, a paved room of which the west wall was an addition, a screen one brick thick (0.17 m.) of burnt bricks standing to a height of 1.40 m. not bonded at either end.:
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On the west side lay Room 8, also paved, divided from Room 9 on the north by a burnt-brick screen 0.26 m. thick (single bricks laid as headers).:
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Same room (2) which by its pavement of bricks (0.26 m. X 0.18 m.) and its central drain was clearly an open court. Along the south wall there was an unpaved strip 0.50 m. wide defined by a line of bricks rising one course above pavement level; from the east wall there ran a line of bricks for a distance of 0.90 m., stepped up from the floor to a height of 0.45 m. against the wall face, and between this and the south wall there was no brick paving; it suggests either a raised platform of which the front had disappeared (and there was nothing to account for its complete disappearance) or a flight of steps with wooden treads going up to a higher door in the east wall which was however too ruined to show any signs of door-jambs.:
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Sanctuary?:
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Room 6 was the domestic chapel; there was a hinge-box against the east jamb of the door; the floor was of clay; walls stood up to 3.30 m. and mud brick and burnt brick alike were covered with a fine smooth plaster 0.04 m. thick; there were no traces of colour on it. At the south end two projecting jambs partly enclosed the altar which occupied what looks like a tiny chamber; it was of burnt bricks, 0.50 m. high; from it in the east angle rose the ruins of a mud-brick "table"; just in front of the east jamb there was a large clay pot sunk in the floor, Type IL.50, ht. 0.55 m. In the rubbish 0.50 m. above floor level was found the fine fragment of a painted terracotta statue of a bearded god, U.16993, P1. 63.:
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Store-room:
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Under the upper mud floor. Analysis indicates that LG/102 is associated with the "later" phase of a LP
occupational sequence which can be outlined for No. 4 Gay St.:
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Under the upper mud floor. Analysis indicates that LG/103 is associated with the "late" phase in this structure.
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Below main floor. Analysis indicates that LG/104, along with LG/105, is associated with the "early" phase of the LP. :
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Below main floor, resting on burnt bricks.
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LG/95 is reported as being placed "under
the floor" of one of the LP occupations in Room 6. Analysis of the architectural evidence indicates that there are multiple occupations in this structure, so that the specific phase association of this burial is unknown.:
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Analysis indicates that this burial is associated with the LP. However, it cannot be linked to either the "early" or the "late" phase which exists in this structure.:
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Analysis suggests that grave is associated with LP occupation. :
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LG/52A, B, and C all appear to be associated with the "later" phase of occupation in this structure/. :
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Analysis of suggests that this grave, along
with LG/54 and LG/55, is associated with the "early" phase of a two phase occupational sequence; exact position of LG/53 is known. :
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Alongside Larsa Grave 53.:
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Alongside LG/54:
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Alongside LG/53.:
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Exact location and stratigraphic association is unknown.:
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Analysis suggests that this grave is associated with a LP occupation.:
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Although two LP occupational phases are outlined in UE7, it is not possible to associate unpublished references in LG/58, LG/58.7, LG/58.8, and LG/59 with either phase, although the material suggests that they are linked to the LP; the location of LG/58 is unknown because there are conflicting accounts in UE7 which the unpublished notes do not resolve.
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Room 7 or 8. :
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Analysis suggests that this grave is
associated with one of the earlier periods of the three-phase occupational sequence which can be outlined for this structure.:
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Analysis suggests that this grave is associated with the earliest period of LP occupation in this structure; located beneath the threshold between rooms 13 and 14.:
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Analysis suggests that a two phase LP
occupational sequence was present, and that this grave was associated with the "late" phase. :
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In front of the door of the corbelled tomb LG/84.:
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Unpublished notes indicate that LG/1 is
located in the "SW Room", which corresponds to Room 3, and that the grave is associated with the Larsa Period.:
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No. 8 and 10 Paternoster, Room 2. Located beneath earth floor linked to Larsa Period.:
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Below an apparently earthen floor which is linked to the Larsa Period; close to LG/2.7:
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Below an apparently earthen floor which is linked to the LP; close to LG/2.6.:
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Against NW wall of Room 11 (Chapel). 0.70m. below pavement level, above a disused drain: some of the pots may not belong. Larnax broken & incomplete.
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Room 11 Chapel. Top of vault 0.45m. below pavement level. Bricks 0.18m. x 0.20m.
x 0.07m.:
|
1
|
|
Against SE wall of Room 11 (Chapel). 0.60m. below pavement level. A layer of bricks below the coffin.:
|
1
|
|
By NW wall of Room 11 (Chapel). c. 0.60m. below pavement.:
|
1
|
|
Room 11 chapel. at 0.55m. below pavement.
:
|
1
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|
Room 11 chapel. Against SE wall 0.45m. below pavement.:
|
1
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|
Room 11 chapel, against NW wall 0.60m. below pavement.:
|
1
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|
Room 11 chapel. Below it was a ring drain, apparently unconnected. :
|
1
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|
Room 11, chapel. Unpublished notes indicate associated with LP; approximate position in room known.:
|
1
|
|
Grouped with LG/14.5 - LG/14.9. Entry in the unpublished notes under AHG/158 suggests that the infant burials in Room 12, here designated LG/14 and LG/14.5 - LG/14.9, are located in Room 12, and not in Room 11, as published in UE 7; the exact location of LG/14 is known, and the burial is associated with the Larsa Period; the LG/14 - LG/14.9 group of burials are incorrectly associated with Plate 39b in UE7, which really depicts AHG/160A (LG/38.7A - I) in No. 12 Straight St.:
|
1
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|
Described in association with LG/14 in the
AHG/158 notes; possibly associated with "latest" clay floor in Room 12, and almost flush with surface.:
|
1
|
|
Unpublished notes indicate the LG/15 is
located "immediately below" a pavement most likely associated with the Larsa Period; location in room known.:
|
1
|
|
Located under floor linked to the Larsa Period; associated with LG/16.5B and LG/16.5C. :
|
1
|
|
Located under floor linked to the Larsa Period; associated with LG/16.5A and LG/16.5C. :
|
1
|
|
Located under floor linked to the Larsa Period; associated with LG/16.5A and LG/16.5B. :
|
1
|
|
Analysis of the available material indicates that there were two LP pavements in this room, an "early" and a "late"; LG/41 is associated with the "early" pavement.:
|
1
|
|
Analysis of the available material
indicates that this grave is associated with the earlier of the two LP pavements in this structure; exact location of grave in room is known:
|
1
|
|
brick tomb with arched doorway (under chapel floor):
|
1
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|
grave under chapel floor:
|
1
|
|
Analysis suggests that this grave is
associated with a LP occupation.:
|
1
|
|
Analysis indicates that this grave is associated with the "later" phase of a two- phase occupational sequence.:
|
1
|
|
Analysis of unpublished sources suggests
that LG/21 is associated with the "Late" phase of a two-phase" occupational sequence in this structure; exact position of LG/21 in room is known.:
|
1
|
|
The grave lies high and belongs to the end of the Larsa period. Analysis of unpublished sources suggests
that LG/22 is associated with the "Late" phase of a two-phase occupational sequence in this structure; exact position of LG/22 in room is known.:
|
1
|
|
Unpublished notes indicate that LG/31.6, along with LG/31 and LG/30, is located in a pit which is associated with the "late" phase of a two-phase LP occupational sequence;(pictured on Plate 46B of UE7, which should read "Room 9" instead of "court").:
|
1
|
|
LG/22.7 is flush with the bricks of
pavement of "early" phase of two-phase occupational sequence; exact position in room is known (in front of raised table).:
|
1
|
|
Analysis of available material suggests
that this grave is associated with the "early" phase of a two-phase LP occupational sequence; approximate location of grave in room is known.:
|
1
|
|
1.60m. below pavement.:
|
1
|
|
The larnax was propped up on burnt bricks 0.265m x 0.165m x 0.07m. Analysis of available sources suggest that LG/27 is associated with the "early" phase of a two-phase LP occupational sequence; approximate location of grave is known.:
|
1
|
|
Unpublished notes indicate that LG/27.5 is
associated with the "early" phase of a two- phase LP occupational sequence; approximate location of grave is known.:
|
1
|
|
Analysis of unpublished notes suggests that LG/23, along with LG/24, is associated with the "early" phase of a two-phase LP occupational sequence in this structure; approximate location of LG/23 in room is known.:
|
1
|
|
Analysis of unpublished notes suggests that LG/24, along with LG/23, is associated with the "early" phase of a two-phase LP occupational sequence in this structure; approximate location of LG/23 in room is known.:
|
1
|
|
Analysis of available sources indicates
that LG/28 is associated with "early" phase of two-phase LP occupational sequence.:
|
1
|
|
Below pavement. Unpublished information indicates that LG/29 is associated with an "early" phase of two-phase LP occupational sequence:
|
1
|
|
Chapel. Analysis of unpublished material suggests grave is associated with "early" phase.:
|
1
|
|
The larnax rested on a bed of clay and bitumen.Unpublished notes indicate that LG/30, along with LG/31 and LG/31.6, is located in a pit which is associated with the "late" phase of a two-phase LP occupational sequence; exact location of LG/30 is known;(pictured on Plate 46B of UE7, which should read "Room 9" instead of "court").
:
|
1
|
|
Unpublished notes indicate that LG/31, along with LG/30 and LG/31.6, is located in a pit which is associated with the "late" phase of a two-phase LP occupational sequence; exact location of LG/31 is known; (pictured on Plate 46B of UE7, which should read "Room 9" instead of "court").:
|
1
|
|
Analysis of available sources indicates that this structure possesses a two-phase LP occupational sequence, "early" and "late"; this grave may be associated with the "early" phase.:
|
1
|
|
This grave and LG/35 were inside a low vault(?) of mud brick.:
|
1
|
|
In E corner of Room 2.
At 0.70m. below pavement of this
(late) house.:
|
1
|
|
Analysis indicates that LG/39 is associated with the LP, although the phase association of the grave is not known; exact position of LG/39 is known.:
|
1
|
|
LG/39.6 can only be associated with a general LP date; exact location is known; (Woolley mistakenly placed the object, type and position information described above with LG/71, but it is clear that AHG/190 is not located in No. 15 Church).:
|
1
|
|
Pictured on Plate 39b of UE7, which is
labeled incorrectly; the LG/38.7 group of burials all appear to be located on or through a LP floor; Woolley considered them all to be linked to this period although they were not assigned grave numbers; exact position of graves in Room 6 is known.:
|
1
|
|
Analysis suggests LG/163.5, along with the
other graves in House 30/C, including LG/163.6, LG/163.7, LG/163.8, LG/163.9 and LG/164.5, is associated with the LP. It is not possible to reconstruct an occupational sequence for this structure.:
|
1
|
|
Chapel. Analysis of the stratigraphic evidence relating to No. 15 Church indicates that it is not possible either to reconstruct the occupational sequence or to determine the relative dates of the dozen or so graves associated with the LP; despite this, analysis of suggests that all of these graves date to sometime within the LP. :
|
1
|
|
Belongs to earliest occupation.:
|
1
|
|
Belonged to earliest occupation.:
|
1
|
|
Chapel. Below the pavement but cut into the wall footings, so strictly con- temporary with house.:
|
1
|
|
Grave slightly later than LG/73.
Analysis suggests AHG/142A = AHG/142B = LG/74; approximate location of grave is known. :
|
1
|
|
The description published in UE7 fits LG/39.6. Presumably an error was made in house assignment and LG/71 was incorrectly assigned to No. 15 Church.:
|
1
|
|
Double-pot burial.:
|
1
|
|
Behind the entrance-pit of LG/125.:
|
1
|
|
Analysis suggests that three LP phases existed for this structure, labeled "early", "middle" and "late". LG/106,as well as LG/107 and LG/108, are associated with the "late"
phase.:
|
1
|
|
Area III. :
|
1
|
|
Area I. :
|
1
|
|
Area IV:
|
1
|
|
The latest body lay on the top of a mass of in- filtered soil and may represent a post-Larsa burial. :
|
1
|
|
Traces of ruined pavement immediately over the grave. Analysis indicates that this burial, although associated with the LP, cannot be conclusively linked to either the "early » or the "late" phase which exists in this structure. The approximate location of LG/101 in Room 1 is known.:
|
1
|
|
Analysis suggests that grave is associated
with one of the two LP occupational phases proposed for this structure.:
|
1
|
|
Possibly Room 5. Analysis indicates that LG/49 is associated with the "early period" of a two phase LP occupational sequence. :
|
1
|
|
Analysis indicates that LG/50 is associated
with "early" period of occupation. :
|
1
|
|
Possibly Room 5. Analysis suggests that this grave is
associated with one of two LP occupational phases; location of grave is unknown. :
|
1
|
|
LG/61 may have been re-opened in the early Kassite Period since it contains objects of Kasssite affinity (beads, t. 109 vessels); stratigraphically, the grave possesses some LP affinities, even though it is not clearly characterised.:
|
1
|
|
Room location unknown, but unpublished notes imply that LG/2 possibly associated with Room 12; grave associated with Larsa Period occupation.:
|
1
|
|
LG/39.7 appears to be associated with a LP level.:
|
1
|
|
Analysis suggests LG/157, along with the other graves in House 30/B, including LG/157.6, LG/157.7, LG/157.8A, LG/157.8B, and LG/158, is associated with the LP. It is not possible to reconstruct an occupational sequence for this structure. :
|
1
|
|
Analysis suggests LG/159, along with the other graves in House 30/C, including LG/160, LG/160.5, and LG/162, is associated with the LP. It is not possible to reconstruct an occupational sequence for this structure.:
|
1
|
|
Located in area ENE of House 30/D, against outer face of SW. wall of Mausoleum. Analysis suggests that grave associated with the LP in area cut by Temenos Wall, and dug down into Royal Mausolea area.:
|
1
|
|
Dug into Room 7 of Ur III Period "Shulgi Mausolea".The foundation- chamber of Sulgi's mausoleum had been discovered and reused by the occupants of the Larsa House. :
|
1
|
|
he published description of LG/198 matches
that of BCG/13 in the Mausolea site, as discussed in Chapter II. The unpublished notes indicate that LG/198 is positioned near Room 4 of the Ur III Shulgi Mausolea; the LP walls are said to be associated with this grave in the unpublished notes.:
|
1
|
|
Grave dug into Ur III Period "Shulgi" Mausolea, Room 8. Analysis suggests that LG/165.5 was dug into the Royal Mausolea. Approximate location of grave is known.:
|
1
|
|
Grave dug into Room 8 of Ur III Period "Shulgi Mausolea".:
|
1
|
|
In a corner of a Larsa chamber on Town
wall.:
|
1
|
|
Against wall foundations in a
Larsa house on town wall.:
|
1
|
|
1.70m. below house wall, against face of
town wall.:
|
1
|
|
0.20m. below LG/168 on town wall.:
|
1
|
|
1.40m. below Larsa pavement on town wall.:
|
1
|
|
On city wall, NE side below Larsa house ruins.
:
|
1
|
|
Unpublished information indicates that
LG/170.5 and LG/170.6 were placed in LP levels of a previously unpublished three room structure, for which architectural plans were uncovered. (The room which contained the burials has the appearance of a domestic chapel; unidentified tablets "baked by fire" were also located here).:
|
1
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|
House area. LG/86, as well as LG/88 - LG/94, are all
present in partially excavated structures. Woolley did not provide either published or unpublished direct accounts of these structures, although some architectural details are described in unpublished notes. It is not possible to match any of these unpublished architectural references to the published architectural plans, so the exact position of this group of graves is unknown. However, analysis of the
unpublished stratigraphie information indicates that they are all associated with a LP occupation.
:
|
1
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|
House area:
|
1
|
|
Block A, SE Range, Square J8:
|
1
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|
Sunk in the pavement of LG/137. [See p. 79 n.5.].
NW Building, Square 06. :
|
1
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|
NW Building, Square R7:
|
1
|
|
Coffin resting on brick platform. Beads and cylinders outside.:
|
1
|
|
Block C, SE Range, Square H6. :
|
1
|
|
NW Building, Square Q9. :
|
1
|
|
NW Building, Square S7. :
|
1
|
|
Coffin lay 0.80m. below a wall of bricks 0.30m. x 0.18m. x 0.075m. :
|
1
|
|
Of same date as LG/147.:
|
1
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|
In ruined shrine(?) under floor of bricks 0.24m. sq.:
|
1
|
|
SE of Block G, SE Range, Square B7:
|
1
|
|
NW Building, Square 09:
|
1
|
|
Outside Block D, SE Range, Square G6:
|
1
|
|
Outside Block D, SE Range, Square G5.
In the tomb filling were the clay tablets U.6314-9, dated to the reign of Samsu- iluna (see U.E.T. V, Nos. 149, 268).:
|
1
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|
Against SW wall of Temenos. This burial is associated with the Temenos Wall area, and was placed in the CLW area list of burials by Woolley (see "CLW area" description in Chapter II).:
|
1
|
|
Chapel. Analysis indicates that LG/44 is
associated with the "early" phase of a two phase occupational sequence; several other graves in structure, including LG/45 and LG/46, can be linked to the "early" phase.:
|
1
|
|
In UE7, LG/16, along with LG/17, 18, 19 and
20, are described as being located in a "partially excavated house south of No. 11 Paternoster". This structure is here designated "No. lie Paternoster Row", and consists of three rooms. The unpublished notes confirm the existence of these burials in a structure south of No. 11 Paternoster; the location of LG/16 is known. :
|
1
|
|
In a partially excavated house S of No. 11 Paternoster Row.:
|
1
|
|
In a partially excavated house S of No. 11 Paternoster Row. Unpublished notes indicate closely associated with LG/17; approximate location in room known; see LG/16 notes.:
|
1
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|
Chapel. Grave lay S. of the vaulted tomb LG/80.
Analysis indicates that the graves in this
structure, including LG/76, LG/77, LG /78, LG/80, LG/80.5, and LG/80.6, cannot be linked to a specific occupational phase; nevertheless, all of these graves appear to be associated with a LP occupation (note that the published directions are probably incorrect); location of LG/76 is known. :
|
1
|
|
Site outside of Ur, material brought in.:
|
1
|
|
A site outside of Ur, usually brought in.:
|
1
|
|
Site Northwest of Ur. excavated in Ur season 2 (and earlier work by HR Hall). Published in Ur Excavation I. :
|
1
|
|
5 miles E of Zeghul :
|
1
|
|
other side of railway from Tell el Obaid.:
|
1
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|
Double bowl burial immediately below pavement of two-pillar chapel. :
|
1
|
|
Designation of a square dug inside PFT:
|
1
|
|
Possibly Rajibeh? Listed in Season 2 catalogue cards as an object findspot with no other indication of where it is located; it is a site outside Ur, sometimes written Rediba II, from which workers brought objects in.:
|
1
|
|
West of Nasriyeh:
|
1
|
|
A surface mound not far from Battha station:
|
1
|
|
West of Abu Sharein:
|
1
|
|
TTB is shorthand for Trial Trench B, one of two trenches excavated in Woolley's first season at Ur in 1922. This one was about 4 meters wide by about 60 meters long and ended up almost entirely within the e-nun-mah, a building that went through many forms over the centuries. The trench was expanded to reveal the building and extra abbreviations were added to it to indicate portions, roughly in directional notation from the main trench. The trench cut the building close to the west corner and TTB.W became the abbreviation for this area beyond the trench itself. TTB.SS and TTB.ES covered the larger area to the south and east. The abbreviation ES was then used in later seasons to refer to the majority of the building and a small portion of the area to the south of it.
The enunmah itself was a complicated structure that seems to have changed function from storeroom (originally called the ganunmah) to temple through its long history. Woolley began assigning room numbers within the abbreviation TTB, but these excavation room numbers do not correlate precisely with the published room numbers.:
|
1
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|
Woolley did not list a location.:
|
1
|
|
Near Khidr (brought in):
|
1
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|
In the west corner there was in the core of the wall a brick with the Kudur-Mabug stamp; it was possibly re-used but is more probably original and dates the lower part of the wall to the Larsa period. The floor had disappeared, owing to the fact that the Neo-Babylonian floor had been laid at the same level in this as in the other rooms of the sanctuary. The room had been partly cleared by Taylor and had suffered severely from exposure since then. Under the Neo-Babylonian pavement, against the inner side of the entrance door, there was a doorsocket stone of Marduk-nadin-ahhe. 76 Loose in the lower earth filling there were found a large oval blue paste pendant (U. 8335), an object like a spoon-bowl of white steatite (U. 8336), tablets (U. 534-6), and a crescent-shaped amulet of red pebble (U. 8334).:
|
1
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|
(See PI. 32b) Except at the NW end of the room virtually nothing of the burnt-brick wall survived. Against the western jamb of the door in the NW wall was a doorsocket stone, uninscribed, for the insertion of which the mudbrick wall has been cut back; part of the brick hinge-box remains and the mud floor can be traced running above the bricks of the box, from which fact one can conclude that the socket-stone belongs to the Kassite restoration. The mud floor, flush with the middle of the fourth course of wall bricks, was much destroyed; at the NW end there were traces of a brick pavement above it, for which it may have served as a foundation. There was a brick threshold across the doorway, and against the northern jamb a brick with a hole through it had been used as an impost for the door frame. Tablets found here included one dated in the 7th year of Gungunum of Larsa (U. 318).:
|
1
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|
Against the NW jamb of the door in the NE wall, enclosed in its hinge-box, was a doorsocket of Gimil-Sin (U. 838, UET 1, 80). In the filling was found a broken mud brick with the stamp of Kudur-Mabug and also in the filling was a very large inscribed stone duck-weight (U. 808). A doorsocket of Kuri-Galzu (U. 950) was not in situ, nor was a fragment of a clay cone of Nur-Adad (U. 335). On a fragmentary vessel of limestone was a dedication by Sin- ... - uballit (U. 873). The tablets were U. 739, 740. To the NW of rooms 23 and 24 all traces of the building had disappeared and a shaft sunk between those rooms and the Nebuchadnezzar drain failed to find even the foundations of walls. Below the level of the drain came hard-packed brick earth, artificially rammed, in which (at depth 2.00 m.) was found a late carnelian cylinder seal (U. 775, UE X, 611), proving that the layer was relatively late. From 2.20 m. to 3.20 m. was sand, and then a floor of grey clay thinly overlaid with white plaster, this connecting with First Dynasty of Ur levels found farther to the west. Below this was mixed soil going down to 3.80 m. and then clean sandy soil to 5.30 m. In the top levels SE of the drain and not disturbed by its construction were found a fragment of an inscribed diorite vessel (U. 874, unintelligible), a fragment of a small inscribed stone macehead (U. 985), and a considerable number of clay tablets (U. 381-86, 389-93, 540, 541, 737, 926-37, 951, 966-68, 979-81, 987) and seal impressions, the former including examples dated to the 3rd year of Gimil-Sin, the 6th year of Gungunum, the 2nd year of Abi-sare, the 22nd year of Sumu-ilum, and to the reign of Samsu-iluna; one seal impression was that of A-ab-ba, son of Enannatum, priest of Nannar, perhaps the Enannatum who built the Gig-Par-Ku in the reign of Gungunum. A certain number of objects were found either against the walls of the building, at a low level, or in the rubbish which overlay its ruins. A roughly made cup of reddish-drab clay with a pierced base (Type IV) seemed to belong to the Kuri-Galzu stratum; stone vase fragments with inscriptions (fragmentary) of Rimush (U. 1167) and Dungi (U. 296) and of an unknown dedicator, an inscribed fragment of a statue in diorite (U. 744), a fragment in dolerite of a wig (?) for application to a statue (U. 176), a shell amulet in the form of a demon's head (U. 233), cylinder seals (U. 167 decayed; U. 234, UE X, No. 217; and U. 790), a plumb-bob (U. 835), seal impressions (e.g, U. 574-84, 3255), and tablets, complete or fragmentary, including examples dated to the 8th year of Bur-Sin and the 2nd year of Abi-sare (U. 373, 724).:
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1
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|
Square U.9 inside of EH:
|
1
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|
Graves that do not have an exact location in AH:
|
1
|
|
This square is located to the South West of AH. :
|
1
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|
To the Northwest of baker's square, 7 rooms:
|
1
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|
North of 1 Baker's square:
|
1
|
|
Located to the western edge of AH, off of Paternoster Row. :
|
1
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|
East side of AH off of Carfax square. :
|
1
|
|
The Eastern Boundary from the north to Carfax Square:
|
1
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|
Off the corner of Church Lane and Straight Street. This house is combined with Straight Street 1, rooms 1,2,3. :
|
1
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|
Combined with No. 1 Church Lane:
|
1
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|
Partially excavated house south of No. 11 Paternoster Row.:
|
1
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|
This tomb chamber contained the remains of Queen Puabi, as identified by one of the cylinder seals on her body. Woolley associated it with the death pit above, to which he had assigned the designator PG/800, thus this chamber received the subletter B. Since the chamber floor is about 2.5 meters lower than the death pit floor, however, the two may actually be unrelated.:
|
1
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|
This was a large and important house at the corner of Boundary Street and Niche Lane,opening on the former. The outer walls had from fourteen to twenty courses of burnt brick showing above pavement level, the inner and back walls had only a damp-course of from two to five courses; the building was well preserved except on the NE where it had suffered denudation by being on the line of a wadi cut by the water from the higher ground to the SW. There were two doors opening on the street very close to one another; the second (No. 3) was probably a shop attached to the dwelling-house.:
|
1
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|
Room 1, the entrance-lobby, had an original threshold just above street level, a second 0.50 m. higher and a third 0.50 m. higher still; the floor was paved with bricks 0.25 m. X 0.16 m. except for a patch in the south corner where there may have been a mud bench. The NE wall was only 0.60 m. high, the SW wall 1.20 m.:
|
1
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|
The room was prolonged into a
passage which led to the door of Room 2, the central court, brick-paved with central drain, the walls preserved up to 1.80 m. and the SW wall showing traces of whitewash.:
|
1
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|
A door in the north corner communicated with Room 3, at the NE end of which was the second door on the street. In the north corner was a pedestal of burnt brick and in the east corner an L-shaped bench, 0.45 m. wide against the NE wall and 0.65 m. wide against the SE wall, built of three courses of burnt brick with mud brick above; its original height was doubtful, its top having been weathered away flush with the existing top of the wall (c. 0.60 m.), butit was probably not very high and seems to have been in the nature of a counter for the display of goods. In the SE wall the high burnt brickwork of the outer wall ran back only for 1.00 m. and was then bonded into mud brick with four cour;es of burnt brick below. The floor was of clay. In the SW wall an old doorway had been walled up. :
|
1
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|
Room 4 was brick-paved.:
|
1
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|
Room 5 was probably only a large cupboard opening off the passage which led from the central court to Room 6,:
|
1
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|
Room 6, the kitchen. The floor of Room 6 was brick-paved; against the SE wall was a circular brick fire-place, diam. 1.00 m., in front of which was a flat hearth; in the east corner rose a solid brick cooking-range and in the south corner was a clay bread-oven diam. 0.65 m.:
|
1
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|
Room 7, a quite large room, was most unusual in that it combined the functions of staircase and lavatory. There had been a doorway to the alley through the SE wall, but this had been bricked up at an early date. The lower flight of steps was against the SE wall and started from the NE jamb of the blocked doorway; the second, third and part of the fifth treads were left; the stairs, resting on solid packing, continued to a point 0.70 m. from the east corner of the room, where the packing (retained, necessarily, by a screen wall, as in
other cases) ended and in the east corner was a paved recess with a lavatory drain. The stairway, 0.70 m. wide, must have returned and run against the NE wall of the room, constructed in wood, and probably continued along the SW side to issue at a door above
that of the room opening on the court. The rest of the room was paved with brick. Had not the steps been preserved we should not, from the character of the room, have deduced their former existence; the evidence forthcoming in this case may explain the apparent absence of stairs in some other houses.:
|
1
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|
Room 8 was once paved (pavement left only in the east corner); by the door was a large brick-lined hinge-box, an unusual feature testifying to the importance of the room. Beneath the floor was a large tomb with a barrel vault built of bricks laid on edge.:
|
1
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|
Room 9, the guest-chamber, was of the usual long and narrow shape with an abnormally thick NE wall and very wide entrance-door; the floor was paved, the paving preserved only at the SE end. On the floor was found the remarkable dagger U.17385, pl. 98, v. p. 184.1 The walls, with six courses of burnt brick, were standing to a height of 3.10 m.:
|
1
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|
At the NW end a central door led into Room 10, a small lavatory with brick pavement and a drain in the middle.:
|
1
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Room 11 was paved with bricks 0.25 m. X 0.17 m., many missing; against the SE door-jamb was the brick hinge-socket for the door; in the south corner was the hinge-socket for the door to Room 12. At the NW end was the altar and in each of the north west corners was a decorated "table". The altar (PI. 43b and Fig. 36) was of burnt brick; it was 3.20 m. long, running right up into the north corner, and 1.00 m. wide; the front had been partly destroyed but at the back it stood to its full height of 0.32 m., and at the SW end rose by an extra course to 0.35 m.:
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Room 12 had a clay floor. In the SW wall was a doorway whose threshold, originally at the level of the chapel pavement, had been raised first by 0.55 m., then to 1.05 m., and finally the door had been walled up. At 2.00 m. below the wall foundations was a drain which had no connection with the house.:
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This was a small and poor house which had undergone a good many changes and was consequently rather a patchwork; it was built up against the chapel wall of No. 1 Old Street and against another older wall on the SW. The entrance on Niche Lane had an original threshold consistent with the existing street level and that of the pavements of the rooms and a later threshold raised 0.60 m. higher; the floors corresponding to this had disappeared.:
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It led straight into the courtyard (Room 1) which was once paved. The SE wall of this was late, abutting on a reveal in the NE wall (which was for the most part destroyed); it had nine courses of burnt brick. The SW wall had a door at its west end which had been walled up and a new door to Room 2 had been cut through it and furnished with a burnt-brick threshold.:
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Room 2 was brick-paved and had a central drain; it was presumably a lavatory. Its SW wall, which was old, had been partly razed and rebuilt with bricks laid along the top of the old work but with a very poor alignment so that the wall face came out in an irregular curve to make the south jamb of the door to Room 3.:
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Room 3 was brick-paved. In the SE wall there were two doors of which the northern was walled up (or a very high threshold added?) at a late period; the south door had a south jamb of mud brick only built against the junction of the old SW wall, which came to an end half-way through the door passage, and a new rough wall of mud brick which abutted on it and was carried on to make the SW wall of Room 4. In the NW wall there seems to have been a door opening on Old Street which was afterwards blocked and a mud-brick wall built in front of it; but the state of the wall was so ruinous that no certain conclusions can be derived from it, and it is possible that there was a shop (?) window with a mud-brick counter inside it.:
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Room 4 was brick-paved. Let into the pavement was a bitumen-lined clay bowl, diam. 0.80 m., perhaps intrusive.:
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This was the only example found on the site of a typical domestic chapel not directly connected with any one house. The original door was at the NE end, looking up part of Niche Lane, but this was subsequently walled up; a second (late) door had been cut in the SE wall near the south corner, and this opened into a small lobby which was shared between Nos. 4 and 9 Niche Lane; it is quite likely that the chapel, in spite of its unusual position, belonged to the former of these two houses which was a fairly large and good house but had no properly authenticated chapel of its own.:
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The old NE door led into a small antechamber (2), originally paved, beneath whose floor was a larnax burial, LG/47. The walls were all of the same date and type, with fifteen courses of burnt brick and above that mud brick of very poor quality, full of dirt and potsherds. The threshold lay flush with the eighth course of burnt brick, implying a certain rise in the ground level. Later the ground rose more and a new burnt-brick NW jamb was built for the front door, not quite on the lines of the old, while the mud brickwork of the upper part of the wall continued to serve as the SE jamb, and the floor and threshold were raised by 0.50 m.; Later there was another rise of about 0.30 m., and later again the door was definitely blocked up as we found it.:
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Room 1, the chapel proper, was paved with burnt bricks 0.26 m. X 0.17 m. At the SW end was a raised dais 1.50 m. X 1.10 m. (surviving; it probably originally extended right across the room) on which were the remains of an altar faced with burnt brick and packed with earth. In the west corner was a "table" of burnt brick plastered with mud, 0.50 m. sq. X 1.20 m. high, decorated on the exposed side with panels and on the front with a rope pattern (Fig. 40D), standing on a base 0.50 m. high set on the dais pavement. Most of the SW wall, together with the altar, had been destroyed; the SE wall had been thrust inwards and much of it had fallen in a solid mass into the chapel. The unevenness of the pavement pointed to the existence of a tomb below it, but the excavation was not carried below floor level.:
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The building had been so confused by constant alterations and by repeated burials beneath its floors that little meaning could be got from it. It was at one time two separate buildings which had been combined by the opening of a door from Room 1 to Room 2; at one time also it had communication with No. 5, but the door in its south-west wall has been blocked.:
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Room 1 itself was at one time divided by a cross-wall into two compartments. The floor of Room 1 was paved, but most of the pavement had been destroyed by the digging for the vaulted tomb below.:
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Room 4 had once had a doorway opening on Niche Lane, but this had been blocked up first by a block in the doorway and afterwards by a wall built against the face of the old, in which also there was a blocked door.:
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Shown on Map, connected to room 3.:
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The original entrance was direct from the end of Niche Lane into the central court, but after the house had been occupied for some time (as is shown by the floor levels) a doorway was put across the lane itself. Later, the threshold of this was raised 0.25 m. and a new jamb was built against the SW end of the wall of the chapel (No. 2), its foundations 1.20 m. above those of the wall, and in this way a small lobby was made on to which opened the doors of No. 2, No. 4 and No. 9.:
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Room 1, was unpaved-at least there was no pavement
left - and had been re-floored at least once, as all the thresholds had been raised by three or four courses of burnt brick above the existing floor level. The NE wall had only two courses of burnt brick, lying below floor level, which is evidence that the existing floor was not the earliest; the other walls had nine or ten courses of burnt brick above the floor, with mud brick above. That the house in its present form was late is further shown by the fact that its floor was 1.35 m. higher than that of the chapel (No. 2), and the burnt brickwork of its NE wall which showed above the floor of the neighbouring Room 12 of the Boundary Street house was here 0.60 m. below the floor level. A straight joint in the middle of the SW wall implied a change of plan at some time, and in the NE wall an old doorway had been walled up apparently when the house was first built. Against the SE wall was an oblong brick enclosure or base partly blocking the door to Room 8.:
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Room 2 had remains of a brick pavement. The old NE wall had no burnt brick showing, the others ten courses; there were straight joints in the west and north corners.:
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Room 3 was the kitchen. The floor was of clay and broken bricks; in the north corner was a raised brick base at least seven courses high with a ledge running along its front; this must have been the cooking-range: close to it, near the NW wall, was an oval enclosure of bricks set on end with their tops just above floor level making an open fire-place which was found filled with wood ash: by this again was a drain made of pots set one above another with their bottoms knocked out. In the south corner the floor was thick with ashes and here and on the SE wall near the door the bricks were liberally blackened with soot. At 0.28 m. below the mixed floor were remains of an earlier pavement of burnt bricks, and the cooking-range went down to this.:
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Room 4, mud-floored, with walls showing nine courses of burnt bricks, was merely a passage leading to Room 5;:
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Room 5; this had an earth floor; in the south corner there was a line of bricks set on edge enclosing an area 1.00 m. X 0.55 m. X 0.25 m. high if, as was likely, it had been filled with a solid earth packing. At a late period, when the floor had risen 0.40 m. above the present level, a narrow door was cut through the SE wall into Room 4 of the next house, but this was no part of the original scheme.:
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Room 6 presented no features of
interest.:
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Room 7 had remains of brick paving; in it was found a group of three pot burials of infants, one being LG/52. The door from Room 8 was cut, not original; the SW wall was not bonded at either end.:
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Room 8, out of which opened Rooms 7 and 9, had no remains of pavement; immediately below the floor level was a large corbel-vaulted brick tomb. The NE wall was not bonded into the NW, nor the SW into the SE wall, but judging from the depth of their foundations both belonged to the main period of the building.:
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Room 9 had no floor left; its walls were a patchwork, the SE wall consisting of two sections belonging to two different houses, not strictly aligned and of different dates, the NE section having its foundations 0.60 m. higher than the SW section. The SE door-jamb was an addition; the NE wall was a mixture of burnt brick at its north end and mud brick at its south end and the NW wall, most of which had been cut away, merely abutted on this, apparently on the blocking of an earlier doorway; of the SW wall nearly all the face had been destroyed.:
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There was here no proper house-plan, nor was it possible to assign any particular character to the building, which consisted only of two large and probably unroofed courtyards and a chapel.:
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Room 1. There was originally no door; then one was cut through the burnt bricks, and later again it was rebuilt with mud-brick jambs; its threshold was raised above the floor, which was brick-paved; the front (NW)wall was not bonded in to its continuation (the front wall of No. 3) but abutted on the corner of that building; the NE wall had at one time been razed and then rebuilt on the old foundations, and at a late period a door was cut through it to No. 3 to correspond with a higher floor level than that found by us. :
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In the east corner a door led to Room 2, a large paved court against the SE wall of which was a rough rectangular fire-place made with an edging of bricks set on end; there had once been a door in the SW wall which was blocked by the south jamb of the existing SE door but the wall in which that door occurred was quite early in the history of the building although not bonded into the NE wall (the outer wall of the chapel of No. 1 Old Street). At a much later period the court was divided by an L-shaped mud-brick wall whose foundations were 0.5 m. above the pavement.:
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Room 3 was a chapel. The floor was roughly paved with mixed bricks; the walls were all of different dates - or different characters, not bonded at any of the corners, the NE wall having twenty four courses of burnt bricks and standing with its mud brickwork 2.90 m. high, the NW wall eight to eleven courses, the SW wall twenty-six courses (altogether 3.25 m. high) and the SE wall eight courses; there were no signs of roofing. At the NE end there were remains of an altar against the wall and in the north corner an exceptionally well preserved "table" standing on a splayed base, 0.62 m. X 0.56 m. X 1.40 m. high; the mud plaster was modeled to a paneled design, its upper planes painted red, its lower planes white; under the coping were dentils, much destroyed, but apparently in three rows (Fig. 40F; and P1. 45a).:
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This was a small one-roomed shop (?) facing on the lane. Half of the front wall was an addition and the two side walls, NE and SW, merely abutted on the old wall of No. 5 Straight Street; each of them had at one time had a doorway communicating with the neighbouring buildings, Nos. 5 and 9, but both had been walled up. It presented no features of interest.:
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No. 9 (given a street number in virtue of its having had a separate door to the lane) appears to have been a one-room arrangement which can scarcely have been other than a porter's lodge (cf. No. 9 Church Lane). It had a paved floor lying relatively high with a drain in the middle of its SW end; there was once a door in its NE wall but this had been walled up; the SE wall was almost completely ruined and it is just possible that there really was a door in it, but there was no sign of anything of the sort remaining. A lodge allowing of the supervision both of the house proper and of the isolated chapel is a not improbable feature. At a late period the door in the NW wall was blocked, and at that time there must have been access to one or other of the neighbouring rooms, 8 or 9 of No. 4.
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In the form in which it survived the house was relatively late; its floor level was 0.60 m. higher than that of its neighbour, No. 3 Straight Street, part of its premises had been alienated and transferred to No. 7 Church Lane and there was a certain amount of patchwork in its walls; but the wall foundations in some cases went down deep and the modifications it had undergone pointed to a long existence. The burnt bricks used in its construction measured 0.25 m. X 0.17 m. X 0.08 m. A long and narrow private passage from Old Street led to the entrance-lobby.:
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A long and narrow private passage from Old Street led to the entrance-lobby (1) which was separated from the passage by a flimsy partition one brick thick (late) and was brick-paved with a drain in its floor at the east end.:
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From this a door led to Room 2, the central court, also paved and with a drain in the middle (the paving-bricks 0.30 m. sq.); in the walls nine courses of burnt bricks showed above pavement level; against the NE wall was a brick box (?) 0.60 m. high which was probably solid with an earth packing. The rooms on the SE side of the court had been made over to No. 7 Church Lane and their doors were blocked with burnt and mud brick to match the wall.:
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Room 3 showed that originally the house extended as far east as the boundary wall of No. 5 Church Lane. This long narrow room was paved (pavement preserved at the SE end) and had a door in its NE wall which was naturally blocked up when the room into which it led became part of the neighbouring house. In its SW wall was another door leading into the chapel of No. 3 Straight Street; it was not original but had been made by cutting away the SE section of the wall when the NW section, originally of mud brick, was rebuilt in burnt brick; at that time there were steps in the doorway from the level of the high pavement of the Old Street house to that of its neighbour, but when the floor of the chapel was raised a new threshold was put in obliterating the steps. The NW end of the room had contained the stairs, which started against the NW jamb of the courtyard door and ran over Room 4; the section of the SW wall of the court containing the staircase was a clumsy piece of reconstruction belonging only to the present phase of the house but built over the remains of an earlier wall in the same position.:
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Room 4 was a lavatory, the pavement gone but the drain preserved at the NW end; a thin screen wall divided it from Room 5, and the curve of the main wall against which the screen abutted points to reconstruction. Under the pavement was the larnax burial LG/57.:
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Room 5 was paved with bricks 0.25 m. X 0.17 m.; the walls showed twelve courses of burnt bricks. At the SW end was a low altar and on it, in the west corner, the lower part of a "table" 0.45 m. high; in front of the "table" there was a gap in the pavement and in it an infant's burial in a bowl covered with a second bowl which was flush with the paving-bricks and seems therefore never to have been concealed. Below the pavement was a vaulted brick tomb.:
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A door in the NW wall led into Room 6; this was paved and beneath the pavement was a brick vaulted tomb (not excavated). At the SW end was a dais raised one course of bricks above the pavement level and on it, against the wall, was a brick altar 2.10 m. long and 0.35 m. high, set in front of a niche in the wall's face, and in the west corner the remains (0.35 m. high) of a brick "table". In the south corner of the room, by the side of the altar, there was an infant's burial in a "hutch" coffin (cf. PI. 97) the top of which was flush with the surface of the pavement and had never been concealed. The niche behind the altar was square and was 0.65 m. high, above which it narrowed down to a chimney.:
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Room 7, opening out of the courtyard, was unpaved and had in it a rough raised square of burnt brickwork which was probably the lower part of a cooking-range, this being the kitchen. A door in its SE side had been walled up when the SE wing of the house was sold; its NE jamb had been pulled down and in its place was built a rough wall occupying the old door passage and the solid block beyond it formed the jamb of the new door to No. 7 Church Lane. A door in the NE wall gave a kitchen-entrance to the unpaved court beyond and so by the private passage to Church Lane.:
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The entrance-lobby (Room 1) had all its walls contemporary except the NE wall, which was older; the NW wall had six courses of burnt brick with mud brick above and in the north corner as many as ten courses; between the north comer and the door to the court it had been partly destroyed and rebuilt with a mixture of burnt and mud bricks. It was bonded into the SW wall and that again into the SE wall. The floor was brick-paved (bricks 0.245 m. X 0.155 m. X 0.07 m.) and there were remains of a brick box against the SW wall; some bricks of the same dimensions occurred in the NW and SE walls but most were of the size 0.26 m. X 0.165 m. X 0.07 m., the two being evidently in use at the same time.:
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Room 1 had the same rough pavement, the step down from the threshold to Straight Street being 0.70 m. and the door seemed to have been blocked at a late period with eight courses of burnt brick, but the condition of the wall was such that accurate deductions were impossible. A round rubbing-stone and some pebbles apparently belonged to the room, but there had been much disturbance, and in it and in Room 2 there were burials of late date in the rubbish above the pavements and the clay vessels which were found were certainly intrusive, all being well above the occupation-level. :
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In Room 2 there was a pavement of burnt bricks (0.235 m. X 0.155 m.) so roughly laid that it was probably a base for a clay floor - which was confirmed by the fact that a brick door-socket against the SW wall was above pavement level; the same repairs had taken place in Room 5, where the NE jamb of the door from the main court was an addition and did not go down quite to pavement level but was based on a fragment of a quern resting on the pavement. Clearly the three service chambers formed a unit which was, more or less distinct from the chapel proper. The repairs were visible in the NE wall also, for here the bricks in the lower courses measured 0.265 m. in length while above them the 0.235 m. brick was consistently employed. The door to Room 1 had been blocked, or its threshold raised, at a late period.:
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Room 2, the court, was remarkably undisturbed. Rubbish from the fallen walls and roof of the building covered the floor to a depth of up to 0.70 m.; above it lay alternate strata of wind-blown sand and water-laid mud, evidently the result of a period of desertion, which rose to a maximum height of 1.65 m. uniform and unbroken, and only then came the broken brick and mixed rubbish, pot-sherds etc. which constituted the ordinary debris spread over the whole quarter. Everything that had been in the building at the moment of its destruction had been preserved in situ. The NE wall stood from ten to seventeen courses high - where it was most ruined the water-laid strata ran over the top of it, showing that there was no rebuilding; the SW wall stood to seven courses, the NW also to seven; the floor was brick-paved, but in the west corner the pavement stopped short at 0.54 m. from the NW wall, and at 1.00 m. from the SW wall, and from the face of that wall three or four bricks projected by as much as 0.15 m., showing that there had been here some kind of pedestal whose front was presumably flush with that of the bases flanking the doorway, though the latter were not bonded into the wall, as whatever stood here in the corner must have been. In the NW wall were two doors, one leading to the passage, Room 5, the other, distinguished by reveals to its jambs, opening on the sanctuary. Against either jamb was a base or pedestal built of mud brick over burnt brick foundations, 0.54 m. sq. X 0.65 m. and 0.75 m. high respectively; in the top of the SW pedestal was a rectangular hollow 0.40 m. X 0.20 m. X 0.20 m. deep, lined with bitumen; the top of the other was flat. In front of the door stood a brick altar 0.75 m. X 0.50 m. X 0.75 m. high with traces of bitumen on its top. In the east corner there was a rectangle of burnt bricks about 1.00 m. X 1.10 m. raised 0.15 above the level of the pavement; if there had been mud brick above this it had disappeared, but that there had been such was not unlikely, and the top of the existing brickwork was rough and unlike a true surface. Against the NE wall, at 1.20 m. from the east corner of the court, there was a gap in the pavement 1.40 m. long and 0.65 m. wide; this may have been due simply to the disappearance of some of the paving-bricks, but was possibly the site of some construction in mud or mud brick, possibly a base.:
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Room 3 was brick-paved and on the same level as the court; its door had originally been wider but had been narrowed by the addition of a jamb against the SW wall and, apparently at the same time, an extra jamb had been built against the end of the NW wall reducing the entrance to less than 0.60 m.; in its present form it is a cupboard rather than a room. :
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Room 4, the sanctuary; the threshold was raised by a single course of bricks, the floor
was brick-paved; in the NW wall, facing the entrance, was a niche of which the lower part was filled by a base of mud brick, plastered with mud and whitewashed, on which stood a limestone statue of the goddess, U.16424, Pls. 52a and 56a. The statue had been broken in antiquity and roughly mended with bitumen and the feet were missing, so that the lower part of the figure was embedded in the mud base to keep it in position.
The sanctuary had been closed by a light door consisting of a plain wooden frame with panels of straight reed stems set vertically; it had of course decayed away completely, but the imprint of it left in the soil was astonishingly clear (PI. 51b). The hinge-pole, 0.095 m. diam., was against the inner corner of the NE jamb and rested on a hollowed brick; the flap of the door was 0.15 m. above pavement level, so as to clear the raised threshold; the width of the flap was 1.12 m., the bottom board of the frame was 0.22 m. wide, the sides of the frame apparently 0.04 m.; there were in the panel thirty three reed stems with an average diameter of 0.03 m. and the whole was preserved to a height of 1.05 m.:
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The house was much ruined; it had been destroyed by fire in antiquity, the north side of the site had been denuded by water action, part of it had been dug, probably by Arab seekers after treasure, and the holes made were filled with clean drift sand; most of the walls had been removed and could often be traced only by the edges of the pavements and it was only along the south side of the building that the brickwork stood to any height. In spite of this it was possible to recover nearly all the ground-plan. The house had been a large one; the party walls between its rooms had had three courses of brickwork but those facing on the courtyard (3) had had eleven or more, and the door-jambs as many as fourteen; the burnt bricks in the walls were of the typical Larsa type, light yellow in colour, often with a bright red face, 0.27-0.28 m. X 0.18 m. X 0.09 m, and in the pavements were bricks of three types, 0.30 m. sq., 0.25 m. sq. and 0.27-0.28 m. X 0.18 m. X 0.09 m. The outer NW corner was rounded (implying that a lane branched off from Church Lane at this point) and the SW corner had been cut off diagonally to make easier the turn of the street. Against the south side of the house, beyond Church Lane, there was what appeared to be an open yard.:
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The front door led into a paved entrance-lobby (Room 1) in the south side of which was a doorway to a passage which ran down the west and along part of the south side of the building (10 and 11); the door was masked by a screen of the thickness of a single mud brick; it is possible that there was a similar screen wall on the north making the beginning of a narrow passage along the north side of the building, but all traces of construction have perished.:
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Through Room 2 was the way to the central court (Room 3):
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the central court (Room 3) of which the brick
pavement remained but of the west wall only the north jamb of the door from Room 2 and of the north wall nothing, though the paving showed a doorway in its line. The NE corner was a hopeless ruin. :
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the narrow Room 4 to the south of it, and this should by all analogy be the lavatory, but there was no sign of pavement or of drain, all the south end of the room having been dug away deep below floor level.:
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On the east side a door with brick steps between its jambs led to Room 5 which was clearly the staircase; the stairs must have run over the narrow Room 4 to the south of it,:
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Room 6 was paved; much of its south wall was destroyed to floor level, but there was no reason to suspect a door here communicating with the "yard"; against the wall of the latter was a brick base or buttress, possibly all that remained of a support for a shed roof.:
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At the S end of the room a door led into a small lavatory (7) with brick pavement and central drain; the pavement round the drain opening had sunk and a patch of new brickwork had been laid over the old so that the intake was above floor level and could not serve to drain the floor as such.:
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Room 8, the guest-room, was brick-paved; its east wall was completely destroyed and only the raised threshold of the door proved its position. Just in front of the doorway there
was found part of a (burnt) plank 0.15 m. wide and about 0.04 m. thick to which were attached cross-planks at right angles with intervals between them of 0.30 m. width which were filled up with vertical bars of light wood (willow or osier?), 0.02 m. in diameter, set 0.01-0.02 m. apart; it was apparently a door of open lattice-work very much like that used in some modern Arab houses; cf. also that in the Hendur-sag chapel and in No. 1 Paternoster Row, Fig. 39 and P1. 51 b. :
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Behind the guest-room was the chapel (Room 9), brick-paved, having at its south end an altar and, in the SW corner, a "table" of burnt brick. One would have expected a door at the east end of the south wall to give access to the little Room 11 (cf. the arrangement in No. 1 Broad Street etc.) but there was no evidence of it, though on the other hand the south wall was so badly destroyed that the negative evidence was not final.:
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One would have expected a door at the east end of the south wall to give access to the little Room 11 (cf. the arrangement in No. 1 Broad Street etc.) but there was no evidence of it, though on the other hand the south wall was so badly destroyed that the negative evidence was not final.:
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The building had good outer walls of burnt brick throughout (so far as preserved) which abutted on the SW side of No. 5, which must have been standing earlier; since the Hendur-sag chapel similarly abutted on No. 3 the latter was in date of construction intermediate between its neighbours- though that need not imply any real lapse of time. The inside level was artificially raised to about the same height as that of No. 5, and, as there, the internal walls had solid foundations of mud brick above which was a "damp-course" of burnt bricks above which again the wall presumably went up in mud brick, but the mud brickwork and most of the burnt brick had vanished. In front of the entrance was a small lump of burnt brickwork projecting into Church Lane; it was shapeless, but was probably the remains of a flight of steps leading up to the front door. The jambs and the threshold of the front door had disappeared but the door's position was certain.:
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Room 1, with a clay floor (?, it was too ruined for a pavement to have survived if there was one), led through what was apparently a very small second lobby - but only the foundations of the NE wall remained and of NW wall and door there was no trace - into Room 2.:
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Room 2, the central court. This was paved with mixed bricks, 0.31-0.32 m. X 0.185 m., 0.27 m. X 0.18 m. and 0.25 m. X 0.17 m.; at the SE end the inner wall of Room 1 was prolonged to make a small compartment (Room 3) in the east corner,:
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at the SE end the inner wall of Room.
1 was prolonged to make a small compartment (Room 3) in the east corner, the NE jamb of its door being formed by a buttress of the old wall of No. 5 to which new brickwork had been added; the recess to the NW of it may have been used to receive the flap of the door when open.:
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In the NW wall a central door led to Room 4 -of which all the floor had perished together with practically all of the back wall, but its line, and the existence of a door in it, were given by the surviving jamb against the SW wall; behind it therefore was a separate room (5):
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Behind it therefore was a separate
room (5) which was paved and had a brick bench filling the whole of its NE end; on the pavement in front of this was a clay pot of Type IL.69a. The rubbish above the pavement was full of fragments of burnt palm-wood and other wood, probably from the roof.:
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The house was the oldest building in the block, but so badly ruined that many details of its ground-plan are doubtful. It seems to have been originally a rectangle, but two rooms in its north corner were at some time cut off and given over to No. 7, so that the existing plan is incomplete. The outer walls were of burnt brick (0.27 m. X 0.18 m. X 0.09 m.) with wide footings at their foundations, buried below floor level, giving a (standing) wall of twenty-three courses; the interior level was high and all internal walls had very solid foundations of mud brick on which the walls proper went up in burnt brick, but of the burnt brickwork very little survived anywhere and in many places it had disappeared altogether so that even the emplacements of the doors are conjectural. The front doorway faced up the turn of Church Lane; at a late period there was built in front of it a block of burnt-brick masonry which had no steps and left but little space between its corner and that of No. 2; it would seem therefore to have been no higher than the then level of the street and may have been the foundation of a porch outside the door.:
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Room 1 (originally paved) led by a door, of which the jamb against the NW wall was preserved, into Room 2.:
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Room 2, the central court; of this the pavement had gone and all the walls were destroyed below pavement level, but in the middle of it was a ring drain with its cover preserved (Fig. 21). Work carried down below floor level produced a few scraps of earlier walls which however gave no consistent plan and probably did not belong to this building at all.:
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Remains of a jamb in the east corner showed the position of the door of Room 3 which had a brick bench along its NW end and a fire-place in its east corner.:
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Next to this, opening on the court, was the staircase, of which only the solid filling from below the lower treads remained, and then ( Room 4) a very small lavatory below the stairs.:
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A very small lavatory below the stairs; the latter may have
continued above the long and narrow Room 5, but of this, as of the remaining rooms in the south corner, 6, 7, 11 and 12, only the foundations of the party walls were left and their intercommunications could not be traced.:
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A door in the NW side of the court, its exact position unknown, must have led into Room 8, which is presumably all that was left to the house by way of a guest-room after the adjoining area to the NW had been alienated.:
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An existing doorway in its back wall led through the little passage-room 9 to Room 10, the chapel.:
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Room 10, the chapel. This had been brick-paved all over, but of the pavement only a little was left at the SE end and along the walls; at the SE end was a dais raised one course of bricks above the general floor level, coming out 1.30 m. from the SE wall, and on this in the south corner was the burnt-brick foundation of the "table"; the altar had disappeared. Just in front of the edge of the higher pavement was an infant's burial in a bowl covered by another bowl; the top of the cover was flush with the strip of pavement left along the wall base so that the burial would seem to have been on the surface and not underground (though in such cases there is always the possibility that the burial belongs to a higher floor, of clay, of which no trace was detected by us). Under the main part of the floor was a very large brick tomb with arched entrance.:
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[Sir Leonard Woolley has left no description of this house. Ed.]
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The house, which was a small one, incorporated in itself rooms which originally belonged to other houses - No. 5 Church Lane and No. 1 Old Street, so that it was relatively late in date and in its construction very much of a patchwork. From Church Lane a private passage led to a rectangular unpaved courtyard, itself separated from the passage by a doorway with a jamb added to the face of the SW wall; from this a door in the SW wall led into Room 7 of No. 1 Old Street (q.v.) and in the SE wall was the front of No. 7 Church Lane; this latter had been largely destroyed by a late drain dug down into it, but its emplacement was still clear.:
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Room 1, an L-shaped lobby, was paved with brick and led directly into the central court (2).:
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The central court (2) which was also paved with bricks, 0.26 m. X 0.16 m., and had a drain in the middle; the surrounding walls had five courses of burnt brick above floor level with mud brick above giving a total height of c. 1.70m.; in the NE wall, by the door of Room 3, was a recess apparently intended to take the door-flap when open.:
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Room 3, brick-paved, had no features of interest other than a straight joint in the east wall at the SE corner.:
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Room 4 was equally without features. Facing this across the court was the staircase, not occupying the whole width of its doorway but built against the NE wall so as to leave a narrow passage beside it to what was perhaps a cupboard under the stairs; there were eight treads preserved, of brick on a solid filling (P1. 40b) and there must then have been a turn to the SW and again to the SE to come back over the courtyard door.:
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Room 5 was (like the staircase site) originally part of No. 1 Old Street and had in its NW wall a door communicating with the central court of that house; this had been later blocked with a wall of burnt brick below and mud brick above, built to match the old wall of the court. Part of the NE wall was also old, but onto the end of that had been built a new section which, after the jamb of the staircase door, changed its angle so as to conform with the lines of the new court; the SW wall was old. The room was brick-paved and had a drain in its floor at the NW end. Judging by its position, this was the guest-room, but it was unusual in having, at its SE end, a door leading to another fair-sized room.:
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Room 6 was part of No. 1 Old Street and had the blocked doorway in its NW wall, the new altar being against the blocking, for this was the chapel. The altar was 0.35 m. high and against it in the west corner was the "table" of burnt and mud brick still standing to 1.00 m.; on the other side was a smaller low brick base. The chapel was originally paved. The NE wall had been altered; the SE jamb of its doorway had been cut, not built, and at the NW end the old brickwork had been cut away 0.20 m. from the corner of the room and a new stretch of wall abutted on it. The SW wall (which had twenty-two courses of burnt brick) had a door which had been blocked up.:
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a door leading to another fair-sized room (7); this together with Room 8 was originally part of No. 5 Church Lane. Half of the NE wall was old and had been cut back so that the corner wall of the new court could be built against its end; the NW wall was also old, being the dividing wall between the two original houses; the SW wall was late and had two doors, one into Room 8, the other, which should lead to Room 8 of the neighbouring house, now blocked up. The room was paved and the pavement lay higher than that- of Room 5 so that there was a step at the threshold.:
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Room 8 had no features of interest.:
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The house lay at the far end of a long private passage which ran back from Church Lane between the "Ram Chapel" (No. 11 Church Lane) and a row of what were probably magazines belonging to the householder; that they were store-rooms seems to be shown by the fact that they required protection; at the entrance of the passage there was a little guard-chamber where a slave could sit and keep effectual watch on all comers. There were six store-rooms in all and they call for no description; to the first three (Nos. 2a, 3a, and 4a) which inter-communicated, no entrance could be found by us, the wall being in places completely ruined; No. 5a afforded access to Nos. 6a and 7a and was itself entered by a door prudently close to the front door of the house proper. The wall along Church Lane was somewhat pretentious, for twenty-five courses of burnt brick still survived; round the main court (Room 1) there were sixteen courses, but behind this the building utilised older walls of which the burnt-brick foundations were buried deep underground and only the mud brick showed above ground level. There were therefore two periods represented, of which the front of the house belonged to the later. It is peculiar that there were two front doors, one leading straight into the central court and one into the small passage-room (2) which is more like the normal lobby. At a later time, when the court level had risen by 0.60 m. or more, the door into it was walled up and only that into the passage used. It is further peculiar that access to the two rooms (3) and (4) was through the passage only and that they had no doors onto the central court - it is a most rare exception to the rule of the omen-texts.:
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Room 1, the court, was brick-paved (most of the pavement gone) and had a drain in the centre; the east wall was built up against the west wall of the "Ram Chapel" or rather, the "Ram Chapel" was built up against it, for a doorway in the court wall was blocked up at the house's expense and turned into a shallow recess, evidently at the time when the chapel was erected. In the south wall also a door had been blocked with a thin partition which left a recess on either side, probably intended to take the two doors, of the court and of Room 2, when these were opened.:
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Room 2 was brick-paved; the front door was unusually narrow and must have been an afterthought, and the room itself was no part of the original plan for whereas its north wall was new its south wall was part of the older building which had occupied the site, and all its burnt-brick foundations were buried below floor level. A second door in the north wall opened into the central court and one at the west end led through Room 3 to Room 4.:
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Room 3 was brick-paved; its west wall belonged to the old system, its east wall was late but below its burnt brickwork was mud brick of an older wall; beneath its pavement was a brick vaulted tomb (LG/59) with arched entrance which was older than the mud brick underlying the east wall (this ran over the top of it) and therefore much older than the existing house. The north wall was also late.:
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Room 4 presented no features of interest.:
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Room 5, off the NE corner of the court, was irregular in shape and a patchwork in construction; the straight section of its east wall was old (only mud brick showing), its west wall was late, with fourteen courses of burnt brick abutting on an older wall on the north.:
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Room 6 was originally paved; its north wall was destroyed to floor level and the position of the door in it was uncertain; in the NE corner was a pillar or base of burnt brick.:
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Room 7 had a clay floor, but 1.35 m. below this was a brick pavement enclosed by the same or similar walls; the east wall went down to this and had thirty courses of burnt brick, the other walls had only a few courses of burnt brick and above them the mud brick which rose to be incorporated in the walls of the existing house; in the early period the room was divided into two by a cross-wall (marked on the plan) which had no counterpart in the late period.:
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Another door in Room 6 probably led to Room 8, which was the chapel of the late house, but the destruction of the wall makes the position of the door conjectural, and possibly it should rather be placed between Rooms 8 and 7. Room 8 had been paved and at its south end were the remains of the altar and the base of the table', the latter in the SE angle; in front of the altar there lay on the floor clay pots of Types IL.55, 69a and 70.:
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Outside the front door was a flight of five brick steps continued into the angle made by the SE corner of No. 13 by a flat-topped block of burnt brickwork. The door-jambs had reveals. The small lobby (1) was brick-paved and led through a second door into the central
court (2).:
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The small lobby (1) was brick-paved and led through a second door into the central court (2).:
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The court (Room 2) was paved with bricks 0.30 m. sq.; its south wall had twelve courses of burnt brick with mud brick above, the north wall was destroyed to below floor level. At its west end were two sanctuaries each consisting of two small rooms, a fore-chamber and an inner shrine.:
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In front of the doorway of Room 3 was the altar of burnt brick, 0.65 m. high; the doorway itself had reveals; the pavement of the room was raised 0.20 m. above the level of the court (Room 2) and there was a second rise of 0.20 m. to the pavement of the inner sanctuary (4).:
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There was no niche or statue-base, but in Room 4 was found a steatite ram's
head U.16427, PI. 59 a, which was probably from a ceremonial staff; on the other hand, in the back wall of Room 4 at a point 0.65 m. from either corner the burnt bricks rose two courses higher than at the sides, and it is possible that originally there had been a central niche in the mud-brick wall, starting at 0.55 m. above floor level, which at a later date had been blocked with a filling of burnt bricks; but this could not be proved.:
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Part of the house had been cut away for the building of the "Ram Chapel"; the dividing wall between the buildings was of mud brick only but was bonded into the burnt brickwork; the facade of the Ram Chapel was shortened in order to retain the entrance-lobby of the house. The front wall had fourteen courses of burnt brick with mud brick above. The threshold had been raised several times, showing one opening at 0.45 m. above the existing pavement of the interior (0.80 m. above the footings of the wall) and another 0.60 m. higher still; the changes were in keeping with the character of the house, which had evidently been more than once remodelled.:
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Room 1, brick-paved, opened into the similarly paved central court (2):
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Room 4 was the kitchen and most of its floor-space was taken up by a rectangular block of burnt bricks which was the base of a cooking-range and close to this was a circular terracotta bread-oven; in the SE corner was a drain.:
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Room 6 was paved, its walls ruined to floor level. The original door had a jamb 0.20 m. deep on the south side; then the door was blocked up, its blocking making a new jamb, and the north section of the wall was cut back to make the opening more central. The north wall was late.:
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Room 9 was also paved and clearly had originally been part of Room 8, the guest-chamber of the house.:
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Room 10 had been the chapel, but was dismantled; most of the pavement had
been pulled up, though part of the raised dais was left at the north end, and the altar had served as the foundation of a new mud-brick wall which reinforced the old north wall; all the walls were of mud brick and were much destroyed, none of the true face remaining. Under the floor, belonging to the earlier phase of the house, was a larnax grave containing clay pots of Types IL.8b and 116.:
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The large area to the north numbered as Room 11 was certainly an open court or yard; it had been paved, and in the NW corner there was a block of burnt brickwork 0.85 m. high of which the use is unknown. The east wall dividing it from Room 5 was a late addition, not bonded at either end. On the west an opening, much wider than any normal door, gave access to Room 12. Originally there had been here a wall with nine courses of burnt brick below and mud brick above having a doorway in its centre; later all the wall south of the door was destroyed and the northern section lost some of its burnt brick; then the north section was repaired in mud brick and the south section rebuilt in mud brick over two courses of burnt brick; then the doorway was bricked up and either at that time or later the wall to the south of it was again razed to make the wide opening shown on the plan.:
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Room 12 was paved and had a drain at the north end; all the walls were of mud brick. In the west wall there were two doors to Room 13, but one had been blocked up.:
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Room 13 had at the north end a certain amount of pavement preserved, but this lay nearly 0.50 m. below that of Room 12, so may have belonged to an earlier phase of the building, though even so it was high enough to bury all the burnt-brick foundations of its walls, so that in relation to them it is late. Against the south wall, west of the door, there were remains of a raised brick base; by the corner of it, nearly in front of the door, there was buried for half its height under pavement level a round terracotta tub (ht. 0.50 m., diam. 0.58 m.) with horizontally ribbed sides coated inside and out with bitumen, obviously a water-basin. Sunk in the pavement was a clay pot containing tablets. :
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The east jamb of the doorway to Room 14 had been veneered with bricks set edgewise and secured by mud plaster; under its threshold was a child's grave containing clay vessels of Types IL.lOc and 48. Room 14 was paved and had a drain.:
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A lower threshold to the front door corresponds in level with the footing along the south and part of the west walls and was therefore original to the house in its present form; later it was raised by 0.75 m. The front wall of Room 1 was not bonded into the northern section of the street frontage but judging from the depth of its foundations was a fragment of an older building incorporated in the present structure.:
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Room 2, which in spite of its small size must have been the central court, was brick-paved and had a drain in the middle and doors in three of its walls; in it were found a stone quern and two clay pots, Types IL. 69a and 114.:
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Room 3, of irregular shape, had no features of interest other than a second door communicating with the entrance-lobby.:
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Room 4, with a brick pavement under which was the grave LG/70, was little more than a passage to Room 5, which opened on the court also; this was clearly the guest-chamber and Room 4 was perhaps a lavatory serving both it and the house in general.:
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Room 4, with a brick pavement under which was the grave LG/70, was little more than a passage to Room 5, which opened on the court also; this was clearly the guest-chamber and Room 4 was perhaps a lavatory serving both it and the house in general. On the floor of Room 5 were found two inscribed tablets.:
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The guest-room was L-shaped and the foot of the L (7) was a passage leading to Room 8;:
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Room 8; the dividing wall well illustrates the patchwork construction of the house, for it merely abutted on the north outer wall but had at its south end a right-angled return, and here no less than three walls abutted on it. At a relatively late period a door was opened in the east end of Room 8 giving directly on to Church Lane (hence on the plan the room is given the street-number 15A) which may have been a back entrance; but was perhaps used as a shop-front.:
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Behind the guest-chamber (5) lay the chapel (6); the wall dividing them had been so knocked about that its character was doubtful; there seems always to have been a door at its south end, for the south jamb was bonded into the south wall, but the main section of the wall had been destroyed and rebuilt and the pillar between the two doors was the latest part of all; but the existence of the second door is uncertain.The chapel (Room 6) was originally paved but most of its pavement had been pulled up; of the altar and "table" there was nothing left. Under the pavement at the south end was a large corbel-vaulted brick tomb LG/66; there was a second corbel-vaulted brick tomb at the north end which however lay so high that it must be assigned to a late phase in the history of the house when the floor had been raised (as is shown to have been the case by the threshold of the front door); below it was a larnax burial LG/67 which should belong to the early phase, while a larnax burial LG/69 underlying the foundations of the west wall must antedate the house in its present form; it contained the body of a child; traces of black hair remained on the forehead and with them fragments of a silver diadem:
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A door in the west wall led into Room 9; here there was a brick pillar-base in the SW corner and in the SE corner by the door was a clay pot of Type IL.51a. Under the floor of Room 9 were the burials LG/71 and 72.:
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The house occupied the corner site between Store Street and Broad Street and fronted on the latter, its main entrance giving on to the open space of Carfax. It had arrived at its present form as the result of a good deal of re-modelling, but in its original lay-out was of quite normal type except for the fact that, owing to considerations of space, there were no chambers on the north side of its courtyard. The house was well-built and it would seem that after its destruction fragments of its walls were still left standing above the debris and were incorporated in a later building, for remains of walls whose foundations were 1.40 m. above the floor ran parallel to the old walls and seemed to join up with their upper parts.:
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The front door, with a raised threshold, led into Room 1 which was brick-paved, the pavement being two steps below street level; a door on the left had led into Room 2, but was later blocked, a door facing the entrance led into Room 6.:
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Room 2, the courtyard, was brick-paved and had a central drain; in its north wall was a doorway to Broad Street having between its jambs four shallow steps leading down from street level; the doorway appeared to be original but the wall was too damaged for the point to be certain.:
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Room 5 was a lavatory with brick-paved floor and drain; the screen
separating it from the stair-chamber (the upper part of the flight had as usual run over the lavatory) was now broken down. A door from the court to the staircase had been walled up. Room 6, opening off the entrance-lobby (1) had a door to the central court which had been walled up and a second door in the same east wall giving on the staircase; the stairs did not start, as was usual, in the door entrance but further back, between the east jambs of two other doors which gave on the court and on the chapel respectively; the treads had gone and only part of the brick rubble filling on which they had rested remained. Since the space left for the stair-flight was reduced by the need to leave the side doors open, the threshold of the door from Room 6 was raised 0.10 m. and at the back of the entrance was a second step 0.25 m. high to the level of the paved floor at the stairs' foot; even so the gradient would have to be somewhat steep (the back of the filling stood to 1.75 m.) and there were probably steps in the thickness of the door above that between the lavatory and the court.:
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Room 6 was well preserved, with brick pavement and walls having sixteen or seventeen courses of burnt brick which, together with the mud brick above, gave a maximum height of 2.10 m. In the south wall was a door to Room 7 and against its west jamb was an impost of bricks set on end for the door hinge.:
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Room 7 had its pavement preserved in the NW corner only and the rest of what was really a passage rather than a room showed no sign of ever having been paved. In front of the west door-jamb was a double impost of bricks set on edge and let into the clay floor. In the west wall there was a straight joint close to the NW corner, and at the south end a doorway to the street had been walled up so as to leave a shallow recess. The south jamb of the blocked door was connected with and seems to have been built on the top of a buttress of an older wall which ran under the south wall of Rooms 7 and 9 and served as a footing for them; its face to the door opening was rough, the bricks cut back and only smoothed over with mud plaster; it looked as if the burnt brickwork of the original angle had been bonded in to a mud brick wall which had afterwards been replaced by the existing burnt-brick west wall of Room 7 when the door was made; the blocking of the door would mark a third stage in the occupation of the building. Finally the jamb had been truncated and stood 0.70 m. high, with a flat top, projecting from the corner of the passage and fulfilling no structural purpose; it is possible that it served as the support of a wooden shelf of which the other end rested on wooden uprights set in the brick imposts; the quantity of tablets found along the wall here would be consistent with the existence of such a shelf: tablets were found in a somewhat similar passage-room in No. 2 Church Lane, q.v.:
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Room 8, the chapel, (P1. 41b) was paved with mixed bricks, 0.31 m. sq., 0.31 m. X 0.15 m., 0.25 m. sq., 0.25 m. X 0.15 m., etc. The altar was at the west end and stood on a platform raised above the general level of the floor by a single course of bricks; it had four courses of burnt bricks with mud bricks above giving a total height of 0.45 m.; in the wall behind the altar was an incense-hearth 0.60 m. wide X 0.28 m. deep which at a height of 0.45 m. diminished in width to a chimney 0.20 m. across; in the SW corner were the remains of a decorated "table" of mud brick on burnt brick foundations; in the south wall above the dais was a recess 0.13 m. deep. Below the pavement was a large brick tomb LG/80, in the SE corner was an infant's burial in a hutch coffin (cf. PI. 96 a) set only just below pavement level, against the side of LG/80 was a larnax burial LG/79 and elsewhere under the floor were graves LG/76, 77, 78, 81. The east wall of the chapel (and of the house generally) is based on an older buttressed wall connected with that underlying the south side. All the internal walls are original to the house.:
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Room 9 was merely a continuation of the passage along the south side of the house; it had scanty remains of brick paving and below its floor, opposite the door to Room 8, was a child's grave. Here too, many tablets were found.:
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The house was built relatively late in the history of the quarter. Whereas the original floor of No. 1 Broad Street (The School House) next door was flush with the offset of its outer wall, the original threshold of No. 1 Store Street was fifteen courses of burnt brick (1.35 m.) above that offset and was raised first 0.30 m. and later 1.10 m., so that the street level rose nearly a metre and a half during the interval between the building of the School House and of this, and rose another metre during the lifetime of No. 1 Store Street. On the inside of the street wall there was an offset corresponding to the early threshold and in Room 8 there were remains of brick pavement at this level; in the same room, and in Room 1 and elsewhere, the existing pavement was 0.40 m. above the offset and so corresponded with the first raising of the front-door threshold. The internal walls had their foundations on the offset level, but some of them were re-built over older mud-brick walls following the same lines; the east (outer) wall had burnt brick foundations going down 0.80 m. lower and resting on mud brick and the west wall went down for 0.90 m. with mud brick below, while the street wall went down in burnt brick 1.20 m. below the door threshold. That the mud brick below the walls was not contemporary foundation is shown by the fact that its top was not flat and regular, but broken, so that the burnt brick above had had to be stepped down at intervals to secure a proper footing in the gaps. It follows therefore that the house as it has survived was a reconstruction of an older building of a more or less similar design, but that older building was of definitely earlier date than the quarter in general (i.e., of the Third Dynasty rather than of the Larsa period) and the lack of any front door in its wall on Store Street implies a different orientation if not an altered street line. It is only the surviving building with which we are concerned.
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Room 1; the entrance from the street was at a very late date blocked by a rough wall made with a mixture of burnt and mud bricks still standing 0.90 m. high; the original threshold was two courses high and the floor was brick-paved, - the pavement lying 1.45 m. higher than that of the adjoining passage in the School House but uniform with that of the other rooms in the building. The west wall had fourteen courses of burnt brick; the north wall had been breached and the south wall razed, so that the doorway to Room 5 was deduced from its west jamb alone.:
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The door in the east wall led to Room 2, a small lobby with a brick pavement; in its east wall there had been a door to Room 6, later walled
up - the blocking was broken away by a late intrusive grave.:
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From this room one passed into Room 3, the central courtyard. This was brick-paved and had a drain in the middle; owing to the house lying so high most of the walls had perished and there remained only the SW corner, a little of the north wall and half the east wall.:
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Of Room 4 very little remained, the south door-jamb and the brick paving at the eastern end, the rest being destroyed below floor level. In the NW angle of the courtyard there was left a doorjamb with the remains of steps starting on the line of the threshold; behind there was a wall built of a mixture of burnt and mud bricks with the east face quite rough - bricks projecting for half their width- showing that it was the retaining-wall for the solid filling which must have supported the lower treads of a staircase; the upper treads presumably were of wood and were carried over the little chamber (5) which lay behind this and was entered from Room 1.:
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Room 5 was brick-paved and had a drain under its floor near the east wall, which together with its position below the stairs identifies it as the lavatory.:
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Room 6 on the north of the central court had a brick pavement on which was a raised base against the north wall and a very small base in the SE corner; the pavement had been broken by a corbelled grave which lay against the south wall with its top just above the original threshold of a door in the west wall, leading to Room 2, which had been blocked up in the later phase in the history of the building when the floors were raised to correspond to the final raising of the threshold; it definitely proves the fact of a third phase.:
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At the north end of the room a door led into Room 7, a small lavatory with paved floor and a drain in it to the left of the doorway.:
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Room 8; the brick pavement remained in front of the entrances; the walls were much destroyed; the shape at the south end was curious, the wall being taken in a curve, obviously to allow for the big drain which occupied the adjoining room in No. 3; the curved wall was bonded into the straight so that the whole thing must have been original and No. 3 is shown as the older house to whose outlines the builder of No. 1 had to accommodate himself. Against the west wall, just north of the doorway, there was a brick tomb LG/83 which went down 0.45 m. below the pavement and rose at least five courses above it; it should therefore belong to the last phase of the building when the floors and the threshold of the front door were raised; in the grave and just above the skull was a collection of 16 inscribed tablets (U.17206).:
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At the south end of the east wall another door led into Room 9, the chapel; the walls were all ruined down below floor level and only against the west wall did a row of bricks survive to show that it had been paved. Beneath the pavement was the very large corbelled brick tomb LG/82; any features of interest that the chapel may have possessed had disappeared.
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This was a very small shop wedged in between the corner of No. 3 Paternoster Row (an older building) and No. 4 Store Street which, judging by the depth of its wall foundations, was more or less contemporary with but independent of No. 2. Of the front wall only four courses of burnt bricks remained except at a point 0.75 m. from the south corner, where there were six courses, but there was no mud brick to imply a door-blocking and the position of the door was not certain; it is quite possible that virtually the whole front of the shop was open to the street.:
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Room 1 had no paving or floor left and produced no objects.:
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Behind it lay the tiny Room 2 which had a paved floor and a central drain and was clearly a lavatory; its south wall was not bonded at either end.:
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The building was a peculiar one; its frontage consisted of two lengths of wall running at a slight angle to one another and independently built, but the two were apparently connected; the arrangement of the inner rooms was unusual and the character of the building was unlike that of any other excavated by us. The front door was in the northern section of the street wall; its north jamb had been ruined away but the south jamb was preserved and was comparatively pretentious in that it had on the outside a reveal rising from a corner block of three courses of brickwork (Fig. 38); the only parallel to this was the "Bazaar Chapel" in Paternoster Row. The floor of the house lay 0.50 m. below the level of that of No. 1, but even so it was high and implied a fairly late date for the building .:
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Room 1 was unusually large, brick-paved, and had in the SW corner by the door a few bricks laid one course high over the pavement which were presumably the base for something but may have risen considerably higher. The north wall had fifteen courses of burnt bricks above the pavement, the south wall eight only, and much of it was breached to floor level; the east wall was symmetrically divided by two doorways both of which had reveals and both led into the same room (2):
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Room 3 behind the supposed steps had a south wall of burnt brick (not more than two courses left) which was a continuation of the south wall of Room 2 but had its foundations at a level about 0.50 m. higher, resting on very solid walls of mud brick, and the same mud brick with burnt brick above continued along the east end of the room; the burnt brickwork was clearly that of the walls of the room proper whose floor was raised above that of Room 2 presumably to the level of the wall foundations; no trace of its pavement survived. In spite of the change of level the wall-construction seems to link up this room with Rooms 1 and 2, and to the east of it and to the south of Room 1 to 3 lay a number of other chambers of which the burnt brickwork had completely disappeared but there remained massive substructures in mud brick. It is not uncommon to find late walls based on mud brickwork that belong to older house-walls buried under accumulated rubbish, but such was not the case here. The mud-brick walls went down for at least 2.50 m. below what must have been the floor-level of the existing house No. 3. They were smoothly faced with mud plaster, and there were no communicating doors whatsoever; they were therefore not rooms. They were filled with light rubbish - chiefly ashes - quantities of burnt straw and, in some cases, carbonised grain and date-stones. The walls were thick, considerably thicker than the walls of burnt brick which, in the case of Room 3, were demonstrably built over them, so that along the base of each burnt-brick wall, on either side of it, there would have been a ledge quite sufficient to support the ends of floor-beams laid across these box-cellars; a trap-door in the floor would have given access to what were clearly underground store-chambers.:
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The small Room 4 was wholly taken up by a large drain which rose to the level of the room floor above; it was surrounded with earth packing;:
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In Room 9 there were found tablets of IIIrd Dynasty date,:
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The front wall and parts of each side wall were contemporary but the back of the building was a patchwork; the front wall was preserved to a maximum height of 2.00 m. The threshold was raised by two courses of brick to bring it to street level, but this gave a step down into the interior.:
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The front room (1) had an earth floor; in the south wall was a slight recess into which the door could fold back.:
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Room 2 was unpaved except for the NE corner where there was a patch of brick pavement surrounding the intake of a drain; against the north wall was a quantity of wood ash. The walls had five courses of burnt brick and on the north side there was on the top of this (0.75 m. above the floor) a later wall running along the earlier but at a slightly different angle and with a return, across the room which divided it into two; it belonged to a reconstruction of which no other evidence remained, and no sense could be made of it.:
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In the (older) west wall was a door to Room 3, which was clay floored and had below its floor the brick tomb LG/84, in front of which was the pot-burial LG/85; the north and south walls abutted on the back walls of Nos. 5 and 7 Paternoster Row; the south wall came up against the mud brickwork of No. 7 with its foundation-course 0.65 m. above the top of the burnt brickwork in that wall.:
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The building lay high, on the same level as the latest edition of No. 3; its foundation must have gone back to the middle of the Larsa period, but its floors had been raised until the threshold of the front door was flush with the top course of the standing wall. Only the two first rooms were preserved above floor level, but behind them there was a series of sunken chambers more than two metres deep, with heavy walls of mud brick covered with a thick mud plaster to which a certain amount of grain was adhering. There was evidence to show that the chambers had been roofed over with planking and that the burnt-brick walls of a superstructure had been carried along the top of the underground mud-brick walls. The chambers were in fact cellars or magazines, presumably for the storage of grain, which would have been reached by trap-doors in the floors of the ground-floor rooms. Nothing of the kind has been found elsewhere on the site.:
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The threshold was only just above street level and the existing floors of the interior corresponded with this, but that level was on a line with the top of the burnt brickwork in the walls and the opening of the front door went down for at least six courses below the present threshold, so that the surviving phase of the building was relatively late in its history.:
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Room 1 had a clay floor but against the SW wall near the west corner was a square of paving (bricks 0.34 m. sq.) and in front of it a hollow used as a hearth and found full of ashes. The NE wall was late and its foundations come only just below floor level; the SW wall was older.:
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Room 2 had a clay floor and opened into Room 3,:
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Room 3, a tiny earth-floored booth which may have had a wide window onto Store Street; in the front wall there were only three courses of burnt brick with no mud brick visible upon them, whereas the angle of No. 4 on which the wall abutted rose six courses higher and the SE angle of No. 6 with the south jamb of the front door also rose in burnt brick so that there is no reason why, if the front wall had ever been higher, it should have been ruined down to its present level; the existence of a window like that in No. 14 Paternoster Row cannot be proved but is probable.:
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The small back room of the shop, Room 4, presented no features of interest; it was clay floored.:
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Only part of the site was excavated. There was here a small building which had at one time been connected with No. 6 by a door in the SW wall of the latter, but this had been blocked up. The street door led into a little room separated by a screen wall from a compartment occupying the NE corner of the building; it looked as if the ground-plan would have been similar to that of No. 6 but the front of this compartment was not an open window but had a wall with nine courses of burnt brick standing above floor level.:
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The small triangular building stood at the junction of Paternoster Row and Store Street, facing on Carfax; it consisted only of an entrance court and a sanctuary; the name of the goddess to whom it was dedicated was given by an inscribed limestone mace-head (U.18837, P1. 58b) found just inside the door. The building had been twice rebuilt after its original foundation and had undergone minor alterations as well.
The original building had a rounded corner made with specially moulded bricks; on Paternoster Row there was an offset of 0.08 m., on Store Street the foundations and the face of the wall proper were flush; of it only three courses of burnt brick remained. On these, as a foundation, was built the second version of the chapel; on Paternoster Row it started flush with the old wall, but ran crooked and soon fell back from its line, on Store Street it had a set-back of 0.10 m. throughout its length. Its corner instead of being rounded was taken off by a hollow reveal. On Paternoster Row there was a doorway 0.90 m. wide at 3.25 m. from the comer with its threshold three courses above the offset of the old wall; on Store Street there was another at the same level also 0.90 m. wide at 3.80 m. from the corner. In its latest form the chapel was divided into three parts by a cross-wall running NW X SE which cut off the base of the triangle and by a wall at right angles to this which divided the base or SW end into two. The triangular entrance-court was paved with bricks 0.23 m. X 0.16 m.; in the apex to the NE of the door was a base of a pillar or altar consisting of three courses of burnt bricks.:
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[Sir Leonard Woolley has left no description of this building, which was numbered 'I' on the earlier plans, A.J. 11(1931 P. XLVII; Excavations at Ur, Fig. 12. It was at one time connected with No. 4 Straight Street (see p. 163 and n. 33). U.16817 was found in it. Ed.]:
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A house of irregular shape occupying the space between the two divergent street lines. The threshold of the entrance-door in Paternoster Row had been raised and now had three steps on the inside, giving a drop of 0.50 m. to the inner floor level.:
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Room 1, the lobby, had a paved floor and walls with seventeen courses of burnt brick and mud brick above giving a total height of 3.00 m. maximum; the wall, well plastered, had been much burnt; against it were fragments of palm logs and reed matting from the roof.:
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Room 2, the central court, had a paving of bricks 0.30 m. X 0.20 m., sloping to a drain in the middle; the walls, with seventeen courses of burnt brick stood up to 3.00 m. and had a plaster 0.04 m. thick with a very fine smooth surface but no trace of whitewash; the plaster was burnt to a deep red. In the south corner was a brick bench, earth-filled, 1.00 m. X 0.60 m. X 0.30 m. high, the brick edging raised slightly above the filling; against the SW wall was a curved bench 1.00 m. X 0.70 m. with brick face and earth filling and against the NW wall was a circular clay baking-oven. Below the floor was the grave LG/1.:
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Room 3, the lavatory, had a paved floor into which, in the north corner, were let two clay pots, diams. 0.50 m. and 0.40 m., both empty. On the floor lay a limestone impost 0.25 m. sq. X 0.15 m. high with a hole in its top 0.18 m. sq. X 0.09 m. deep. Above this ran the staircase, which was unusually well preserved (PI. 40a); from the courtyard five treads gave a rise of 1.40 m., then the stairs turned to the SW over the lavatory but did not occupy its full width, an interval between them and the courtyard wall being screened off; the new flight was built inside the stair-line on the top of the fifth tread and bricks moulded to a curve were set at its corner to make the turn easier.:
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Room 4 was of irregular shape owing to the angle of the chapel wall to the NE and the need to make the SE wall at right angles to Store Street. The floor was of clay; walls, with seventeen courses of burnt brick, stood up to 2.90 m.; against the NW wall was added a pier of burnt brick of which twenty-one courses remained; between it and the east corner was a raised edging of brick flush with the face of the pier.:
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Room 5 was triangular, intended to effect the transition between the lines of Paternoster Row and Store Street; it was brick-paved; the sharp corner at the south was partly masked by a cross-wall of burnt bricks, 0.75 m. high, whose flat top formed a shelf 0.65 m. wide. Part of the door from the court was preserved - i.e., its impression was preserved in the soil; it was of vertical planks with a plain cross-board below and a round hinge-post diam. 0.15 m.:
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The front door preserved its original threshold, only just above street level, and there
were no signs of its having ever been raised.:
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It led to Room 1, a small clay-floored lobby; the hinge-socket of brick was against the inner face of the left jamb; the walls showed eight courses of burnt brick giving, with the mud brick above, a maximum height of 2.50 m. There was a door in the SW wall (v. under No. 4 A) and another in the NW wall (later blocked by an intrusive corbel-vaulted tomb built right through it, the soffit of its roof 1.85 m. above the floor) led into Room 2.:
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Room 2, the central court, was brick-paved and had a
central drain; the walls showed seven courses of burnt brick with mud brick above, giving a height up to 2.50 m. There were seven doors opening on the court.:
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Room 3 was a lavatory with paved floor in which, close to the stair-blocking at the SE end, was a rectangular slit forming the intake of the drain. Its original threshold was raised 0.25 m. above the pavement, but at 1.25 m. above the pavement, resting on mixed rubbish, there was more burnt brickwork rising to 1.90 m. which might be a blocking of the door but might also be a threshold belonging to a much later phase in the history of the house. Above the lavatory ran the stairs. There were two steps in the wall thickness at the door, the lowest 0.30 m. high, then a corner landing and in the turn to the right one step of mud brick and three of burnt brick (the second fronted with bricks set on edge) giving a height of 1.20 m. above the pavement; there had been two more steps over the solid filling and thereafter the flight had been continued in wood. In the mud-brick wall facing the door, 0.90 m. above the landing, there was a niche 0.50 m. high X 0.50 m. wide X 0.25 m. deep; it might have been for a lamp. In this doorway also there was at 1.30 m. above the pavement more burnt brickwork (four courses) rising to 2.05 m. which seemed to be a late threshold and not a blocking of the door.:
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Room 4, a chapel, opened out from the NW side of the court, an unusual position; its somewhat irregular shape makes it likely that there had been alterations and that this was once two rooms now turned into one by the demolition of a wall continuing south-westwards, the back wall of Room 11. It was paved with bricks 0.27 m. sq., many of which had been pulled up; the walls, with seven courses of burnt brick, stood to 2.40 m. In the north corer was a brick base 0.40 m. high on which stood a "table" 0.55 m. sq. and 0.85 m. high; the front, which had suffered greatly, was decorated in relief with what seems to have been the normal panel design, but on the side was preserved a curious design recalling the "honey-comb" pendentives of Moslem art; (P1. 46a, and Fig. 40A). At the NW end of the room the paving was raised by one course to make a dais, and on this the altar should have stood, but there was no trace of it; possibly it had been of mud brick. In the NE wall was a door to Room 5; over the original threshold was mud brick to a height of 0.80 m. on which, on the side of Room 5, rested a single course of burnt brick; it was presumably therefore a raising of the threshold and not a blocking of the door.:
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Room 5. This was a chapel, and probably the original chapel of the house. It was paved with bricks 0.32 m. sq. and 0.26 m. X 0.17 m.; later on this pavement was covered by a clay floor 0.50-0.60 m. higher, and the two thresholds at the SE end were raised correspondingly. In connection with the later floor there were (1) against the SW wall a narrow trough or bench with burnt brick top and a raised edge of bricks set on end and (2) in the middle of the floor, almost between the two SE doors, a shallow rectangular box-like arrangement, of bricks set on edge with plain earth in the centre, measuring 1.05 m. X 0.55 m. The walls stood to a maximum height of 2.45 m., showing seven courses of burnt brick; in the NE wall, at 1.55 m. east of the doorway to Room 7, there was at 1.95 m. above the pavement a circular beam-hole running right through the mud brickwork of the wall; this was probably a rafter supporting the outer end of a pent-house roof which sheltered the NW end of the chapel. In the SW wall there had been a door to No. 1 Bazaar Alley which had been blocked by a thin screen with seven courses of burnt brick and mud brick above (matching the wall) so as to leave a shallow niche. At the NW end was a brick altar, the front of it plastered with bitumen, and in the wall behind it was an incense-hearth 0.26 m. deep which started on the level of the altar top, 0.45 m. above the pavement. Next to it in the west corner, on a brick base 0.80 m. sq., was a "table" 0.62 m. sq. X 1.05 m. high, of mud brick plastered with mud and decorated with a panel design (PI. 44); at each of the three corners of the base there was a raised lump of bitumen, carefully rounded and smoothed, through which had run a round wooden bar diam. 0.055 m. raised 0.03 m. above the bricks f the base; in the lump at the east corner there were two holes at right angles, in each of the others a single hole, so that there had been a free horizontal rod along the base of each of the exposed sides of the "table"; our Arab workmen at once suggested, on the analogy of the modern mosque, that this was the lower rod of a curtain, which would conceal the "table" and be drawn back when a service was being held (v. Fig. 40B and P1. 44b). By the altar was a broken ring-stand, Type IL. 137, ht. 0.15 m., rim diam. 0.16 m., of green clay, and a terracotta, U.16975, P1. 84, No. 178.:
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Room 6, behind the altar, was earth-floored; in the SE wall, 0.60 m. from the door and 1.80 m. above the floor was a beam-hole c. 0.09 m. in diameter; there was nothing corresponding to it in the opposite wall and it was perhaps merely a peg.:
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Room 7 had an earth floor and no features of interest lying at floor level, and therefore of at least secondary date, was a pot burial, bones only (no objects) in a bowl somewhat like Type IL. 32.:
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Room 8 was a lavatory with paved floor and a central drain; a brick in the west corner suggested a later raising of the floor by 0.65 m.:
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This opened out of Room 9, a passage-like room having doorways also to Room 10 and to the chapel (5); it was brick-paved. The NE wall of the house, against which the room lay, was not a party-wall but was backed on the outer wall of No. 4 Straight Street. The foundations of the latter were not so deeply laid as those of No. 4 Paternoster Row and here actually overlapped the projecting footings of its burnt brickwork; the Paternoster Row house must therefore have been the earlier of the two, but there were rights of ownership which prevented the builders of the Straight Street house from utilising the existing wall in their own construction.:
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Room 10, with an unusually wide doorway opening on the central court (2) was
evidently the guest-chamber; the threshold was raised 0.10 m., the floor was paved with bricks 0.28 m. sq. At a late period the outer (NE) wall seems to have been in danger of collapsing inwards and a new mud-brick reinforcement was added to its inner face, reducing the width of the room to that of a mere passage; the foundations of the new wall were 0.45 m. above pavement level and corresponded with a raising of the floor of the house by c. 1.05 m.:
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Room 11 had a (late) threshold raised 0.65 m. above the pavement; the floor had disappeared, but there was a drain in front of the door with its intake preserved at floor level. The walls stood to 3.00 m.; in the SE wall and about in its centre a niche 0.25 m. X 0.20 m. X 0.40 m. deep had been cut in the brickwork at 0.30 m. above the original floor. The walls were heavily blackened with soot. Probably this was the kitchen but the destruction of its floor had removed the fittings which constitute real evidence.:
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Room 12 had a brick pavement, most of which had vanished; in the north corner against the NW wall was a rectangle of mud bricks with two courses of burnt bricks above, 1.75 m. X 0.65 m. X 0.70 m. high, which looks like a bedstead or a bench; on the left of the door, against the jamb, was a brick hinge-socket which lay above the old pavement level but may correspond with a threshold raised 0.25 m. above that pavement; later thresholds came at 1.40 m. and 2.30 m. At one time a door was cut through the SE wall into Paternoster Row, but this was blocked up again soon after.:
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Considerable and frequent alterations, often of a shoddy sort, had done much to confuse the site of this house and of its neighbours, Nos. 8, 10 and 12;2 3 it was impossible always to be sure that remains were contemporary and a certain confusion of phases was difficult to avoid. No. 4 A was at an early period connected with No. 4, forming virtually an annexe to it, its entrance being through the lobby of No. 4, and also a communicating door in Room 2. Later both of these were walled up and there was a door opening directly on Paternoster Row. Later again this was walled up, largely with burnt brick, to the full height of the standing wall, and the door to the lobby of No. 4 seems to have been re-opened. Judging by the depth of foundations, the oldest parts of No. 4 A were older than anything in No. 4; its central period was about contemporary with the first occupation of No. 4 and there were later phases also.:
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Room 1 had an earth floor covered with ashes 0.60 m. above which was a brick pavement. The north corner of the room was destroyed by an intrusive drain.:
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Room 2 had also an earth floor with a brick pavement 0.60 m. higher up. Against the SW wall (in the late period) there was a circular brick oven diam. 1.20 m. In the NE wall was the blocked door to No. 4. In the NW wall were two doors, one at the west end, of which the west jamb was of burnt brick and dated to the time of the high pavement and the north jamb went deeper and should be earlier, and of which a threshold rather below the late pavement had been raised by 0.50 m. to serve a higher pavement which had disappeared: this door had been finally blocked up. Of the north door the north jamb, of burnt brick, was rebuilt in the time of the brick pavement and the other was of mud brick and perhaps contemporary, and here too were two thresholds 0.50 m. apart.:
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Room 3 was unpaved; in the NW wall, which was early, was a door blocked in all later periods; the SW wall, of mud brick, was early but was breached at its south end and roughly patched with burnt brick; the SE wall belonged to the middle period only.:
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Room 4 was enclosed by old walls; it was very long, narrow and irregular and may well have been subdivided, but the cross-walls had gone. It was brick-paved in the middle period, and circ. 1.00 m. below the remains of the pavement were signs of an earth floor of the first period. In the north corner was an oven of bricks and clay built round an ordinary bee-hive-shaped bread-oven, diam. 0.60 m. (Fig. 41 and P1. 49c), and further along the NW wall were remains of a second similar oven. In the NW wall were two doors of the first period, both walled up. The SE wall was peculiar because on the burnt brick foundations there were eight courses of mud bricks normally laid, then a course of bricks set vertically on edge, one of flat bricks, one of bricks on edge and again four courses laid flat; all seemed to belong to the first period and illustrate a method of wall-construction to which in this period we have no parallel elsewhere.:
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A small building, long and narrow, which was probably a shop rather than a private house, though it was more elaborate than most of the shops. It was of relatively late date, for the threshold was only 0.15 m. above street level.:
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Room 1, a small square room which may well have been a booth. The front wall of the building had only eleven courses of burnt brick, again evidence of late construction, the back wall twenty-one, the NE wall seventeen and the SW wall only three or four. The front room was unpaved. In the doorway to Room 2 and blocking half the passage there was against the SW wall a shallow rectangular trough, 1.00 m. X 0.65 m., lined with burnt bricks set on edge; the door had opened inwards, for its hinge-box was against the inner side of the SW jamb.:
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Room 2 was unpaved; the SE wall had seven courses of burnt brick with mud brick above giving a total height of 2.15 m.; in the NW wall, close to the north corner, there was a recess in the burnt brickwork 0.30 m. X 0.28 m. X 0.37 m. deep, 0.95 m. above floor level; in the NE wall there was a second recess at 0.90 m. above the floor, 0.70 m. wide and at least 0.80 m. high, but the top had disappeared and the recess was filled with bricks slipped down from the wall-face above. In the east corner, partly blocking the doorway to Room 3, there was a shallow rectangular depression or trough 0.80 m. X 0.40 m. lined with bricks set on edge.:
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Room 3 was floored with clay, the walls well mud-plastered. In the south corner was a pillar of mud brick 0.48 m. sq. standing 1.45 m. high; against the middle of the SW wall there were three courses of brick, each of two bricks' length, resting on packed rubbish 0.60-0.80 m. above floor level and clearly belonging to a later phase when the floor had been raised.:
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Room 4 had a clay floor and presented no features of interest.:
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The building closely resembled No. 5 and was probably also a shop; it was divided by cross-walls into three instead of into four rooms. The original threshold was only just above street level; the front wall which was independent of No. 5 but continued as far as the door of No. 9 to the SW had thirteen courses of burnt brick with mud brick above; after the street level had risen considerably the wall was rebuilt and at 2.00 m. above the (old) street three new courses of burnt brick foundation were laid on the top of the old mud brickwork and the wall was carried up in mud brick. The party wall between Nos. 7 and 9 was of mud brick only and did not bond into but abutted on the front wall.:
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Room 1 had a clay floor; the mud-brick SE wall was rebuilt in the reconstruction period and the jamb of the door to Room 2 was also rebuilt with nine courses of burnt brick and mud brick above independently of the wall.:
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The two numbers have been given to what was certainly a single building for the reason that there appear to have been two openings on the street; but it is probable that while one of them was a door the other was really a wide window such as we have in No. 14 Paternoster Row; a close parallel to the front part of the building is given by No. 6 Store Street, q. v.:
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The small front room of No. 8 could not be excavated owing to the threatened collapse of the whole of the SE wall, which stood over 2.50 m. high and was leaning over into the room. The front room of No. 10 was brick-paved and had a central drain; there was no trace of any later and higher floor but in the doorway on the street there was a blocking of burnt brickwork 1.00 m. high; this might of course have been a raised threshold, but might even more probably have been the sill of a shop window. Both the rooms had doors at the back leading into Room 2.:
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Room 2, which had an earth floor and was enclosed by walls all of the first constructional period which continued in use throughout. In the SE wall the old doorway had been blocked with a mixture of burnt and mud brick; the door in the NW wall had been blocked more carefully with burnt brick below to match the wall; this was already done in the first period.:
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Room 3 was a chapel. Against the NE wall was an altar, of which only a few bricks were left, and in front of it a large clay pot was sunk in the earth floor. Behind the altar in the wall face was an incense-hearth 0.60 m. high and then narrowed down to a chimney 0.20 m. wide which ran up to the top of the burnt brick in the wall (a total of 1.55 m.) and then ended abruptly, the mud brick, which was certainly contemporary with the burnt brickwork, being carried flush across its line, the incense-hearth not going up to the roof. In the north corner by the altar was a burnt brick base 0.60 m. sq. and five courses high on which stood a "table" of nine courses of burnt brick (0.75 m.) lacking its top and all its mud-plaster decoration. Below the floor there were two larnax graves, one empty, one containing clay vessels of Types IL. O1c, 69a, 93b.:
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Another shop. The floor level was virtually at the level of the existing street. Of the front
wall the part NE of the entrance belonged to the front wall of No. 7, the SW jamb had
twenty-four courses of burnt brick as against thirteen, and was a patchwork.:
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Room 1 had a slightly raised threshold; its floor was of clay; against the NE jamb of the front door was the door-socket; the front wall and the SW wall were bonded; the SE wall is of mud brick only.:
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Room 2 had a clay floor; in the north corner two large blocks of stone seemed to enclose a fire-place - there were smoke-stains and soot on the wall above. In the SW wall a break in the bond near the south corner seemed to show a wall end, but the mud brickwork above was carried on unbroken; possibly this is evidence of reconstruction. The SE wall was of mud brick only.:
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Room 3 had a clay floor and presented no features of
interest.:
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Room 4 had a clay floor; in its SE wall at 0.70 m. above the floor was a niche in the mud brickwork 0.60 m. wide and 0.08 m. deep; in a later phase a new niche was made at 1.40 m. above the floor, 0.15 m. deep and of unknown depth. In the back (SE) wall was a blocked-up doorway:
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This was by far the largest house found on the site and part of it at least would seem to have been three storeys high; it was further peculiar in having three separate entrances from Paternoster Row and a fourth at the back from what seems to have been a blind alley. It was not all of one date, as regards its foundation, and it included a virtually independent house of small size (Rooms 16-19) which had once had its own door opening on the street, but as found by us it was undoubtedly a single unit. Owing to its size and complication we gave it the name "The Khan", being unprepared to find a private house with nineteen or more ground-floor rooms; but it must be admitted that the presence at the back of the building of a large domestic chapel with many burials is against such an identification and this may have been merely the home of a wealthier citizen than the others living in the quarter and may be not less typical of its class than are the more modest houses of theirs. The three front doors would appear to have served respectvely the guest, the family and the servants and tradesmen.:
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Room 4 was in the form of a truncated triangle so as to allow of a rectangular lay-out of the interior rooms and was brick-paved; there was possibly a rise of floor level to correspond to the first raising of the threshold, but if so the new floor was only of clay over the old brick pavement; with the making of the higher threshold the floor did not rise but was approached by steps leading down. The walls had five courses of burnt brick with mud brick above standing to a total height of 3.05 m.; there was no sign of the roof.:
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Room 2, (PI. 38 b) opening out of 4, was the central court. It had a brick pavement sloping to a central drain; at a later stage this would seem to have been covered with a clay floor, for towards the north corner, in front of the door of Room 4 and also in line with the NW jamb of the door to Room 10, there were lines of burnt bricks set on edge (PI. 37 a) which merely rested on the pavement and could not have kept their position unless they had been embedded in such a floor. In the east corner, by the door to Room 9, and also against the wall by the SW jamb of that door there were compartments made of single bricks which probably belonged to the assumed clay floor and were perhaps imposts for the frame of the door, or they may have been supports for pots, as was the brickwork in the north corner.:
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Room 3 (PI. 34a) had a pavement flush with that of the court off which it opened. It had a door to the street the threshold of which had been raised (twice) to 1.30 m. above floor level and had six steps leading down to it. The walls had five courses of burnt brick with mud brick above rising to 2.90 m. covered with a thick mud plaster; in the plaster of the SE wall, facing the street door, was the imprint of two poles or round-edged planks set together :gable-fashion, the apex 0.90 m. and the ends 0.55 m. above the pavement; it looks like a kennel roof. Near the south comer was a doorway with a low threshold leading to Room 6.:
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Room 6; the low threshold had at a later date been raised by 0.55 m., or possibly blocked up altogether, but no trace of mud brickwork could be found on the burnt brick; there were four other doors, all with low thresholds two of which led to room 5, but of these one had been blocked with a thin screen wall making it into a niche 0.25 m. deep. The floor was of beaten clay; the walls all had five courses of burnt brick and with the mud brick above stood to a maximum of 3.05 m.:
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Room 5 had a clay floor; it may have been a shed for animals, for
it could have had no light except indirectly through the doorways from Room 6.:
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Room 7 was of a definitely domestic character. It had a clay floor; against the SE wall, near the east corner, were the remains of a brick fireplace, with quantities of ashes, and a pot, diam. 0.30 m., buried with its rim flush with the floor; near the NE wall there was sunk in the floor a large jar of Type IL.57b, rim diam. 0.30 m., and in the east corner (P1. 35 b) lay a big (broken) basin of rough clay, Type IL.31, diam. 0.90 m., ht. 0.70 m. roughly decorated with bitumen paint, PI. 103. Close to the door from Room 6 was an inverted clay bowl which may however have been of later date; in the middle of the room there was a bowl, diam. 0.65 m., sunk in the floor and next to it were the remains of another large ribbed bowl like that by the doorway, and nearer to the east corner, only half sunk in the floor, was a jar of plain drab clay, Type IL.49, ht. 0.48 m.:
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Room 8 was only partly excavated and its limits were not found; opposite its door lay part of another "compartment vessel" with two or more compartments (P1. 97 c). There can be little doubt but that Room 7 was a store-room or pantry and Room 8 the kitchen - no other room was equipped for that purpose.
The north jamb of the door of Room 8 was formed by a rounded buttress (P1. 35 b) of mud brick over burnt brick foundations which projected into Room 7 and ended in line with the NW jamb of the door from that room to the central court; against it, to the NE, there was a doorway which had been filled up with mud brick and above the filling, at 2.30 m. above floor level, came a mass of burnt brick apparently corbelled out over the room and occupying the door which from this point upwards was open; the brick mass was really the top of the flight of stairs surviving in the wall's thickness.:
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Room 9, opening out of the central court, had a clay floor; its walls were standing to a maximum height of 2.60 m.; in the SE wall there were two doors leading to rooms 11 and 12 respectively; it presented no features of interest.:
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Room 10, the guest-chamber (P1. 38 a), was of the usual long and narrow shape; it had a raised threshold 0.25 m. high and a brick pavement (much of which had been destroyed), and from the door there ran along the SW wall a brick bench 0.20 m. high and 0.40 m. wide which broke away after 3.20 m. The walls were very thick, with five courses of burnt brick above floor level and mud brick above giving a maximum height of 3.20 m.; against the NE wall were plentiful remains of reeds and matting from the roof.:
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The NW door led into Room 1, a very small triangular room with entrance from the street; it was brick-paved and the street threshold had been twice raised, and now had four steps on the inside; the door to Room 10 had a low threshold.:
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Room 11; another door from Room 14 led into a large long and narrow chamber which was a chapel. The threshold had been raised at a late period by new brickwork 0.40 m. high; the whole floor had been paved, but much of the pavement was destroyed; under it, in the middle of the room, was a large brick burial-vault with arched doorway (LG/4) and all round by the walls were pot-burials and larnax graves (LG/3, 5-12); at the NE end of the room very little of the pavement remained and a stratum of ashes lying on earth flush with the better-preserved paving at the SW end may mean that here the bricks had not been replaced after the later interments. At 2.4 0 m. from the SW wall a line of bricks laid above the pavement seems to mark the line of a "chancel screen"; in the centre of the space behind it a mass of burnt brick with a mud-brick centre which was apparently the ruins of an altar 2.00 m. long X 1.50 m. wide which, contrary to the general rule, was detached from the back wall (from which it was separated by a strip of paving 1.15 m. wide) and lined up with the screen of the "chancel". In the south corner was another rectangle of burnt brickwork which was the lower part of a "table" standing, apparently, on a stepped base; just by this there was in the SE wall a doorway which had been blocked up by a screen of brickwork so as to transform it into a shallow niche; another door in the same wall but near the east corner was not opened by us.:
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Behind the chapel there was the usual tiny room (12) ;2 it had a clay floor in which, almost flush with the surface, were burials of infants in clay bowls (P1. 39 b); the doorway from this room to Room 9 was not original but had been cut through the burnt and mud bricks of the wall. In the doorway from Room 11 there was an added threshold 0.45 m. high, corresponding to a high late floor-level of clay, in the centre of which was a rectangular trough paved with bricks and edged with bricks set upright on end; a large nether grindstone and several upper grindstones were found on this late floor. The original floor, 0.45 m. lower, was also of clay; in it was a pot buried with its rim flush with the surface and on it was a hemispherical clay bowl. Possibly food for the chapel ritual was prepared here.:
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At the NE end of the chapel was a door leading to Room 13; on the threshold was a hutch burial LG/14 containing the bones of four infants and inside Room 13 was the urn
burial LG/15.:
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Room 14, a mere passage with earth floor (now partly blocked by a Neo-Babylonian drain which came
down through the Kassite level) at the end of which was Room 15:
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Room 15, a lavatory with paved floor and a drain at its SE end; the SE wall of this was only a screen one brick thick not bonded at either end; the NW wall was not bonded into the NE. In front of the door there was a gap in the brick pavement 0.85 m. long (the same length as the door opening) and 0.35 m. wide which was perhaps intended for a wooden threshold.:
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Room 16 had been the courtyard of this house; it was brick-paved and had a drain in the middle.:
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In the NE wall was a door to Room 17, a
small brick-paved room the excavation of which was not completed owing to the fact that heavy walls of Kassite date ran across it only 1.50 m. above floor level; it had no features of interest.:
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Room 18 (P1. 37 b) (its ruins much confused by Kassite walls of burnt brick running across it) had its doorway into the court occupied by brick steps which gave a total height of 0.60 m. and must have led to a late floor level, for there was an older brick pavement 0.15 m. above that of the court. Inside the door the stairs were continued by a narrower flight (0.40 m. wide) of which three treads remained, resting on a block of brickwork built against the SW wall and corbelled out behind in a manner which shows that it was constructed against steeply-sloped beams - presumably the higher treads were of wood, resting on the beams, and the stairs turned at the corner of the room and went up against its NW wall and perhaps again against the NE wall to emerge on a gallery above the court. There was a shallow niche in the (late) NE wall.:
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Room 19 was brick-paved; its SE wall (not bonded into the NE) had had a shallow recess cut into it; its NW wall consisted of the blocking of the old front door which, like the house wall proper (the NW wall of Room 18) had twenty-eight courses of burnt brick.:
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This was another shop. The door opening on Paternoster Row was unusually wide; its original threshold was level with the street, it had been raised to 0.80 m. and again to 0.95 m. above the level.:
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It led into a small booth (Room 1) originally paved with brick and enclosed, like all the building, by old walls on the SE and NW sides. The NE wall was curious; the door opening had originally been at the east end of the wall with at most a mud-brick jamb against the SE wall, if there was any jamb there at all; the rest of the NE wall had burnt-brick foundations. The SE wall began to lean inwards and threatened to collapse, so the NE wall was dismantled to its foundations and on those a new wall of burnt brick was built with the door-opening at the north end so that the whole eastern section should act as a buttress to the SE wall; in spite of this however the movement continued and the new wall had been pushed out of the straight so that the existing jamb was at a sharp angle from the vertical.:
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Room 2 had an earth floor and presented no features of interest.:
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Room 3 had an earth floor; at the NE end there were remains of an altar, much destroyed, and the "table" had disappeared altogether, but at 2.50 m. above floor level there was here the base of a much later "table" showing that at a much later date the room continued to be used for its original purpose as a chapel. In the north corner where the "table" should have been there was under the floor an infant's burial in a double bowl and in front of it two more bowl-burials with infants' bones, and all over the room there were larnax burials. Of the walls, the NW wall had twenty-four courses of burnt brick for most of its length, but near the west corner there was a straight joint and up to the corner the wall was of mud brick with only eight courses of burnt brick; the west jamb of the door to Room 2 was presumably of mud brick but had disappeared. The burnt brickwork of the wall had been breached from below by treasure-seekers; the mud brick above was unbroken.:
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The original house, which probably was quite normal in plan, had been completely changed first by the cutting away of its SE corner to make room for the "Bazaar Chapel" and secondly by the conversion of the remaining part to business purposes. The internal walls were of mud brick only - or if they had burnt brick foundations these were buried below the late floor levels at which our work stopped.:
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Room 1, the entrance lobby on Paternoster Row, was earth-floored and a door at its back led directly into Room 2,:
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Room 2, the central court; this also was earth-floored. The doors in its SW and SE walls were original but there had been no doors in the NE wall; the door now giving on Room 5 was cut through the brickwork and the rough sides were mud-plastered; it had a rounded top in the form of an arch and was very low, only 1.65 m. high and 0.70 m. wide - the "arch" was very irregular, but this seemed to be due to the collapse of the bricks in the wall above rather than to crooked cutting in the first place. Further along to the north was a second opening, also late; this too had a rounded top and the cut sides had been plastered smoothly with mud, but the lower part of the opening (originally cut to floor level) had been walled up with burnt brick so as to leave a hatch 0.75 m. high and 0.65 m wide with its base 0.70 m. above the floor; that this was a late alteration was shown by the fact that the hatch cut away half of the jamb of the door-way between Rooms 5 and 6, so that the door could scarcely have been any longer in use.:
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Room 3 had a threshold raised 0.60 m. above the level of the court but its own floor was only 0.10 m. below the threshold; the floor was mud covered with a thin layer of bitumen over which matting had been spread, its imprint remaining on the bitumen. In the north corner was a terracotta bread-oven of the usual bee-hive shape 0.65 m. in diameter; in the south corner was a platform of burnt brick thickly covered with wood ash in which lay fragments of three large jars; the walls were much smoke-blackened. Nearly the whole of the room was open to the street, there being in the middle of the SE wall a large window whose sill was about 1.00 m. above street level (the mud brickwork on either side of the opening rose for the best part of a metre higher, so that there could be no doubt about the window), and the room was evidently used as a cook-shop.:
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Room 4 had a burnt-brick threshold 0.20 m. high in the doorway from the central court; the room had been twice floored with clay, the upper floor being 0.25 m. above the lower. At the SE end was a door the original threshold of which had been raised by 0.50 m. and this, together with signs of re-building in the same wall seemed to imply a third and higher mud floor.:
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In the NE wall a door with stepped threshold led to Room 5, originally the chapel. The chapel had probably once been brick-paved all over but the pavement survived only in front of the altar and in the form of a single brick against the SE wall. The walls had from three courses of burnt brick (in the SE wall) to nine, and stood to a total of 3.00 m. In the NE wall, near the east corner, there had been a doorway (not original) which was later walled up; near the north corner was a niche 0.20 m. deep rising to the full surviving height of the wall. In the north corner was a "table" 1.00 m. high and 0.50 m. sq. of burnt brick with panel decoration in its mud plaster standing on a burnt brick base 0.45 m. high and against, by the NW wall, remains of a brick altar; beyond this was a door to Room 6.:
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Room 6 had been brick-paved. The NW wall was a-patchwork (ten courses of burnt brick)
with a very awkward joint built against a curved wall-end. Many tablets were found here.:
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The chapel was of late date. To make accommodation for it the south corner of No. 14 had to be sacrificed, but instead of following Bazaar Alley to what was presumably the original street angle the builders had thrown forward the facade so as to secure additional space. Even so the building was very small. The chapel faced on a small open space and commanded a view down Paternoster Row (P1. 19b); it lay high and a flight of brick steps led up to a threshold 0.65 m. above street level, and this was shown to be its original height by the fact that the jambs of the door-opening did not go down below the threshold whereas in most of the neighbouring houses the door openings went down well below street level although added thresholds may have raised that opening by 0.50 m. or even by 1.00 m.; alongside the chapel a similar flight of steps led from Paternoster Row to Bazaar Alley, the level of which was the same as that of the chapel pavement. The chapel then was built at a time when the street level was that shown in our photograph, a level acquired only after most of the houses bordering the street had been standing for some while; it stood so high above the street that no reconstruction to meet a rise in level was necessary during the lifetime of the quarter; this height was obtained by the demolition of the south part of No. 14, and the chapel walls were newly built ad hoc, the burnt brick in them rising nine and on the SE side twelve courses above that in the older house walls.:
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From Paternoster Row a flight of brick steps took one to the higher street level of a narrow alley which turning to the right passed the secondary entrance of No. 14 Paternoster Row and so between blank walls to another right-angled turn to the NW. Here there were on the right hand side two buildings closely resembling No. 12 Paternoster Row, with narrow frontages and deep rooms behind, each divided by cross-walls into three compartments (allowing for the destruction of one wall in No. 1), probably shops with magazines behind. A doorway across the alley was followed by another turn to the NE; in the angle was the entrance to a third long narrow building which may have been of a similar nature to the other two but looked more like a converted chapel. Another door closed the alley which beyond it emerged into a square room part of which may well have been occupied by a coster's stall, for along the NE wall, clear of the thoroughfare, there lay on the ground two large clay pots, Type IL. 61, a number of rough pounders and rubbing-stones and a limestone palette c. 0.25 m. sq. A door in the NW wall led out to Baker's Square, a somewhat narrow door cut through the brickwork at a late period when the level of the Square was already beginning to rise. The original floor of the room (which was flush with the contemporary level of the Square) came well up against the mud brickwork of its walls, hiding the burnt-brick foundations; when the levels inside and out had risen by nearly 0.90 m. an L-shaped wall or screen was built against the outer wall of the room to mask the entrance of the alley.:
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A door with raised threshold led into a long narrow room (1) which had perhaps been divided into two by a cross-wall of mud bricks, but this had disappeared and only a burnt-brick door-jamb projected from the SE wall to suggest its existence. Near the north corner there was in the SW wall a door to No. 2 which had been blocked up. The floor was of earth. The SE wall (2.70 m. high) had been breached, a great hole having been cut through the burnt brickwork of its lower part, but the mud brickwork above ran on unbroken and the breach was probably due merely to later burrowers after treasure.:
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Room 2, earth-floored, had had a door to the chapel (Room 5) of No. 4 Paternoster Row, but this had been blocked with a wall which showed mud brick on this side and a burnt-brick face on the side of the chapel.:
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Most of the front wall had been destroyed; it had been of mud brick and had a door with raised threshold near the south corner.:
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This led into Room 1, which was brick-paved; later the floor was raised by 0.80 m. and a brick base (?) was built against the SE wall; still later the room was enlarged by pulling down the original back NE wall of mud brick over burnt brick foundations and replacing it by a new mud-brick wall further to the NE (on the plan the older wall is shown in outline only).:
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Room 2 had an earth floor; in the SE wall was a blocked door to No. 1.:
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Room 3 was also earth-floored; the wall dividing it from Room 2
had been much destroyed by a late drain; the SE wall was built abutting on a shallow buttress or jamb projecting from the chapel wall of No. 4 Paternoster Row, but owing to rebuilding the evidence of date was difficult to follow (Fig. 42); the buttress belonged only to a late phase of the chapel wall, but the wall of the Bazaar Alley building while only abutting on it yet went below it and abutted equally on the face of the older section of the chapel wall where there was no buttress and itself seemed to be all of one date. Perhaps it only means that the builders of the Bazaar building were unusually careful about their foundations and dug below the reconstruction-level of the chapel and fitted their new work to whatever they found there.:
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A raised threshold in the doorway led to a long narrow room (1), earth-floored, with larnax burials below the floor; in the north corner was a pedestal of burnt brick 0.60 m. sq. and standing 0.60 m. high which looked as if it might have been a "table" and gave the room the air of a domestic chapel. The NW wall had ten courses of burnt bricks, the SW wall five courses only, but with its mud brick was standing to 3.40 m. A:
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A door in the NE wall led to Room 2, a very small earth-floored room presenting no features of interest.:
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A door in the north corner of Baker's Square led into a long passage which was more like a private lane than a room in a house and had in its SW wall the front entrance to a separate building (not excavated). Facing this was the entrance to No. 1. The passage was unpaved and let into its floor was a brick enclosure like a manger. Of the walls, the SW was the deeper and apparently the older; the foundations of the NW wall lay at a much higher level, seven courses above those of the SW wall, but the two were bonded together above; the NW wall had been much destroyed by an intrusive bread-oven.:
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What may then have been the front door of No. 1 opened directly into Room 1, the courtyard of the house; it was brick-paved with a central drain and the walls showed eleven courses of burnt brick with mud brick above. On a secondary floor level was found the cylinder seal U.16802; under the original pavement was the corbel-vaulted tomb LG/41 and an infant burial LG/42. Two rooms on the NW side of the court were not excavated by us as they lay under spoil-heaps whose removal would have entailed a cost out of proportion to any probable results, so only their doors were cleared.:
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Room 4, the guest-chamber, had only a clay floor and its walls showed eight courses of burnt brick, standing to a total height of 2.30 m.; in the back wall was a door to Room 5,:
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Room 5, the domestic chapel. Here- a few bricks in the east corner may represent a pavement but this had perished and the rest of the room seemed to be clay floored; in the west corner a few courses of brick stood for the "table". The SE wall, with thirteen courses of burnt brick, was preserved to a height of 2.90 m.; in the NW wall, on the line of the front of the altar that must have been there, was a niche which started at floor level and was carried up to the top of the surviving mud brickwork (c. 2.20 m.); in the SW wall was an incense-hearth, its base 0.35 m. above the floor and it had at one time been widened, as the NW side was a straight joint and the SE side had been cut in the burnt brick; above the burnt brickwork it narrowed to the normal chimney, which went up to the height of the standing wall, 2.20 m. Below the floor was a large brick tomb with arched doorway and also a burial in a large urn.:
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Room 6 had a clay floor laid over a rough foundation of burnt brick; the walls were a patchwork, with straight joints in the NE and SE walls but the corners bonded; the SE wall had been rebuilt on the old foundations, the new work starting at 1.20 m. above floor level and projecting beyond the face of the old.:
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Room 7, with a clay floor, had originally had a door opening directly on Baker's Square, but this had been walled up while the level of the Square was still what it is at present - the new wall rested on the old threshold which had never had to be raised.:
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The approach to the house, which lay on the edge of the area excavated by us, was not found, but there was a narrow alley leading to the front door. The house, built fairly early in the Larsa period, was during that period completely re-modelled and turned into a factory or workshop. At this time the floor was raised by about 1.00 m., and the stumps of the old walls were left below the new floor level and new walls were built with shallow foundations or carried along the old lines with different material, with the result that the alterations could be followed by us more or less in detail.:
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In the original house a narrow passage rather than a lobby-room led into a large courtyard (Room 1) all trace of whose paving, if it was paved, had disappeared; out of this, rooms opened on three sides.:
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On the SE side a door led into the guest-room (2), which was brick-paved and had a drain at the NE end; communicating with it on the NE was a little room which, in spite of its position, was probably not the lavatory, seeing that it had no pavement and no drain; below it were three infant burials (AHG/171-3). Through the guest-room one passed to the chapel which occupied the SE end of the site. The chapel was paved with bricks 0.26 m. X 0.17 m.; against its NE wall were the remains of a long brick altar 0.60 m. wide which showed signs of having been repaired; in the north corner was a brick 'table' 0.60 m. sq. of which eleven courses of brick survived. On the pavement were clay vases of Types IL.lOc. and IL.71; under it were larnax burials LG/44, 45 and 46, and let into the pavement in front of the altar was the pot burial of an infant.:
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Room 3 (itself probably formed out of two old rooms). The NW and SW walls of this room were also rebuilt with mud brick on the old burnt-brick foundations, but in them were contrived three stoke-holes with their passage-sides of burnt brick (P1. 50b); these stoke-holes were roofed with true arches in mud brick (thirteen bricks to a span of 0.70 m. or, in the case of that in the NW wall, 0.78 m.) with vertical sides 0.27 m. high and a height from base to soffit of 0.50 m. In each case, after a period of use, the base had been raised by a layer of broken burnt brick and fire-clay laid over the old ashes, probably at a time when the kilns were repaired. In Room 3, roughly corresponding to the central stoke-hole, was a 1.00 m. square basin let into the floor, paved with bricks and bordered with bricks set on edge (bricks 0.27 m. X 0.18 m. X 0.07 m.); in and by this was a quantity of lime (?). Room 3 had served as a stoke-room for the furnaces, which were in Rooms 4 and 1 (P1. 50a).:
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Room 4 was virtually the same as in the previous period except of course
that its SE wall, containing the stoke-hole, had been completely rebuilt, and the floors of
both rooms had been raised by c. 0.80 m. The furnaces were constructed on brick bases
sunk in the new floor level; they were circular (diam. 0.93-0.98 m.) and were built of
bricks set in and plastered with clay; the bricks may have been mud bricks only, but they
were now thoroughly burned. The floor of the furnace was also of bricks and clay and rose
in the centre; the passage from the stoke-hole was not flush with the furnace floor but raised
some 0.20 m. above it; the floors had been re-made several times and had risen by as much
as 0.30 m., below each floor being the ashes of former burnings; the walls had been
destroyed, but those of the furnace in Room 4 were still standing to 0.50 m.; the floor of
the central furnace was thickly covered with a fine white ash.:
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Lying at the corner of Straight Street and Paternoster Row was a single-roomed building which can scarcely have been other than a shop. It was originally connected by a door in its NW wall with No. 4 Straight Street, but this had been walled up. The SE wall, which was not bonded at the south corner, was peculiarly badly built and in a very bad state of conservation, but at its south end there was in the outer face a reveal which, with the projecting angle of the next house seemed intended for a heavy wooden upright; if this were so it suggests that the front of the building on Paternoster Row was open, with a large wooden-framed window. The room was mud-floored.:
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A large and in many respects a typical house, though its ground-plan was made somewhat irregular by the fact that it was built up against earlier houses and its site was not rectangular. It was well built, the burnt brickwork (bricks 0.27 m. X 0.165 m. X 0.075 m.) rising in the street wall to 1.70 m. and in the internal walls to 1.10 m. above pavement level; it had a long life and underwent a good many minor alterations and the walls were still in use after the floor had risen 1.85 m. above the original. Its foundation would seem to have been later than that of Nos. 3 and 5 Church Lane and of No. 5 Straight Street, judging by the bonding of the walls, but contemporary with the Hendur-sag chapel; the tablets found in its ruins ranged from the 27th year of Sulgi to the 15th year of Rim-Sin,3 2 and although the building probably did not itself go back to the Sulgi period it need not have been very much later (for the main walls of Nos. 3 and 5 Church Lane were of Third Dynasty date) and while the main floor level to which our excavations went down must come at least very early in the Larsa period the building as such shared in the general destruction of the quarter in the reign of Samsu-iluna.
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The front door had a brick threshold which was later raised to 0.70 m. and again to 0.90 m. above the old; the lobby (Room 1) was of irregular shape, brick-paved, and the NE wall had been remodelled; originally it seems to have been straight and had a doorway leading to Room 4, but this was blocked up and also the NW end of the wall was cut away and against its ragged end was built the curved wall which now made the room irregular and afforded space for the door in the NW wall opening on the central court. Against the SE wall were four vases of yellowish drab clay, Type IL. 44, and fragments of a saucer, Type IL. 8.:
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Room 2, the courtyard, was paved with mixed bricks carelessly laid and had a central drain; clay floors of later date lay at 0.60 m. and at 0.90 m. above it. Near the north comer there was a rectangular enclosure of broken bricks and mud which was probably a stand for a pot and in the east corner was a similar stand. The walls, preserved up to 2.90 m., were heavily mud-plastered, but the mud bricks were of extraordinarily bad quality, crumbling and full of potsherds, except for the SW wall which was unusually good (bricks 0.26 m. X 0.165 m. X 0.07 m.) and must have been built at a different time. In the SW wall were two doors giving on the lavatory (Room 3) and on the stairs.:
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Room 3 had a high threshold which had later been raised to 1.15 m. above the court pavement and its own pavement was 0.50 m. above that of the court; at the NW end, beyond the door-jamb, it was raised one course of bricks higher and near the NW wall was the drain intake; at one time a door was cut through the SW wall and the room served as the entrance-lobby of the house (this in an intermediate period when the street had already risen half a metre) but afterwards the door was walled up again and the room's use as a lavatory was restored with no apparent change in its floor level. Of the stairs only the bottom tread was preserved; at a time when the level of the courtyard had been raised and a clay floor laid down c. 1.00 m. above the original pavement a hole was dug into the filling of the lower part of the stairs and a terracotta bread-oven, diam. 0.65 m., was let into it, destroying all the treads; the earth round it was burnt to a deep red.:
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Room 4, opening out of the court, was of irregular shape and only earth-floored; in the east corner were the remains of a circular clay hearth and the whole of the recess on the SW side was occupied by a low bench of brick with a rubble and mud filling which was
presumably a bed-stead.:
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At the SE end was Room 5, a very small lavatory with a paved floor (most of the bricks missing) and a central drain; the walls here as elsewhere only abutted on the older boundary wall of Nos. 3 and 5 Church Lane.:
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Room 6 was the guest-room; its door was unusually wide (1.20 m.), it was long and narrow and floored with clay; the walls, except on the SW, had burnt brick up to a height of 0.30 m. only; above this was mud brick, and matting had been laid between the mud bricks to give a through bond, an unusual thing in private buildings. :
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At the other end was another room (7) so small that it was probably but a passage to Room 10 with the rest of its space taken up by cupboard or press in its SW half.:
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Room 8, opening off the central court, was earth-floored; a door in the NW wall presented certain difficulties in that its NE jamb was original whereas the SW jamb was cut and its rough wall-end plastered with mud; there was nothing to show that the SW part of the wall was older than the NE section and it may be merely that the door was at first narrow and was later cut to the (normal) width of 1.00 m. Below the floor were larnax graves LG/21 and LG/22.:
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Room 9 was unmistakeably the kitchen; it was clay-floored; in the north corner was a circular terracotta bread-oven (diam. 0.65 m.) and at the SW end a regular fire-place, a raised base of burnt brick having, in its top brickwork, channels for burning charcoal exactly like those of the modern Arab stove; a rough straight-sided clay bowl, diam. 0.55 m., lying inverted in the middle of the room may have belonged to a later phase. The room had undergone several changes. The SW wall, which went up in burnt brick to 1.80 m., was originally the outside wall of the house; at a later time a door was cut through it to Room 12, but then the door was blocked by a rough screen wall and finally, when the kitchen floor had risen 0.90 m. above its old level, the door was again opened. In the same SW wall, facing the court door, there were at 1.45 m. above floor level two holes in the brickwork which looked like lodgements for timbers but could not be explained.:
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Room 10; behind the guest-rooms and approached through it and through Room 7 lay the domestic chapel, P1. 43a. It was brick-paved throughout (though in the middle the pavement was much destroyed) and from it at the SE end-rose the altar and "table". The altar consisted of two courses of burnt bricks with mud brick above and was 0.35 m. high, projecting 0.90 m. from the wall. On the same foundations stood the "table", of mud brick with the plaster moulded in panels to imitate wood still standing 1.00 m. high - originally it must have had a top of burnt brick making the total height 1.25 m. Behind the altar there was in the SE wall an incense-hearth in the form of a square recess with open chimney above; the floor of the recess (of burnt brick) was only just above the altar-top, it was 0.30 m. deep and 0.60 m. wide and 0.42 m. high, flat-topped and continued by a chimney 0.27 m. wide which ran to the full height of the standing wall, 2.40 m. (v. PI. 43a.) Under the floor, towards the north-west end of the room, there was a brick vaulted tomb and beside it a larnax burial, both empty, and in front of the "table" was an infant's burial in a terracotta "hutch" coffin virtually flush with the bricks of the pavement.:
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Room 12, opening out of the kitchen, was an addition to the original building, its SW wall abutting on the front wall of the house; in this there had been a door, subsequently blocked. The floor was of earth and the NE wall was only a thin mud-brick screen later broken away by an intrusive corbelled brick tomb (of later date) which occupied half of the first compartment of Room 13. This was almost certainly an unroofed yard.:
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Room 13 seems to have ended originally at the first cross-wall which, like the NW wall of Room 12 and of Room 13 up to this point has burnt brick foundations standing 1.00 m. high; then the cross-wall was partly dismantled and the NW wall carried on with a foundation of burnt bricks 0.25 m. high and mud brick above to abut on the outer wall of No. 1 Old Street. The area thus enclosed was divided into two by a second cross-wall (with burnt brick up to 1.30 m.) 1.80 m. long. The whole place was earth-floored and must have been a yard, but the two piers probably supported (together with wooden uprights?) a pent-house roof, making a row of three sheds open to the front; the entrance from Room 8, which was probably a servants' working-room, would be an obvious convenience.:
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A solidly built and compact house with rooms symmetrically arranged about a central court: the exceptionally heavy walls suggest that this house may have stood to a considerable height, and that there may have been a heavy roof to support. The site was nearly rectangular but the SE wall ran askew, following the angle of Paternoster Row. The burnt-brick superstructure of the house stood in places as much as twenty-two courses high, and the high level of the top pavement suggests that most of this superstructure belonged to the end of the Larsa period, shortly before the destruction by Samsu-iluna. On the tops of some of the Larsa walls there were flimsy remains of burnt-brick walls of the Kassite period, and much of the Larsa brick-work had been torn down and levelled to make an even foundation for the walls of the Kassite house. On the other hand much of the evidence suggests that this house dated back to an ancient foundation in Third Dynasty times. The burnt-brick walls of the Larsa period followed along the lines of an older mud-brick structure, and between the pavement associated with this older building and that of the end of the Larsa period, there was an accumulation of more than 1.6 metres of debris. The rubbish in the courtyard underneath the late Larsa pavement consisted of decayed mud brick and contained carinated saucers of Third Dynasty type. In the SW wall there was an inscribed brick of Amar-Suena, but the fact that this wall did not go as deep as the boundary wall of No. 4 Paternoster Row and that the foundations of No. 4 Straight Street appeared to overlap the burnt-brick work of No. 4 Paternoster Row indicates that the latter was an earlier foundation still.:
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Room 1, the lobby, had a raised threshold which had followed the rise in level of Straight
Street.:
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Room 2, the courtyard had a sunken pavement in the middle with an impluvium, and under it a deep drain descending at least 4 metres below pavement level. The burnt-brick walls all rested on mud brick foundations, the latter were of poor quality mud bricks and very roughly built; the foundations of the NE wall were deeper than any other. In the SE corner of the court there was a heavy rectangular blocking of mud bricks, 0.26 X 0.165 X 0.075 m. very roughly laid. This blocking had obviously never had an exposed face, and was probably intended to serve as a kisui or support for the later party walls at this corner of the court where the foundations were of poor quality. The remains of two pavements were still preserved. The uppermost was built two courses above the footings of the burnt brick walls and consisted of mixed burnt-bricks, 0.30 sq. X 0.05 m. and 0.31 m. sq. This pavement probably belonged to the end of the Larsa period: the earlier pavement occurred no less than 1.6 m. below the upper pavement and contained burnt-bricks measuring 0.27 X 0.175 X 0.07 m. Between these two pavements there was a filling of ash and decayed mud brick, ll loosely packed, and evidently thrown in to effect the re-levelling which occurred when the burnt brick walls were erected over the older mud brick foundations at the end of the Larsa period. Below the level of the lowest pavement the soil was tightly packed and waterlogged and contained carinated sherds of Third Dynasty type. Under the foundations of the NE wall was the larnax grave LG/25,and 1.60 m. below the Larsa pavement were LG/2 6 and LG/27.:
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Room 4, the guest-room, lay between the courtyard and the chapel; in it were the larnax grave LG/28 and an inhumation grave LG/29.:
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Room 5, the lavatory, had a blocked doorway onto Straight Street and may at one time have served as an entrance lobby; outside the SE wall were found the larnax graves LG/23 and 24.:
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Room 6, the chapel, had an altar in the form of a burnt-brick table built up against the NE wall and in the north corner there was a plain burnt-brick pillar built up against the altar. A shallow niche in the NW wall might have been a cupboard. Under the chapel floor was a corbelled brick grave LG/32, probably the family vault, and a number of larnax graves as well.:
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In Room 7, the burnt-brick foundations in the SW wall, the boundary wall of the house, ran down five courses lower than the burnt-brick foundations in the other walls, and these five lower courses were bonded with the mud brick foundations of the NW wall of Room 6. In the burnt brick foundations of this wall there was an inscribed brick of Amar-Suena measuring 0.26 X 0.16 X 0.08 m.:
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Room 8, probably a servant's room, gave access from the kitchen, Room 9, via Room 7 to the reception room and to the chapel. The lower burnt brick pavement was here well preserved, regularly laid with bricks measuring 0.27 X 0.18 X 0.07 m. As was shown by the bonding in Room 7 the deep burnt-brick foundations of the SW boundary wall were contemporary with five courses of mud brick in the adjacent walls, but all the mud brick-work below this level belonged to the earlier foundations with which was associated the well laid brick pavement noted above.:
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Room 9 was the kitchen, or was at all events used as such during the early foundation of the house: there was a circular bread oven resting on a clay floor at the same level as the early burnt brick pavement in Room 8. It is possible that in the succeeding period the room ceased to be a kitchen, as at the normal level of the upper pavements there was a burnt-brick floor with bricks measuring 0.255-0.235 X 0.17-0.18 X 0.06-0.07 m, and below the floor a ruined corbel vaulted grave which had evidently been dug down below the level of this pavement. Presumably therefore at this period Room 9 had ceased to be a kitchen, for as such it would hardly have been used to house the family vault. In the SE wall there was a blocked doorway showing that at one time there had been access to No. 2 Straight Street 3 3 but that at the extreme end of the Larsa period the two houses were separate dwellings. There was a doorway of the same period in the SE wall of Room 1 which had been blocked at the same time as this. The mud brick walls of the early foundation contained bricks measuring 0.235-0.24 X 0.15 X 0.07 m, a size of brick freely used during the Third Dynasty, and at intervals matting had been used to obtain a through bond, a method characteristic of the pre-Larsa mud brick buildings. The burnt-brick footings of the SE wall were not bonded with the older mud brick substructure of the NE wall. The older mud brickwork had a thick coating of mud plaster.:
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Room 10. This room, inconveniently narrow at the SW end had undergone modifications. In the second foundation a niche was made in the SE wall in order to widen the room, and in the latest (Kassite) period a flimsy burnt brick wall was built over the older burnt-brick foundations of the Larsa wall and made parallel to the NW wall in order to obtain a rectangular room. In the Larsa period there had been a door in the NE wall which was blocked in the Kassite period. The earliest burnt-brick pavement, contemporary with the mud brick walls of the early foundation had bricks measuring 0.275 X 0.18 X 0.07 m. The Kassite SE wall was only 0.75 m. thick and contained burnt-bricks measuring 0.24-0.25 X 0.16 X 0.065 m. and there were other bricks 0.185 and 0.15 m. wide.:
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The brickwork and pavements in this room give a convenient summary of the history of this house which divides itself into four main periods: 1. The earliest foundation, mud brick walls and burnt brick pavements, probably going back to Third Dynasty; 2. Burnt brick superstructure erected over the mud brick foundations in the Larsa period, good burnt brick pavements associated, access given to No. 2 Straight Street by doorways in the SE wall; 3. Burnt brick pavement slightly raised, following the rise of Straight Street, doors in SE wall blocked up, end of the Larsa period; 4. Kassite period, flimsy burnt brick walls erected over the more solid foundations of the Larsa period. :
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A doorway (late) at the end of Straight Street led into a narrow unpaved passage between the walls of Nos. 3 and 7 into a rectangular paved enclosure which seems to have been kept as an open space during the main occupation-period of the quarter. Older walls were found below its floor level which divided the area into four compartments, in one of which was a corbel-vaulted tomb, but these walls were not necessarily contemporary with each other and did not appear to have any connection with the walls bounding the space; if the tops of them served as the foundations for light walls of sheds - as is possible - there is nothing to prove this, and the plan as given must be taken to have no real meaning. The existence of an open court in the middle of the houses, attached to one of them and used for some such purpose as stalling animals, is not surprising.:
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The house as it stands was contemporary with the main occupation-period of No. 4 across the street,3 5 but the existing burnt-brick walls were built over and virtually reproduced the mud-brick walls of an earlier structure of the same character. With the rise of the street level the floor of the house was raised by 0.80 m. and a new threshold was put in, approached by a flight of steps from Straight Street which gave a sill 1.30 m. above the original street level. The whole front of the house has been razed to floor level.:
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Room 1 was paved, but most of the bricks were gone; the NE and SW walls were destroyed but the jamb on the SE wall showed the wall's position.:
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In Room 2 there was no trace of paving left. In the SE wall a niche (not original) had been cut to take the flap of the open door; the NE and SW walls were destroyed; the SW wall had no older mud brick below its foundations. At 0.80 m. below the floor level there was a brick pavement with central drain which must have belonged to the earlier mud-brick stage of the house.:
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Room 3; the exact position of the door from Room 2 was uncertain; no pavement was left. The SW wall rested on older mud brick and had at its west end a shallow niche and at its south end a door to Room 4; against the NE wall was a line of brickwork, possibly from the pavement?:
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Room 4 had all its walls resting on older mud brick; there was none of the pavement left, but below floor level the whole area of the room was taken up by a large corbel-vaulted brick tomb, LG/33, and two pot burials, LG/34 and 35.:
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A very small house, probably of one storey only. The outer walls were bonded together and were probably all of one date. They were of good quality, that on the NE having shallow external buttresses, and their foundations went down deep below the pavement level whereas the internal walls had only three courses below the pavement, but that seems to have been due to the house level being high from the beginning; it seems to have dated from the time when the threshold of the front door of No. 3 Straight Street was raised to meet the rise in the street's surface.:
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The front lobby (1) was an addition, made by running a new wall out from the west corner of No. 3's outbuildings to the end buttress of the wall of No. 12; it cut across an existing (rather thin) wall which now formed the NE side of the lobby; the floor was paved with burnt bricks 0.23 m. X 0.15 m., a size characteristic of the Third Dynasty and suggesting that the builders had availed themselves of material derived from some old building.:
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Room 2 was the central court, brick-paved with a drain in the middle; against the SE wall was a block of burnt brickwork 0.45 m. high and between it and the threshold of Room 3 was a pot burial LG/36, at 0.70 m. underneath the pavement.:
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Room 3 was clay-floored; the upper part of the masonry of the outer walls was late, rebuilding over the top of the old walls.:
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Room 4 had a clay floor but in the south corner was a raised patch of brick paving which looked like the foundation of a bed.:
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Room 4 was entered through Room 5, which was paved.:
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The tiny Room 6 had no floor left; it had presumably been the lavatory, but was much ruined.:
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The building was one of the latest in the main occupation-period of the quarter. The street front, with twenty-one courses of burnt brick, was built up against the corner of No. 10 on one side and against No. 6 on the other, and its foundations lay at least six courses above those of No. 6 and actually above the level of the street as given by the threshold of No. 4. Even so its threshold, originally at 0.85 m. above the present street level (which was that of the main occupation-period) was raised later to 1.00 m. and finally to 1.20 m. In Room 2 there were found traces of a floor corresponding to the highest of these thresholds, but excavation was carried down to or below the earliest floor in each room. The dividing wall between this house and No. 6 had at most points been destroyed to floor level.:
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The front door led into a passage (1) separated by a screen wall 0.25 m thick (much of it destroyed)' from Room 2.:
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Room 2; in the latter were remains of a brick pavement and of an earlier pavement 0.60 m. below it. The SE door-jamb of Room 1 was of burnt brick bonded into the SE wall, the middle section was destroyed, the NW section with the jamb of the door of Room 2 was of burnt brick abutting on the NW wall of the house.:
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Room 3 had an urn-burial under its pavement in the south corner; of the walls other than the NW wall only the foundations were left.:
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Room 4 was a similar small room but with no signs of paving; there was a shallow niche in the NE wall, the SE and SW walls were ruined to their foundations (as in the case of No. 6 next door, the late burnt-brick walls rested on older walls of mud brick) and of the door to Room 5 only the NW jamb was left.:
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Room 5 had been brick paved; its whole area was occupied, below floor level, by a corbel-vaulted brick tomb.:
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The house was closely connected with No. 12; they shared a common outer lobby at the end of Straight Street, and towards the back of the houses (in Room 5) there was a communicating door. Owing to exigencies of space neither agrees with the normal house-plan, though they approximate to this as closely as possible, but they were built more or less on the same lines and have the same number of rooms arranged more or less similarly:
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The outer lobby led by a wide doorway with raised threshold (there may have been a jamb against the SE wall, but it had disappeared) into a minute anteroom (1) closed on the SW by another door the hinge-socket of which was found against the SE wall in the corner of the recess (there was no jamb) into which the flap of the door folded back.:
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This led into Room 2, the courtyard, which was brick-paved, its walls showing two courses of burnt brick above pavement level with mud brick above of very bad quality.:
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Opening out of the north corner was (3), a small lavatory with paved floor and central drain (the door seemed to have been blocked later).:
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Room 4 had a strip of brick pavement between its doors but the SE part of the room was unpaved; it might have been a place for a bed.:
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It led into Room 5, the domestic chapel. The chapel floor was originally brick-paved; in the south corner was the brick "table" 0.50 m. sq. and standing now 0.65 m. high; in the NW wall, at its north end, there was a recess in which four clay pots were found standing in a row; in the SE wall there was an incense-hearth 0.70 m. wide and 0.25 m. deep which was 0.80 m. high and then narrowed down to a chimney 0.25 m. wide; the altar which should have stood in front of this had disappeared. The walls in general showed six or seven courses of burnt brick above pavement level; they had been several times re-plastered with mud and showed at least three different surfaces of whitewash; the NE wall had been breached at the east corner and patched with mud brick; the SW wall had been razed to floor level.:
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Room 6 was earth-floored; of the walls, the SE and the SW were ruined down below floor level; the SE wall was older than the house and the SW wall abutted on it; the latter had its foundations much deeper than those of the NE and NW (internal) walls and consisted of a skin of burnt brickwork on the outside with a mud-brick facing to the room; it was clearly an exterior wall.:
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An unusually narrow door of which the SE jamb was cut and the NW was a piece of late rebuilding led from the end of Straight Street into a very small forecourt that afforded approach both to No. 10 and No. 12; this outer doorway was closed by a door whose hinge-box was against the NW jamb.:
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A second door led through a paved lobby-passage (1) into Room 2.:
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Room 2, the courtyard, of which the pavement remained in the south corner only. Under it were two larnax burials and a small brick vaulted tomb (wrecked). The walls, with six courses of burnt brick, were shallow and late in date; the SW wall was very crooked - apparently to compensate, inside the Room 4, for a projection in the SW wall which would have made the west end unduly narrow; the NW wall was a poor patchwork in which the burnt brick failed altogether towards the north corner and was replaced by mud brick of very poor quality which (in Room 3) merely abutted on the older NE wall.:
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Room 3 had an earth floor only; its SE wall abutted on the outer wall of the building.:
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The doorway away from the court to Room 4 was at a later period completely walled up with burnt and mud brick to match the wall on either side (six courses of burnt brick); the room was earth-floored with a raised brick bench along the SE wall. In the NE wall, at the north corner, there was a shallow niche in the brickwork; the SW wall was in two sections, irregularly joined, of different ages, the older part together with the NW wall being of mud brick only above floor level.:
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Room 5 was earth-floored. Below it was found larnax grave LG/39. The walls were very much of a patchwork; the NW wall was in two sections, the other three seem to have been of one date but show various modifications, the SE wall being in two parts of which one had six and the other ten courses of burnt brick, but the mud brickwork above them was bonded over the join. The door in the NE wall had had its threshold raised by four courses of burnt brick; in the SW wall there were two doors, one very narrow, the other, which had no brick threshold corresponding to the main floor of the house had had a threshold added later, which was 0.90 m. above the threshold of the narrow door. In the SE wall was a door affording access to the next house (No. 10) of which the threshold had been raised by two courses; the floor of the room had twice been raised, first by 0.20 m., then by another 0.70 m.:
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Room 6 was earth-floored; the wall dividing it from Baker's Square was 0.75 m. thick with an inner face of burnt brick and an outer face of mud brick; it abutted on the NW wall but was bonded in to a return to the SW after which it showed another straight joint and was continued to the corner of the room by a wall of different construction. In the north corner there was under the floor a child's "hutch" coffin, empty, and against the SE wall, just below floor level, was a bowl of light reddish clay, Type IL. 69, ht. 0.26 m. diam. 0.21 m.:
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Luby says room 11; Woolley only mentions to LG12 but shows a 313; 314 and 315 in field note map along with two unlabled:
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Lower than and disturbed by AHG/51:
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Child's Grave:
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In season 8, Woolley expanded the Royal Cemetery (area PG) to the southwest and northeast. After digging more of the southwestern extent, he decided to investigate deeper still in two pits larger than those he dug in season 7 but not as large as Pit F in the Temenos area. These two pits were initially Pits I and J in the sequence but confusion with lettering caused Woolley to begin at the end of the alphabet and rename these pits Y and Z.
Pit J was located in the far southwestern corner of the expanded Royal Cemetery of season 8 and was quickly renamed Pit Y. The published stratigraphic profile shows it to be 12 meters wide at the top but within 1 meter of depth it shifted to only 6.5 meters width. At the bottom, where it reached sea level, the pit had been further reduced to 5 meters width, and a smaller segment of 3 meters size was taken another meter down below sea level. This pit and Pit Z both uncovered graves earlier than the Royal Cemetery main burials. These graves were eventually given JNG numbers, a continuous sequence across Pits W, X, Y, and Z that collectively came to be considered area PJ. PJ initially stood for Pit J but the concentration of burials found in this pit (renamed Pit Y) gave rise to the use of the abbreviation PJ for graves in the southern extension of area PG in Pit X. Woolley believed the early graves to come from the Jemdat Nasr period (thus JNG). Note also that some JNG graves initially held PG numbers, especially in the PG/1800 sequence, and were later renumbered.:
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Neo-Babylonian (?) Pot Grave:
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Persian Larnax:
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TTA is shorthand for Trial Trench A, one of two exploratory trenches excavated in Woolley's first season at Ur in 1922. This one was about 4 meters wide by about 40 meters long as revealed by an aerial photograph taken at the end of the 1922 season. The trench encountered a few scattered finds of jewelry and materials that led Woolley to suspect they were from a graveyard, but he felt his team of local diggers was not yet ready to excavate such sensitive contexts. Thus, he decided to concentrate on TTB for the first few seasons, according to his various publications. One of the primary reasons for concentrating on TTB initially, however, may have been that Woolley discovered no architecture in TTA but had struck the enunmah building in TTB.
Woolley returned to TTA in season 5, when he expanded with new trial trenches and eventually opened up the entire area of the Royal Cemetery. No individual graves are reported in TTA and any that might have been encountered did not receive PG numbers. Those in the following trial trenches expanding TTA (TTE, TTF, TTG) did receive these numbers and gave their abbreviation (PG) to the entire Royal Cemetery area.:
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The excavation area abbreviation TW stands for Temenos Wall, a wall that surrounded the ziggurat terrace and its extended sacred space in the northern central portion of the city of Ur through much of its history. The wall may have begun in the Early Dynastic period, as Woolley found some indication of what he believed to be its earliest foundation. There was clearly an Ur III period version that ran south of the giparu and then further southeast to encompass the ehursag. This was the general line of the wall through the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian and into the Kassite period, though the Kassites made some changes in the northern portion. Finally, the Neo-Babylonians changed the wall greatly, expanding the area encompassed to the north and south and adding several gateways. The foundations of this later, quite massive, wall often destroyed earlier remains.
Woolley explored parts of the temenos wall in many seasons and frequently used the TW abbreviation for the wall in any of its building periods. Other excavation area abbreviations include parts of the temenos, particularly NCF, PDW and BC. The temenos wall built by Urnamma was 6 meters thick and built of mud brick with a baked brick facing. Most of the baked brick had been removed, probably for later building. The Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus temenos wall had chambers within it and sported six gates into the temenos area. This area was known as e-gish-nu-gal (Woolley read this e-gish-shir-gal). At least one later interpretation conflates TW with the phrase Town Wall, but the wall surrounding Ur was always referred to as the city wall, (CLW).:
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In the southeast portion of the mound of Ur, Woolley excavated a large horizontal extent of domestic space roughly 115 x 85m. near the surface he found scattered Neo-Babylonian and Kassite remains and intrusive graves of the late periods but he did not publish these in detail nor are there any extant notes covering them. Instead, Woolley's main goal was to uncover the best preserved floorplans of houses. These he found several meters down, houses of the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian period. Because the Old Babylonian period was typically that associated with the potential time of Abraham, Woolley used the abbreviation AH (Abraham's Housing) to refer to this excavation area.
In the course of excavation of the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian levels Woolley numbered 27 'houses,' or excavation units. He renumbered the houses for publication based on the overall plan, preserved walls, and doors onto streets. In this way he showed there were 52 individual houses within his 27 excavation areas. However, houses were frequently altered throughout period, as families would knock out walls or block up doors, and thus true house numbers are difficult to establish. Woolley mentions phases of rebuilding, but states that he sought the best preserved floor plan and published the excavation of a particular house based on that plan alone. In some cases he noted deeper remains that may have gone back to the Ur III period. These levels he partially uncovered as he excavated graves beneath the Larsa period floors.
A great deal of baked brick was in use for walls of the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian period. Some houses used it in the lowest portion of a wall, but others used it for entire walls up to 3 meters in height. Town planning was not evident, as streets tended to wander in narrow and winding paths. Corners where streets met were often rounded, leading Woolley to surmise that this was to prevent problems with laden donkeys catching their wares on corners.
Many houses had a domestic chapel within, often with family burials beneath the floor. Communal chapels were also noted, at least four being identified in the area. Finally, Woolley believed that some buildings were specifically used for commercial activities (shops), though this is difficult to prove.:
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The excavation area abbreviation AD was apparently duplicated by accident and thus refers to two different areas of the site. Legrain reported the abbreviation as "Annex of Dungi's Tomb," but he was not on site the year that the context was excavated. He placed the abbreviation with this meaning on cards he created for inscribed material that came to him in the museum. Some tablets and cylinder seals were found in the filling of the tomb annex and some even have a note that they are from Seal Impression Strata against the tomb or its foundational fill. These artifacts are clearly from the BC area, that of the Mausoleum of the Ur III kings built by Shulgi and his son Amar-Sin (Amar-Suen).
Amar-Sin built two annexes onto the Shulgi building (See area BC), one to the northwest and the other to the southeast. It is not clear which of the two annexes Legrain was referring to with the abbreviation AD, probably either or both. Essentially artifacts from this use of AD can only be located generally to the overall BC area at the eastern edge of the Royal Cemetery (PG).
On the excavation site the abbreviation AD was being used for the so-called Palace of Bel-Shalti-Nannar. Artifacts from the two separate AD contexts have been divided in the digital data wherever possible.:
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Near Tell Halawiyeh on the east bank of the Euphrates in the Nassireh district. :
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This term describes the area around Ur. It includes the sites surrounding Ur from where objects were brought in by the workers. :
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Near Sharif:
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Woolley called the east corner of the Neo-Babylonian temenos the Bur-Sin Corner (area BC) because he found bricks of Bur-Sin (now read Amar-Sin or Amar-Suen) there in early season explorations.
Area BC is particularly complex because it consists of substantial building in many periods. The largest building was of the Ur III period, and it is this building to which the abbreviation BC typically refers in field notes. It sits at the northeastern edge of the Royal Cemetery. The main Ur III building was 35 x 27m and its southwest wall was preserved two meters in height, while its northeast wall was largely destroyed. Its walls were built with inscribed bricks of Shulgi. The overall layout of the building is much like a courtyard house but on a large scale and with more ritual furnishings. Attached to this building were two annexes, one northwest and the other southeast, built with bricks of Shulgi's son, Amar-Sin (see context AD). Beneath the entire building were three very large vaults. All of them had been plundered in antiquity and only scattered fragments of artifacts and bones were discovered inside. Nonetheless, Woolley believed that these vaults originally held the remains of the Ur III kings. For this reason, area BC is sometimes referred to as the Mausoleum Site.
The building was destroyed by Elamites, according to Woolley, and sometime thereafter houses of the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian period were constructed in the area (see House 30). Finally, the Neo-Babylonian Temenos wall was constructed over and through parts of the remains.:
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The meaning of this excavation area abbreviation is not clear, but its location is known to be immediately southeast of the giparu (KP) extending to the ehursag (HT) in the east. Badly preserved remains of a building were found here, distinct from the giparu. On a tentative reconstruction of the ground plan, Woolley suggests the original structure measured some 35x40 meters. The building remains date to the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian period and many small tablets recording business transactions were found within. T.C. Mitchell, editing the UE 7 volume published after Woolley's death, notes that many of these tablets actually date to the reigns of Shulgi and Amar-Sin. According to Woolley, some of the tablets were twisted together as if in the process of being recycled to reuse their clay for new tablets. He also suggests, very tentatively and based only on a few minor and out-of-place bricks, that this building was originally a temple to Nin-Ezen.:
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The excavation area abbreviation DP probably stands for Dungi's Palace; Woolley believed the building with bricks marked e-hur-sag (thought to refer to Shulgi's palace) was too small to be what should be a grandiose building. Thus, he explored the area southeast of the giparu extensively looking for it. Most of his abbreviations for excavations in this area refer to the potential palace. When he found cylinders inscribed with the name of Shulgi beneath a partly ruined floor (excavation area abbreviation DT in the northwestern portion of area EH), he thought he might have found it or at least indications of it. This building turned out to be a temple dedicated to Dimtabba (now read Nimintabba) and its very partial remains extended beyond the line of the Neo-Babylonian temenos wall to the west. Woolley continued to dig into this western area under a new excavation abbreviation, DP. This area did not reveal a palace or additional ruins of the Nimintabba temple, but instead it showed denuded domestic space related to Hall's Area A excavations. Area DP became the northern portion of area EM, but only partial houses are shown here along what Woolley termed Quality Lane. The houses here were never published in great detail, but many of the DP graves appear on the area EM map as falling along Quality Lane.:
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The abbreviation DT stands for Dungi's Temple or Dimtabba Temple and this abbreviation is found within the larger EH excavation area; Woolley discovered cylinders inscribed with the name of Shulgi beneath a partly ruined floor in area EH and assigned the building it was associated with an excavation abbreviation of its own. The building's walls were almost completely destroyed, however, and thus were difficult to follow. They lay in the northwestern portion of area EH and originally defined a temple dedicated to the god Nimintabba (Woolley initially read the name as Dim-Tab-Ba). The ephemeral remains of the temple stretched underneath and beyond the Neo-Babylonian temenos wall and Woolley expanded excavation in search of the rest, but little more of the temple was found. The westward expansion of the excavation beyond the temenos wall became excavation area abbreviation DP.:
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When Woolley lists context only as 'Ur' on his object catalog cards he tends to mean that it was found somewhere within the confines of the city wall but no more specific than that. These are often surface finds that Woolley felt did not require more specific find spot information. Those found outside the city walls were typically recorded as 'brought in' followed by the name of the broad region from which they were brought in by the workers.:
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KP Grave B:
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KPC Grave 2:
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KP Copper Grave 1:
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Neo Babylonian Grave S.4:
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KP Grave C:
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The excavation area abbreviation HD stands for Hall's Dump. When H.R. Hall investigated portions of the ziggurat in 1919, he left a great deal of back-dirt to the south of the structure. Woolley worked for several seasons clearing the rest of the ziggurat and in season 3 he removed Hall's back-dirt dump. It had covered most of the southern ziggurat terrace, and moving it revealed a temple to Ningal of the Neo-Babylonian and Kassite periods as well as a series of rooms of these late periods probably used for storage. In the earlier periods, the southern terrace was largely free from structures.:
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The excavation area abbreviation HT stands for Hall's Temple because H.R. Hall had excavated parts of it in 1919. Hall called it Area (or Building) B and he found inscribed bricks in the paved floors of the building which indicated it was the ehursag, the house of the mountain, which was purported to be Shulgi's palace. Woolley, in his first season, found inscribed bricks in the walls that mentioned Ur-Namma's temple of the moon god, and he concluded the building was actually a temple, dubbing the excavation area HT. He believed the actual ehursag palace to be located somewhere else within the temenos. Many of his subsequent excavation abbreviations attest to his search for the building, but he eventually agreed that HT was the ehursag itself.
In his fourth season, Woolley cleared the remaining extents of the building. He had already explored parts of the terrace wall on which it stood and came to find that this was part of the Ur III temenos wall. Along this wall near the ehursag Woolley found a deep well, at the bottom of which (13 meters down) were many inscribed clay cones.:
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In season 10 Woolley had completed the Royal Cemetery volume (UE2) but he continued to expand the Royal Cemetery area and find more graves. Continuing the PG numbers would be confusing since they would not be included in the main publication of the cemetery. Thus, he shifted his numbering to reflect the year he was digging. Starting at the end of 1931, when season 10 began, he recorded PG1931 instead of solely PG. However, he had stopped the normal Private Graves sequence around the number 1850 (some PG/18xx graves were renumbered in the PG1931 or PG1932 sequence) and 1931 is easily mistaken for a grave in the normal sequence when it is actually a series of graves. Even more confusing, Woolley often shortened the 1931 number to PG31, which is easily confused for PG/31, a grave in Trial Trench E.
The general abbreviation PG1931 or PG31 refers to the 1931-1932 Royal Cemetery investigation, revisiting the area along the western side of the Mausoleum of the Ur III kings (area BC). Some of these graves are from the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian period and are likely associated with House 30. PG1931 graves were therefore often renamed for publication to LG/xx (Larsa Grave). Objects that were collected from the area but not associated with a particular grave were given the generic PG1931 or PG31 abbreviation. Specific graves were given additional numbers in the sequence PG1931/xx or PG31/xx. The highest number noted in this sequence is PG31/32, but most graves did not have objects or were not recorded since very few specific graves are indicated on the catalog cards.:
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Larnax Grave:
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A little S. or SW of Sakheira:
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12 miles south of Ur, almost 1 mile West at railway:
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Double Pot Grave:
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The grave is a complex one, consisting of a deep, walled shaft above a rubble and earth domed tomb. Woolley believed that the burials in the shaft acted as a kind of death pit, thus he believed the bodies in the shaft to be attendants to the primary burial in the domed chamber below.
In the main chamber were the bodies of five people, four men and one woman. The woman was clearly an important person, lying in the center of the tomb and having a gold cylinder seal as well as other high value objects, including much carnelian. The walls of the shaft above began from a layer packed over the domed chamber and in theory could be a different grave entirely. However, Woolley believed he had evidence of a continuous process that included the packing and smoothing of layers above the dome and then the construction of the shaft.
In the shaft, at differing levels, were four more burials. Some of these also possessed rather high-end objects and one had nearby a cylinder seal with the name of Meskalamdug, the King. In his section of PG1054, Woolley reconstructed a dome over this grave, but later intrusive burials had destroyed the upper walls and, if it had been there, the upper, smaller dome as well.:
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The meaning of this two-letter designation is unclear. It may derive from Woolley's search for Shulgi's palace and may thus stand for Palace of Dungi. Woolley came to realize, however, that it was an enormous courtyard surrounded by rooms, and at times in the excavation it was simply referred to as the Ziggurat Courtyard. The path through the court led to the ziggurat terrace and eventually to the temple atop it. The court was likely a gathering place for special occasions of worship to the moon god (whose name Woolley read Nannar, but which we read today as Nanna). Therefore, Woolley eventually dubbed this space the Great Nannar Courtyard.
Area PD is the large space to the east of the ziggurat terrace, substantially lower in elevation than the base of the ziggurat. It had many floors over many periods. It consisted of a large paved courtyard (some 50 x 75 meters) surrounded by rooms that may have been used for storage. Because of indentations in some of the wall faces, Woolley believed there was once an inset wooden colonnade along some of the walls.:
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The excavation area abbreviation PDW derives from the fact that the area lies to the west of the area designated PD, the Great Nanna Courtyard. Area PDW is on the ziggurat terrace itself, but includes only the north and northeast portion of the terrace since the Great Nanna Courtyard does not extend to the southern ziggurat terrace. The southern terrace was excavated under the abbreviation HD. Some of the finds from either side of the terrace may also be coded ZT. Legrain lists PDW as specifically the deep trench within the Ur-Nammu terrace, but this is almost certainly a reference to PAT, later called Pit K, a pit dug within PDW.
Area PDW included the investigation of the Bastion of Warad Sin at the northern corner of the ziggurat terrace and essentially part of the northern temenos wall. This structure was possibly a defensive gate that led onto the terrace in the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian period, expanded somewhat in the Kassite. It had thick walls and a potential sally-port gateway. Other structures uncovered here included the Ur III shrine to Nanna and its Neo-Babylonian counterpart as well as various potential storage rooms. Two deep pits were begun here in season 3 and completed in season 8, see area abbreviations Pit K and Pit L. Much other work was done on the northwest terrace in later seasons, particularly 9 and 10. See excavation area abbreviation NCF.:
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Essentially a suburb of the ancient city, this area is located about 2 km to the northeast of the ziggurat of Ur. The precise extents of Diqdiqqeh were never defined, but Woolley referred to it as the low ground between the main railway line and the branch that went to Nasiriyeh. The train lines no longer run in the same place they did in Woolley's day, but Corona images allow us to recreate their paths. This makes the general boundaries west, south, and east somewhat known but how far it stretched north is not completely clear.
From the first season workers walking across this area picked up surface finds and brought them to Woolley. At that time the location did not have a fixed name in Woolley's mind and thus first season references sometimes say 'near the railway' or 'near Munshid's water engine.' In the second season Woolley decided to investigate more systematically, but after two days of excavation he decided there was not enough remaining architecture to reward further work. Instead, he continued to allow the workers to gather finds over the next ten seasons, and many later catalog cards state "brought in: Diqdiqqeh"
The finds from Diqdiqqeh indicate that the ancient suburb played a role in manufacturing and perhaps in commerce. Canals seem to have met in the area and boats may have unloaded goods here. Many figurines, tools, moulds and other crafting items are among the finds, suggesting that Diqdiqqeh may have been an industrial area away from the main habitation. The so-called Treasury of Sin-Iddinam was also excavated in this general area in season 5.
In the Antiquaries Journal of January 1925, Woolley described Diqdiqqeh as follows: A mile and a half NE. of the ziggurat, between the main railway line and the Nasiriyah branch, there is a patch of low-lying ground, occasionally cultivated, which the natives call Diqdiqqeh... a happy hunting-ground for treasure-seekers, and I took advantage of this fact to collect from the natives the scattered antiquities which they might bring to light.:
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These were graves excavated in AH that have not been assigned a period. :
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Graves located somwehere in CLW, that do not have a period designation:
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Graves in EH that do not have a period designation:
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Excavated in 1930:
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Beginning in season 7, Woolley excavated a series of pits within the Royal Cemetery. He had already cut this area down about 10 meters from the surface, so it was an ideal location to go deeper to investigate the earliest occupation of the site. The only map of the location of these pits that Woolley published is found in Ur Excavations volume 4 in 1955, but it is demonstrably unreliable. Combining information from the field notes, the UE4 plan, and the UE4 stratigraphic profile helps to get closer to the actual sizes and locations, but most of these cannot be taken as exact.
Pit A was located relatively centrally in the overall Royal Cemetery Area, though its exact location is not known. A reference in the Antiquaries Journal for 1929 mentions a pit dug somewhat northwest of Pit B on the "other side of PG/1237" and this must be Pit A as no other pit would fit the description. This helps to narrow the location as does the fitting of lines from the combined stratigraphic profile published in UE4. Everything points to a location west-nortwest of PG/1237. The plan map published in 1955 shows Pit A substantially southwest of this, but it is not trustworthy. The stratigraphic profile places the width of the pit at 2 meters and it is probably safe to assume that it was square. It began at the same level as the floor of PG/1237 and went down at least another 5 meters, reaching 1.5 meters above sea level. No artifacts are recorded as having been collected from this pit.:
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Tell Abu Shahrain:
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In season 8, Woolley expanded the Royal Cemetery (area PG) to the southwest and northeast. After digging more of the southwestern extent, he decided to investigate deeper still in two pits larger than those he dug in season 7 but not as large as Pit F in the Temenos area. These two pits were initially Pits I and J in the sequence but confusion with lettering caused Woolley to begin at the end of the alphabet and rename these pits Y and Z.
Pit I was located northwest of Pit J along the southwestern line of the Royal Cemetery excavation and was quickly renamed Pit Z. There are very few references to Pit I in the field records. Legrain lists PIG as a pit near PFT and the final letter G shows that it was within the Royal Cemetery area rather than the Temenos area. Pit Z is about 50 meters southeast of Pit F. The published stratigraphic profile shows it to be 6 meters wide at the top and 4 meters wide at the bottom. Its sides sloped in order to prevent collapse. It reached just below sea level and it revealed more of the seal impression strata that ran through the cemetery. This pit and Pit Y both uncovered graves earlier than the Royal Cemetery main burials. These graves were eventually given JNG numbers, a continuous sequence across Pits W, X, Y, and Z that collectively came to be considered area PJ. Several, however, were initially given PG numbers and later renumbered in the JNG sequence.:
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Excavation area abbreviation PAT was also called Ziggurat Pit A. It was expanded and renamed Pit K in season 9. The pit was located within the area of PDW, on top of the northwest portion of the ziggurat terrace and cut down into its filling. Woolley had hoped to find early buildings beneath the terrace but only uncovered fill of broken bricks and Ubaid period pottery. He dug a second pit to the west on the line of the terrace wall (see Pit L). Woolley is unclear on the exact placement of either pit and the only plan published does not correspond well with his notes. In a field report dated Feb. 1, 1931, he speaks of removing the Neo-Babylonian sanctuary of Nannar and making this the site of his deep pit. This building sat on the northeastern side of the terrace, just north of the ziggurat's central staircase. In publication UE4, however, Woolley states that the pit was located in the center of the northwest portion of the terrace (the plan shows it falling in the UrIII shrine of Nannar). At this point Woolley also states the pit was dug in 1932, but all field records indicate it was dug in January, 1931 (and begun as PAT in 1925).
In the season 9 excavation it is clear that Woolley intended to excavate a deep trench on the terrace that included both PAT and PBT. He laid out an area measuring some 20x40 meters that included the smaller pits. This excavation uncovered the early and quite dense terrace wall, so Woolley continued as two pits, Pit K and Pit L, falling essentially on either side of it. Pit K was farther southeast and measured 11x20 meters, stepping in to become 9.5 meters at a depth of 7 meters from the surface. It continued down to sea level, about 14 meters below the surface. These measurements are obtained from the stratigraphic profile published in UE4, but it is admittedly difficult to interpret. The only scale on the image is the vertical and this scale appears to have been exaggerated to show the strata while including the entire horizontal extent on the page. When the portion of the ziggurat included on the drawing is scaled to meet its appropriate horizontal, the Pit K profile is shown to be approximately 11 meters NW-SE at the top.
Two season 8 artifacts have the context Ziggurat Pit A (with a note that this was renamed Pit K). Field notes do not indicate excavation of the pit in season 8 and the artifacts are very late in the season 8 sequence. Woolley may have been cleaning out the old pit in preparation for the following season expansion.:
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Combined with PG/580:
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Pit F Grave A:
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Pit F Grave B:
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Pit F Grave C:
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Pit F Grave D:
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Pit F Grave EE:
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Pit F Grave G:
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Pit F Grave H:
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Pit F Grave J:
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Completely ruined. :
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Taken up by a broken brick tomb and a larnax burial. :
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Guest chamber before destroyed by builders of Neo-Babylonian Temenos Wall :
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Broken larnax burial and pot-burials. :
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The excavation area abbreviation AD was apparently duplicated by accident and thus refers to two different areas of the site. At the excavation, the designation was used to refer to a large Neo-Babylonian structure in the northern portion of the site that was eventually dubbed the 'Palace of Bel-Shalti-Nannar.' The horizontal extent of this building is one of the largest at Ur and the layout resembles that of the 'Great House' in Merkes at Babylon. The building's foundations were preserved to a great depth (over 3 meters) and paved floors sat at the top of the intentional fill of these foundations. Walls did not extend much above this level and excavation consisted mostly of following the outlines in order to determine the ground plan. A few artifacts were recovered, primarily from intrusive graves and from foundation deposits.
Inscribed bricks in the preserved floor led Woolley to identify the building with the residence of the entu priestess in the Neo-Babylonian period. It was built for the daughter of Nabonidus, whose name we now read as Ennigaldi-Nanna but which in Woolley's day was read Bel-Shalti-Nannar. It may have had some administrative functions but it mainly appears to have been a large-scale residence.
Legrain, in his museum work on inscribed materials, used the excavation area abbreviation AD to refer to a subsection of area BC (the mausoleum of the Ur III kings). Artifacts from the two separate AD contexts have been divided in the digital data wherever possible.:
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This unit includes a shrine, store rooms and the domestic housing of the entu preistess.:
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Entrance way through NW Wall. Was divided into A.1 and A.2
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Private house, living quarters of entu-priestess
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Possible Store room:
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Passageway:
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Long Passageway:
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Antecella with bases to support stele:
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Subsidary room containing tablets:
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Decoration of doorway indicates this room as a true cella, however no podium or raised structure:
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Storeroom. Treasury?:
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Corridor:
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Storeroom for oil?:
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Small antechamber to cella A30:
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Antechamber to cella A30:
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Ur III; Old Babylonian; Kassite; Assyrian; Neo-Babylonian
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Niche expanded to a separate room, no trace of cult statue/podium surviving:
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Possible treasury:
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Vestibule room leading from entrance to main courtyard.
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Cella and principal cult room of temple
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Ur III; Old Babylonian; Kassite; Assyrian; Neo-Babylonian:
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long antechamber of temple possibly used for lustration. It was lined with brick benches and waterproofed with bitumen:
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Corridor possibly another lustration before entering preistess house.:
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Private house, living quarters of entu preistess:
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Large courtyard in the living quarters of the entu preistess:
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Private house, living quarters of entu priestess.:
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Privated living quarters of the entu preistess:
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Group of rooms with tombs beneath the floors, the resting place of former entu preistess. A shrine and storehouses for lesser gods. :
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Antechamber to a shrine:
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Small Shrine:
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Cella for possibly one of the gods who look after Ningal:
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Cella for deities who take care of Ningal:
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Storeroom that encases rooms B6, B7, B8.:
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Storeroom with stelas of Amar-Sin:
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Storeroom that was possibly used as a cemetery in later periods:
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Enlargement of cemetery of entu-preistess:
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Cemetery of entu preistess:
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Cemetery of entu priestess:
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Cemetery of the entu priestess :
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Cemetery of entu preistesses:
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Cemetery of the entu priestesses :
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The sanctuary stood as a complete and independent entity. Rooms and courts are all interconnected, It has it's own name, the E.NUN. It has a similar plan to private houses with added features like washing places, stele, benches, etc. There are storage jars, weavers pits, a large kitchen, and economic tablets attest to a varied activities involved in running an estate.:
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Vestibule room to the Ningal Temple:
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Small storageroom?:
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Weaver's Pit:
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Antechamber to Ningal Temple includes the statue of the goddes Bau and temple records.:
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Antechamber to Ningal Temple. Possible Treasury:
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Inner sanctum of Ningal Temple, including Ningal's statue:
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Possibly a formal 'bedroom' including a raised area that may have held a bed. the E.NUN. Room.:
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Kitchen Suite including cooking range:
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Kitchen suite including bread oven:
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Kitchen suite for all the inhabitants of the giparu, both human and divine:
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Main Courtyard of Ningal Temple. In the North corner there is a brick bitumen lined water tank and limestone pillar. :
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Large open court.:
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Domestic House dating to the Kassite Period. SE side of a street. Walls were often altered and patched.:
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Long and narrow entryway. :
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Mud lined floor with drains and sealings of Ibbi-Suen.:
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Destroyed by Temenos Wall. Unknown function.:
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Addition to original plan. Mud floor with large clay jars.:
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Roughly paved room step down possibly store room with hoard of objects.:
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Off of courtyard, includes fireplace and drains. Possible Audience Chamber:
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House, much ruined. Field cards say maybe a kiln/furnace, publication doesn't mention this.:
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The best preserved house in the KPS site. :
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First investigated by Taylor in 1853, the dublalmah was originally a gateway onto the eastern corner of the ziggurat terrace. It expanded into a larger building in the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian period. It had multiple functions, religious and administrative, through the centuries. An inscribed door socket of Amar-Sin found here refers to the building as the great storehouse of tablets and the place of judgment. It was thus essentially a law court, possibly with tablets recording judgments stored within. In Mesopotamia, an eastern gateway--in sight of the rising sun--was typically seen as a place of justice, and gateways were often places where witnesses or judges might hear claims.
After the Ur III period the door onto the ziggurat terrace was sealed up and the dublalmah appears to have become a shrine, but it retained its name and probably its law court function. Kurigalzu made significant restorations to the building in the Kassite period and Woolley marveled at the well-constructed fully preserved arched doorway of this Late Bronze Age time. By the Neo-Babylonian period, the structure had essentially merged with the functions of the neighboring giparu.:
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The Harbor Temple had no field abbreviation, probably because HT was already in use and because very few artifacts were found within. Despite being largely empty, this building was described by Woolley as one of the best preserved temples of the Neo-Babylonian period in Mesopotamia.
The temple covered 33x27 meters and some of the bricks in its walls bore the inscription of Nebuchadnezzar. Nonetheless, Woolley suggested Nabonidus as the more likely founder. The walls were of mud brick with baked brick facing up to a meter thick and they stood to a height of 6.5 meters. The entire building was filled with clean sand and Woolley proposed that it was, in fact, not the actual temple but a complete replica beneath the surface never intended for human use. The actual temple would have stood above and it had completely eroded away. Evidence for the upper temple was found in a few paving bricks of Nabonidus at a level equivalent to the floor of the nearby 'Palace of Belshaltinannar'. In fact, Woolley suggested that the Harbor Temple may have been a chapel specifically associated with this building.
Creating such a substructure has apparent (much earlier) textual but not archaeological precedent. Woolley believed that after the sub-temple was complete, it was consecrated to the gods and then filled with sand, then an entire temple built again above it for human use. No indication of the deity to whom the temple was dedicated was found.
The temple was first uncovered at the end of season 8 and a temporary wooden roof was erected to keep it from filling in during summer sandstorms. So roofed, it appeared remarkably complete and Woolley suggested it be preserved this way for tourists to experience.:
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In House III:
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The ziggurat was a focus of Woolley's work in many seasons. It was covered in millennia of dirt and it took the initial seasons just to clear this away. In the process, many artifacts were discovered but Woolley did not assign a separate excavation area abbreviation other than Zig. and this does not always refer solely to the Ziggurat but also to its immediate surroundings. When Woolley listed Ziggurat or Zig as the context for an artifact, he usually included that it was at the foot, along the south wall, or some other region of the ziggurat itself. In 1931, however, he began using the code Zig.31 to indicate the deep cuts across and in front of the northern terrace that were essentially under the excavation area PDW. Many of the artifacts with the excavation area abbreviation Zig.31 come from the Ubaid period. The terrace was packed with soil gathered from earlier deposits at Ur, and thus the fill itself contained very early remains.
J.G. Taylor first investigated the ziggurat in 1854,R. Campbell Thomson in 1918 and HR Hall in 1919. Hall uncovered the southern portion and dug into the ziggurat itself to retrieve foundation cylinders of Nabonidus. Woolley worked extensively on the ziggurat, stating that there were only three seasons where it was not worked on in some form. In some of these seasons, however, it was really the ziggurat terrace and its buildings that were the main focus.:
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TTG is shorthand for Trial Trench G, the second extension of TTE, actually extending TTF and obliterating TTA. Like the other trenches in the Royal Cemetery it was never mapped and does not appear on an aerial photograph. The trench was dug on the same lines as TTF, essentially extending its width to the northwest. The first grave to be numbered in this trench was PG355, but the sequence from this point up to PG580 is shared among the three trenches. This trial trench and TTF may have been about 5 meters wide, somewhat wider than other trial trenches as Woolley continued to expand, though there is no proof of this other than a slight indication on the 1930 aerial photograph. Excavation while the three trenches were open would have resembled a wide stair case, with TTE being the lowest in the southeast, TTF somewhat higher to the northwest, and TTG higher still. By the end of the season, all three trenches had reached at least 5 meters depth, though TTE had reached 9 meters.
The northwest portion of the cemetery did not produce as many graves as the southeast and Woolley extended excavations in the following season over a large area southeast of TTE, beginning with PG580. He also began to map individual graves in the overall area at this point.:
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TTF is shorthand for Trial Trench F, the first extension of TTE. Like the other trenches in the royal cemetery it was never mapped and does not appear on an aerial photograph. The trench was dug on the same lines as TTE, essentially extending its width, and the only report that shows its southern line is a mention of the location of PG513 within it. This grave rested upon the ruined northwest wall of PG777, which means that TTF must have met TTE at PG777, since the roof of that grave was revealed in TTE. TTF therefore extended the width of TTE to the northwest.
The calculated location of TTF crosses over at least the southern end of TTA. This trench had been dug four years prior and had not been overly deep. It would likely have been mostly collapsed by this point, accounting for the somewhat different line of it and the season 5 trenches TTE, TTF, and TTG. While TTE was almost certainly around 4 meters in width as had been previous trial trenches, TTF and TTG may have been wider in order to find more graves. The only indication is the 1930 aerial photograph that shows an extent in the northwest portion of the cemetery that may go as far as 17 meters from the northwest edge of TTE. It is by no means certain, but a trench width of 6-7 meters (twice that of TTE) is suggested for each of TTF and TTG.
The first grave to be given a PG number in TTF was PG227. From this point, the sequence of grave numbers is shared between the two trenches, eventually to be supplemented with TTG.:
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TTE is shorthand for Trial Trench E, one of two initial trenches dug in season 5 to extend TTA from season 1. Woolley dug TTE and TTD at right angles to each other in order to search for graves in what he believed was a potentially vast cemetery. These trenches were never mapped and no aerial photos show them, as by the time of the 1930 photograph the trial trenches had been so extended that most of the Royal Cemetery area was exposed. Fortunately, Woolley's field records allow us to reconstruct its direction and extents. He states that TTE extended southwest to the south gate of the Neo-Babylonian temenos wall. This would make it about 85 meters in length, and though he does not tell us its width it is likely that it was around 4 meters, the same as the measurable trial trenches A, B, and C.
Although Woolley reports that he dug "two long trenches running diagonally across the site from the head of the old trench" only TTD can actually have begun at the northern end of TTA. TTE extends at a right angle to TTD, but it does so 8 meters from the northeast corner of TTA. In order to place TTE accurately, other information has been used from field notes and publications. These show that TTE struck PG580 but did not completely reveal it. In fact, Woolley began to dig part of PG580 from the side of the trial trench because he had cut through it without recognizing its full importance. He had to leave this particular grave at the end of the season and return to it in season 6. TTE also hit the stone roofing of PG777 but left it intact. PG580 and PG777 were mapped and show the direction and general placement of TTE.
TTE almost immediately began revealing graves, some of them relatively rich in gold jewelry. It is probably for this reason that Woolley did not continue TTD to any great depth but chose instead to focus on TTE. In fact, he later began extending TTE into new trenches along the same line (TTF and TTG). He assigned numbers to each grave as it was uncovered, preceded by the abbreviation PG (Private Grave). The initial sequence, PG1-PG226 were all located within TTE. The sequence then began to share with TTF and eventually with TTG. Unfortunately, none of the first 579 graves were ever mapped within the length of their trial trenches.:
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TTD is shorthand for Trial Trench D, one of two initial trenches dug in season 5 to extend TTA from season 1. Woolley dug TTD and TTE to search for graves in what he believed was a potentially vast cemetery. Neither of these trenches were ever mapped and no aerial photos show them, as by the time of the 1930 RAF photograph the trial trenches had been so extended that most of the Royal Cemetery area had already been exposed. Luckily, Woolley's field records allow us to reconstruct the direction and extents of the trench. He states that it ran from the head (northeast end) of TTA and extended southeastward to the east corner of the Neo-Babylonian temenos wall, making it about 65 meters in length. Though he does not tell us its width it is likely that it was about 4 meters, the same as the measurable trial trenches A, B, and C.
TTD did not reveal much, but it was only excavated to a depth of around 2 meters. As Woolley reports in the Antiquaries Journal volume 7 page 1: "The trench to the temenos angle produced no sign of buildings, but for the greater part of its length a floor of beaten mud, lying about 1.75 m. below the present surface, at which level we stopped short." It had just missed the south corner of the Mausoleum of the Ur III kings, and when area PG was expanded beneath the level of TTD in season 8, many graves were recorded here.:
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That its foundation goes back behind the Third Dynasty of Ur is certain, for fragments of walls
and pavements in pIano-convex brick (PI. 30a) prove the fact, but of the character of that original structure nothing can be said. Ur-Nammu was responsible for the temple in its existing form; he built it in mud brick, or at any rate made much use of that material, and his work was added to and probably completed by his son Dungi. Bur-Sin
replaced with burnt brick the mud-brick walls of his grandfather and Gimil-Sin added further details. The temple was
completely overthrown by the Elamites on the occasion of the downfall of Ibi-Sin and under the Isin Dynasty was rebuilt by Gimil-ilishu, who faithfully followed the lines of the Third Dynasty ground-plan. Ishme-Dagan, Nur-Adad,
and Sin-idinnam all in turn undertook repairs of its structure and Kudur-Mabug seems to have done some more radical restoration, but his building was destroyed by the Babylonians in the time of Samsu-iluna. It was probably
restored after a fashion not much later, but the first actual record of its re-establishment is that of Kuri-Galzu; the
Kassite ruler still kept to the original plan, but added a few new features. His building was repaired, without any
noticeable alterations, by Marduk-nadin-ahhe in the 11th century B.C. Nebuchadnezzar was the first to tamper seriously with the ancient ground-plan; his reconstruction involved a complete change of character corresponding to
a change of ritual in the temple services, and in the temple as he left it the old E-nun-mah is barely recognisable. Nabonidus repaired but does not seem to have modified his predecessor's work. Finally we find, above the Nabonidus
level, remains of a further reconstruction which we can attribute only to Cyrus of Persia.:
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The building was an almost exact square measuring some 57.00 m. in either direction; its angles were, as usual,
orientated to the cardinal points of the compass. It was surrounded by a wall 2.70 m. thick strengthened by double
buttresses, of which there were five on each side, and the area thus enclosed was raised to form a platform about 2.00 m. above the level of the ground outside; this wall is fairly well preserved on the NE (v. Pis. 28b., 29b), has
suffered a good deal, and is partly masked by subsequent additions in the SE (PI. 29a), could be traced only by its
foundations on the SW, where the building has been remodelled, and on the NW it has been completely eradicated by a drain of Nebuchadnezzar. There is a doorway in the SE wall which, however, would seem to have led only into
two small chambers having no communication with the rest of the building. In view of the denudation of the walls,
which here do not rise above floor level, it is not possible to assert definitely that such communication never
existed, but the facts that the wall between rooms 17 and 18 is whereas in almost every other case the doorways can be distinguished even at this level (rooms 8, 9, and 10 are the sole exceptions), and that no hinge-box or doorsocket stone was found here, make the theory of a door hazardous. Probably the real entrance to the building
was in the NW front.:
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Along the city wall (CLW) in the southeast Woolley came across a relatively large building and spent some time investigating it. Here he found clay cones of Rim-Sin and a foundation deposit mentioning that this king had dedicated the building to the god Enki. Thus Woolley referred to the building as the Enki Temple of Rim-Sin or simply the Rim-Sin Temple. Legrain lists the abbreviation RS but the code does not appear on any field catalogue cards.
Rim-Sin's ninth year is known as 'the year in which he built the temple of En-ki at Ur.' He probably made major restorations rather than founding the building, however, as there is an earlier, Amar-Sin, temple beneath. There are many inscribed bricks of this earlier king, but the early ground plan was mostly destroyed.:
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In season 6, Woolley expanded his trial trenches in area PG opening up a much larger space in the Royal Cemetery proper. The northeastern extents in TTG had been revealing fewer and fewer graves, so he expected many more to the southeast; indeed, he found an increasing density here. He no longer considered this to be trial exploration, but a true excavation area, and thus began to call the space the Private Graves Area, abbreviated PGA. He also began mapping individual graves, establishing at least 4 mapping points from which he took angular measures to pinpoint locations. Unfortunately he never showed where these stakes were placed on any map so we can no longer utilize the recorded angles.
Cards from this season that bear the abbreviation PGA all concern textual material. Grave goods or other finds were recorded under their individual PG numbers rather than the general PGA abbreviation. It appears that the only material collected in the area but not associated with graves directly were inscribed objects and thus these were the only ones to garner the PGA designation.:
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Pit X was excavated as a large southern extension of the Royal Cemetery area, likely originally conceived as an extension of Pit Y (Pit J) at the southwest corner. Its main purpose was to uncover the earliest burials in the area, the so-called Jemdat Nasr cemetery first encountered in pits Y and Z. Pit X measured approximately 30x15 meters, though it may originally have been laid out to be 35x20. Woolley reports it as a rectangle covering 1000 square meters, but even the largest indication on the plan map and satellite images is at most 700 square meters and not truly rectangular. Nevertheless, it is a very large space that reached sea level some 20 meters below the surface of the mound. In the Antiquaries Journal for 1934 Woolley reports a total of 13,160 cubic meters of dirt having been removed from this pit.
Some minor building remains of the Neo-Babylonian and Kassite periods were found near the surface but most of the area was apparently used as a dumping ground in the Late Bronze Age and later. Woolley knew that the Royal Cemetery area extended to the south of his main area PG but believed he would find few graves of the Akkadian and EDIII period. He discovered more than he expected, but none were overly rich in finds. These graves did not receive PG numbers since the UE2 Royal Cemetery volume had already been published. Instead, they received PJ numbers. The series PJG applied to graves in Pit X Woolley felt to be Akkadian or later and PJB applied to those of the EDIII period. The break between these two sequences came at around 10 meters above sea level. In all, Pit X added some 250 to the more than 1000 burials of these periods that Woolley had already uncovered in area PG.
Beneath the graves of the Royal Cemetery (starting at around 6 meters above sea level) Woolley reached the earlier graves of what he called the Jemdat Nasr cemetery. Graves at this depth were given JNG numbers. In fact, JNG eventually applied to all of the early graves discovered in pits W, X, Y, and Z. Some of those excavated in Y and Z had received PG numbers but they were renumbered for publication in the JNG sequence. Most of these graves actually date to the Early Dynastic I period.
The area near the base of the pit was smaller than that at the top. Only around 400 square meters was exposed near sea level, yet more than 200 early graves were discovered. Although Ubaid period pottery fragments were found, only two Ubaid burials were discovered here. The large area excavation stopped at 2 meters above sea level, but a test pit at the bottom reached down to sea level itself.:
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Pit W was excavated from the bottom of area PG near Pits Y and Z in order to more fully explore the Seal Impression Strata discovered running across the cemetery. Since these strata contained so many early seals and tablets it was clear that they were essential for dating the graves and for learning more about the administration of the city of Ur. In order to observe the strata more clearly, Pit W was much larger than most exploratory pits in the cemetery region, laid out to be 15x7 meters. It was dug from the northeast side of PG/1631 but its horizontal extents were not mapped and Benati (2015) believes that PG/1631 was mistaken for PG/1648, placing Pit W somewhat farther SE. Its published stratigraphic profile shows that PG/1631 (possibly 1648) was actually somewhere near the middle of the long side of the trench and Woolley states that Pit W was placed so as to virtually fill the gap between Pits Y and Z, but was set a few meters northeast of them. This allows for a relatively accurate placement of the pit.
Pit W quickly ran through the seal impression strata but Woolley continued it down much farther, as he had with Pits Y and Z, to reach about a meter below sea level. He thus uncovered many graves earlier than the main Royal Cemetery, and because he believed them to be from the Jemdet Nasr period, he began JNG numbers for them. This discovery, combined with early graves in Pit Y, spawned the conception of a Jemdet Nasr cemetery running beneath and south of the Royal Cemetery, and in season 12 Woolley would seek to expose it in Pit X.:
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In season 10 Woolley had completed the Royal Cemetery volume (UE2) but he continued to expand the Royal Cemetery area and find more graves. Continuing the PG numbers would be confusing since they would not be included in the main publication of the cemetery. Thus, he shifted his numbering to reflect the year in which he was digging, beginning very late in 1931. When January arrived, he shifted his numbers to PG1932. However, he had stopped the normal Private Grave sequence at around number 1850 (some PG/18xx numbers were renamed PG1931 or PG1932 numbers) and 1932 is easily mistaken for an individual grave when it is actually a series of graves from late in the excavations. Even more confusing, Woolley often shortened the 1932 number simply to PG32, which is easily mistaken for PG/32, a grave in Trial Trench E.
The general abbreviation PG1932 or PG32 refers to the 1931-1932 Royal Cemetery investigation, revisiting the area along the western side of the Mausoleum of the Ur III kings (area BC). Some of these graves are from the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian period and are likely associated with House 30. PG1932 graves were therefore often renamed for publication to LG/xx (Larsa Grave). Objects that were collected from the area but not associated with a particular grave were given the generic PG1932 or PG32 abbreviation. Specific graves were given additional numbers in the sequence PG1932/xx or PG32/xx. The highest number noted in this sequence is PG32/80.:
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Beginning in season 7, Woolley excavated a series of pits within the Royal Cemetery. He had already cut this area down about 10 meters from the surface, so it was an ideal location to go deeper to investigate the earliest occupation of the site. The only map of the location of these pits that Woolley published is found in Ur Excavations volume 4 in 1955, but it is demonstrably unreliable. Combining information from the field notes, the UE4 plan, and the UE4 stratigraphic profile helps to get closer to the actual sizes and locations, but most of these cannot be taken as exact.
Pit H is probably the smallest of the pits in the Royal Cemetery. It does not appear on the stratigraphic profile but is clearly stated to have been located in the middle of chamber B of PG/779. This is a small chamber measuring only 2x2 meters and the pit therefore must be this size or smaller. Woolley reports reaching 2.5 meters above sea level in the pit, beginning at the level of the chamber only 5.65 meters above sea level. Its relatively small horizontal and vertical extents are almost certainly why it does not appear on the profile drawing. It is also approximately in line with Pit A at the angle of the stratigraphic profile and would thus be difficult to include. Finally, it may actually be that the pit was dug in season 8, though there is no firm indication of this.:
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Beginning in season 7, Woolley excavated a series of pits within the Royal Cemetery. He had already cut this area down about 10 meters from the surface, so it was an ideal location to go deeper to investigate the earliest occupation of the site. The only map of the location of these pits that Woolley published is found in Ur Excavations volume 4 in 1955, but it is demonstrably unreliable. Combining information from the field notes, the UE4 plan, and the UE4 stratigraphic profile helps to get closer to the actual sizes and locations, but most of these cannot be taken as exact.
Pit G was the largest of the pits dug in the Royal Cemetery in season 7 (larger were dug in seasons 11 and 12). It was located northwest of PG/777. The stratigraphic profile shows it as being 10 meters from NW-SE, but an early reference in the Antiquaries Journal for 1929 states that it was laid out as being 14x4 meters. It may have been conceived of as two pits, however, as the same reference mentions one pit on the outer line of a retaining wall [of the early temenos?] and a smaller on the inner line. Together they are later referred to as Pit G, or the smaller one may have been abandoned and only the 10 meter extent of Pit G reported.
The pit was on the northwestern outskirts of the Royal Cemetery and it uncovered some building remains. In fact, walls were not unusual in the Royal Cemetery as witnessed by this quote from UE4, p.70: "Over a large part of the Cemetery area there extended walls of plano-convex mud bricks, at two distinct levels... All were thin and flimsy, all much destroyed by the diggers of the Cemetery graves." Woolley felt that these were just store rooms of a temporary nature.
The pits dug in the Royal Cemetery in season 7 were intended to test the lower levels and little if anything was collected from them. Pit G, however, appears to have been a prelude to Pit F and may have initially been conceived of as Pit F in the sequence. Pottery was collected from it and analyzed by Henri Frankfort in Antiquaries Journal volume 9. Initial mentions of the pit indicate it was to go to the lowest levels, but it only reached 7.5 meters above sea level. It also began at a much higher point than other trenches, at 14.5 above sea level. Woolley must have realized he needed a much larger pit to achieve his goals and began that as PFT in the next season. The shift from this pit to the much larger is likely the origin of Legrain's listing of separate PF and PFT contexts, and the beginning of Woolley's realization that he must rename the entire sequence of pits at Ur.:
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Beginning in season 7, Woolley excavated a series of pits within the Royal Cemetery. He had already cut this area down about 10 meters from the surface, so it was an ideal location to go deeper to investigate the earliest occupation of the site. The only map of the location of these pits that Woolley published is found in Ur Excavations volume 4 in 1955, but it is demonstrably unreliable. Combining information from the field notes, the UE4 plan, and the UE4 stratigraphic profile helps to get closer to the actual sizes and locations, but most of these cannot be taken as exact.
Pit E was near PG/777 but whether southwest or northeast is not clear. It is likely to have fallen to the southwest as the plan map places it on the western side. It was approximately 3x3 meters and was "sunk against the face of the wall of the second pre-cemetery series of buildings" (UE4 p.56). It reached a depth of about 2 meters above sea level. No artifacts are reported as having been collected from this pit.:
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Beginning in season 7, Woolley excavated a series of pits within the Royal Cemetery. He had already cut this area down about 10 meters from the surface, so it was an ideal location to go deeper to investigate the earliest occupation of the site. The only map of the location of these pits that Woolley published is found in Ur Excavations volume 4 in 1955, but it is demonstrably unreliable. Combining information from the field notes, the UE4 plan, and the UE4 stratigraphic profile helps to get closer to the actual sizes and locations, but most of these cannot be taken as exact.
Pit D is said to be close to PG/1332, though the UE4 plan map places it 20 meters to the northeast of this grave. Combining all available information puts Pit D only about 3 meters from the eastern corner of PG1332 and shows it to be about 2.5 meters square. It reached a depth of about 4 meters above sea level. No artifacts are recorded as having been collected from this pit.:
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Beginning in season 7, Woolley excavated a series of pits within the Royal Cemetery. He had already cut this area down about 10 meters from the surface, so it was an ideal location to go deeper to investigate the earliest occupation of the site. The only map of the location of these pits that Woolley published is found in Ur Excavations volume 4 in 1955, but it is demonstrably unreliable. Combining information from the field notes, the UE4 plan, and the UE4 stratigraphic profile helps to get closer to the actual sizes and locations, but most of these cannot be taken as exact.
Pit C is said to be in the southeast corner of the Royal Cemetery. The cemetery was expanded through the years, however, and the corner referenced in relation to this pit should be the corner as of its excavation in 1929. The stratigraphic positioning compared to the overall map of the Royal Cemetery allows us to place Pit C with relative confidence, but its horizontal extent is not known as only its northwestern edge appears on the stratigraphic profile. It is likely that this was a 2x2 meter square, as were so many of the others dug this season in this area. Pit C reached a depth of 1.5 meters above sea level. No artifacts are recorded as having been collected from it.:
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Beginning in season 7, Woolley excavated a series of pits within the Royal Cemetery. He had already cut this area down about 10 meters from the surface, so it was an ideal location to go deeper to investigate the earliest occupation of the site. The only map of the location of these pits that Woolley published is found in Ur Excavations volume 4 in 1955, but it is demonstrably unreliable. Combining information from the field notes, the UE4 plan, and the UE4 stratigraphic profile helps to get closer to the actual sizes and locations, but most of these cannot be taken as exact.
Pit B was located in the annex to PG/1237, the Great Death Pit. This 'annex' was immediately to the northeast of the pit and is only shown on early maps (Antiquaries Journal for 1929). Woolley believed it was the site of a completely destroyed chamber for the primary burial associated with the death pit. He states that Pit B was not much more than a meter square, but the stratigraphic profile shows it at 2 meters across. It began from the level of PG/1237 and continued down about another 6 meters to around 1 meter above sea level. No artifacts are recorded as having been collected from this pit.:
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A few artifacts excavated in the first season at Ur are recorded with the excavation area abbreviation PH. The artifacts are ceramics of the Persian period, so it seems the abbreviation stands for Persian House or Persian Housing. There is no clear indication of where this domestic area was located but it is very likely to be along the northern edge of the temenos wall where other late period artifacts were excavated in the same season. These were said to come from Cemeteries X, Y, and Z, all of which were near each other along the line of or just north of the Neo-Babylonian temenos wall and were later found to be graves from beneath the floors of late period (Neo-Babylonian and Persian) houses. The context was never published on its own but instead is likely to be a part of the later assigned excavation area abbreviation XNCF.:
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Ziggurat Pit B (PBT) was expanded and renamed Pit L in season 9. The pit sat on top of the northwest portion of the ziggurat terrace and cut down into the terrace itself. Woolley is unclear on its exact placement and the only plan published does not correspond well with his notes. In the Antiquaries Journal for 1925, he states only that this pit was dug west of the first (PAT) along the line of the terrace wall and included the find U.2826. This artifact, a shell plaque, carries on its catalog card only the location abbreviation PDW. The pit had to be located northwest of PAT (Pit K), but that pit is also difficult to pinpoint.
In the season 9 excavation it is clear that Woolley intended to excavate a deep trench on the terrace that included both PAT and PBT. He laid out an area measuring some 20x40 meters that included the smaller pits. This excavation uncovered the early and quite dense terrace wall, so Woolley continued as two pits, Pit K and Pit L, falling essentially on either side of it. Pit L was farther northwest and measured initially 15x20 meters, but it was split up again (according to the stratigraphic profile in UE4) and the main portion of Pit L measured only 5 meters NW-SE. At approximately 8 meters down from the surface, it was truncated again to about 2.5 meters NW-SE and continued down to sea level another 6 meters down. These measurements are obtained from the stratigraphic profile published in UE4, but it is admittedly difficult to interpret. The only scale on the image is the vertical and this scale appears to have been exaggerated to show the strata while including the entire horizontal extent on the page. See Pit K for more information.:
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The excavation abbreviation LT is recorded on only one artifact from season 3. The abbreviation probably stands for Lower Town or something to that effect since this area is found outside the walls of Ur, about 800 meters southwest of the ziggurat. Woolley sent a crew to excavate here for one day in season 3, uncovering partial remains of a small building, but little else. The building was never published and the only record of it is in a report dated November 15, 1924: "A small gang were set to test the character of a site lying some nine hundred yards SW of the Ziggurat, in low ground, where Mr. Gadd had remarked large bricks of a type unusual at Ur and possibly of Sargonid date. One day's work sufficed for this spot; a small building was found here, but it had been denuded by weather below floor level, nor was there anything left to indicate its period; the work was therefore abandoned.":
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Field photograph captions make it clear that LR is a series of rooms cutting across Area EH at a slight angle off of north-south, in the approximate grid squares of EH, E6-L9. Confusingly, these rooms then acquired their own letter designations running against the grid designations.
Woolley rarely used a grid, preferring to use architectural remains to guide his excavation. When he did use a local grid (usually because no architecture was visible to guide other numbering), it was typically established in 5x5 meter individual squares, numbered east to west and lettered south to north. These grid square number/letter combinations occasionally appear on artifact cards, but more often they do not. Only four artifacts have the context designation LR and one of them makes it clear that the area is within EH, as do many field photograph captions. The captions give some of the square numbers into which parts of LR fell, helping to confirm the overall location.:
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Area abbreviation LH refers to the excavation of an ancient (Larsa period?) pit mostly filled with broken pottery that sat in front of the eastern portion of the Third Dynasty temenos wall. The pit is inside area FH but appears to have been given its own abbreviation. Legrain lists the context as, "Pit in front of third dynasty wall" and one of the field catalog cards says similarly, "mixed rubbish in the pit in front of the IIIrd Dynasty wall." UE 6 discusses this rubbish pit briefly in connection with the Ur III temenos stating that the pit was located in site grid square Y 37.:
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Originally well built and brick paved. Cut through by the Temenos Wall of Nebuchadnezzar. :
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built on a slope, thus has stronger lower walls:
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Very little remains of this building. :
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The excavation area abbreviation HDB refers to the southern extension of area HD, thus it is beyond Hall's Dump, or south of the pile of back-dirt on the southern ziggurat terrace. Many of the artifact cards that have this context designation mention 'lower rooms' and it is apparent that the southern extension HDB uncovered walls at a lower elevation because they were off of the ziggurat terrace. This makes HDB actually the northern part of area KP (the giparu), also begun in season 3. Only one season 4 artifact has the abbreviation HD, and it sits among many other cards from KP.:
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1
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The excavation area abbreviation FH stands for 'Front of Hall'. By this, Woolley meant the area in front of (north of) Hall's excavation area B, the building found to be the ehursag. Woolley dug Trial Trench C (TTC) in the southern extent of this denuded area in season 4 and expanded investigations in seasons 9 and 10 in order to complete his understanding of the constructions inside the temenos and especially to find more evidence of the earlier temenos wall.
In a season 9 report early in 1931, Woolley had this to say about what he found in area FH: "considerable Larsa wall, some Kassite house remains of no particular importance, and a remarkable cistern of burnt bricks and bitumen." In season 10, he said: "Having proved that nothing could be recovered in this area to complete the ground-plan of the Temenos I stopped the work.":
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1
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This is the excavation area south of area ES, beyond the southernmost wall of the enunmah and just east of the dublalmah (likely it extends further west than the reference image shows). It was in this area that a door socket of Kurigalzu mentioning a building called the emuriana was found and Woolley attempted to uncover this building here. The socket was not found in its original position, however, and Woolley eventually felt that the emuriana building was never in this location or that it had been completely destroyed. What he found in the area was mostly related to the enunmah and/or the NeoBabylonian Giparu or were scattered walls that were very difficult to follow. Indeed, this area of the temenos zone, from the eastern edge of the dublalmah to the northeast wall of the NeoBabylonian temenos wall, was badly denuded. Area ES/ESB was sometimes equated with the dublalmah because it was initially thought that building may have extended here and it was included as part of the NeoBabylonian Giparu.:
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1
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The excavation area abbreviation PS probably stood for Palace Stores and refers to the series of magazine-like rooms surrounding the Great Nanna Courtyard. Woolley originally coded the region of the courtyard as PD, standing for Palace of Dungi, since he felt it might have been a palace. The series of rooms surrounding the courtyard may well have been for storage, but Woolley came to realize that the building itself was not a palace. The abbreviation PS appears on several season 3 catalog cards, but no explanation of its meaning occurs. Legrain lists PR as the magazines around the courtyard, but this was probably a mis-typed reference to PS since PR does not appear as an abbreviation on any of Woolley's cards.:
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1
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The abbreviation ES almost certainly stands for Enunmah South, though it may also have to do with the building called Emuriana, referenced in a disturbed Kassite door socket found in the area. Legrain lists ES as the Egigpar of Nabonidus, SW end, and ES, or at least ESB did extend into the later remains of the Dublalmah, which at that time was part of the NeoBabylonian Giparu. The abbreviation ES first appeared in season one as a supplement to Trial Trench B (TTB.ES) when the trench was expanded to reveal the extents of the building found to be called E-nun-mah. In season 3, the abbreviation shortened simply to ES, used for the majority of the enunmah building.
The Enunmah changed in layout and likely in usage through the many centuries of its existence. Initially a storage building called the ga-nun-mah, it seems to have been used as a temple, the e-nun-mah, in the Neo-Babylonian period.
Some lists of excavation abbreviations equate ES with the Dublalmah site. This is because the southern Enunmah is just east of the Dublalmah. Area ESB is still more closely associated with the eastern edge of the dublalmah and likely into it.:
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1
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Season 1 catalog cards very occasionally contain this context location referring to graves discovered along the northwest temenos wall. The graves labeled Z seem to have fallen north/northeast of those labeled Y. Originally believed to be a late period cemetery (along with cemeteries X and Y nearby), it was found that the graves lying near the surface here were originally located beneath the floors of a domestic area that had almost completely denuded. The Z designation is listed in the abbreviations list of UE9 as "late graves close to but distinct from YC.":
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1
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Season 1 catalog cards contain this context location referring to graves discovered along the northwest temenos wall. The graves labeled Y typically fell east/northeast of those labeled X. Originally believed to be a late period cemetery (along with cemeteries X and Z nearby), it was found that the graves lying near the surface here were originally located beneath the floors of a domestic area that had almost completely denuded. Later work in the area revealed portions of Kassite houses. These were published as area YC.:
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1
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Season 1 catalog cards contain the context location Cemetery X referring to late period (Persian and Neo-Babylonian) graves discovered along (or just northwest of) the northwest temenos wall. Originally believed to be a late period cemetery (along with cemeteries Y and Z nearby), it was eventually found that the graves lying near the surface here were originally located beneath the floors of domestic space that had almost completely denuded. Contextual information from later seasons indicate this area of houses and graves with the abbreviation XNCF, meaning northeast of the Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort. Some of the material in this later explored area is as early as the Kassite period.:
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1
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Excavation designation for a portion of area AH that was eventually published as No. 1 Church Lane and No. 1 Straight Street. It was also called the Pa-Sag or Hendur-Sag chapel. This space was identified as a neighborhood or wayside chapel at the NW edge of Carfax.:
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1
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Excavation house designation on the southeast side of Straight Street (originally called Division Street as it divided the first excavation house designations I, II, and III). This unit covered published houses No.2 and No. 4 Straight Street.:
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1
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Excavation house designation on the northwest side of Straight Street (originally called Division Street because it divided the initial excavation units of House I, II, and III). This unit may have initially contained some rooms in No. 3 Straight Street.:
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1
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Excavation designation in area AH mostly covering No. 1 Old Street but likely containing parts of No. 7 Church Lane as well.:
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1
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The excavation area abbreviation PJ originally referred solely to Pit J, later renamed Pit Y. The abbreviation then came to represent the expansion of the Royal Cemetery to the south from Pit Y, called Pit X. Pit Y uncovered many graves earlier than the Royal Cemetery that Woolley believed to come from the Jemdet Nasr period. This gave rise to the southern extension being conceived of as a Jemdet Nasr cemetery for which Woolley began assigning PJ numbers. From the beginning of Pit X, Woolley assigned PJG numbers rather than PG numbers. He quickly recognized that these upper graves were actually a continuation of the Royal Cemetery Akkadian burials and when he began to see the burials of the main Royal Cemetery period, he switched to PJB numbers. Below these he assigned JNG numbers to graves, continuing the sequence from Pit W excavated in the preceding year. Then he renumbered early graves in Pits Y and Z (dug 4 years prior) to follow the Pit X JNG sequence.
There are very few references to the original Pit J. In fact, all catalog cards that utilize the PJ abbreviation come from the final season of excavation and all refer to Pit X. Any artifacts that have only the PJ designation and no further refinement of grave number come from the general area of Pit X and were not associated with a specific grave. These often have further notes such as 'upper levels' or other indication that they are from the dumping grounds near the surface of Pit X.:
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1
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This is the death pit that Woolley associated with the tomb chamber of Queen Puabi (PG/800B), though the floor of that chamber is about 2.5 meters lower in depth. The death pit held the remains of more than 20 people as well two oxen, a cart and a potential wardrobe chest. Woolley believed the wardrobe chest had been centrally placed in order to hide the looting hole made into the roof of the PG/789 chamber below.:
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1
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Typically referred to as the grave of Meskalamdug, items with this name inscribed upon them were found within. It does not, however, appear to be the same Meskalamdug identified as king on items found elsewhere.:
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1
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Woolley called this the 'King's Grave' because of its elaborate death pit that included many weapons. The main chamber, however, had been looted, leaving only a few scattered remains.
The death pit contained the remains of more than 60 people, six of whom wore helmets and stood at the dromos/entrance as if to guard it.:
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1
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Woolley called this the 'Great Death Pit' because it is the largest of all the death pits in the royal cemetery. He found 74 bodies within but did not find a built chamber, an aspect he believed essential to royal tombs. Woolley declared the chamber must have been completely looted away and pointed to small amounts of rubble as evidence of this, but in fact the large size of this death pit and the particular wealth displayed by Body 61 may indicate that the primary burial was among the attendants in this case.:
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1
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The earliest of the royal graves found, it was identified as such after the criteria for royal graves was established. This grave appeared in Trial Trench E and was not well mapped, but reportedly contained remains of a mudbrick wall that Woolley later interpreted as the destroyed tomb chamber associated with a death pit.:
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1
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This grave was cut by Trial Trench E at the end of one season and excavation was not completed until the following season. It was a time when Woolley was only just recognizing the royal graves as a separate type in the cemetery. The wealth of objects uncovered here led him to suspect it was 'royal' but there were many problems with the condition of the grave and the circumstances of excavation that have led to confusion.
After this discovery, Woolley decided to abandon the trial trench method and open the entire cemetery area. He also began to map individual graves.:
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1
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A built chamber tomb with a collapsed dome, it had been robbed in antiquity but some artifacts remained along the walls. The collapsed roof of this tomb was first seen in Trial Trench E but the grave was fully excavated after the trial trenches had been opened into a larger area. This led to the discovery of a small trenched area next to the chamber that contained three skeletons, and an approach or dromos that contained another. These Woolley took to be the guards of the tomb in a small 'death pit'. There were two chambers inside the tomb, and the outer held the remains of four more people, possibly servants, while the inner may have held the royal personage.:
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1
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A large, stone built chamber with four rooms. There was no clear death pit, though Woolley suggested that the upper shaft may once have contained structures or other burials. The multiple rooms inside the large chamber, however, served the purpose of a death pit in many ways as there would have been multiple burials within.
The two central chambers had been badly damaged in the collapse of the roof and the tomb had been plundered in antiquity. This means that the true number of attendants cannot be known and any royal personage cannot be identified, but the few artifacts inside and the size of the chamber attribute to it having been important.Indeed, this was the location of the so-called 'Royal Standard of Ur'.:
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1
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An intricate and problematic grave, the entire complex identified as PG/1050 may in fact belong to several episodes of burial rather than a single grave. At the top was a four-chamber mudbrick construction that contained layers of skeletons and pottery. Beneath these layers, and indeed the mudbrick construction itself, sat a layer of packed earth 70cm thick.
Woolley found a pit cut below the packed earth and believed this to be the main grave, believing the construction above to be related to ceremony following the fill of the main grave. The side of the pit stepped in several places, however, and may indicate more than one burial episode even in this portion of PG/1050.
At one level sat the remains of a reed coffin, at a deeper level, a wooden one. The wooden coffin rested on a thick prepared surface and beneath part of this lay around 40 bodies, which Woolley took to be the death pit of the royal tomb. He believed there must have been a chamber above and that it had been looted, but could find no evidence of the looter's access and could not fully explain the lack of a chamber.:
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1
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PG/1157 is a "death pit of the poorer sort" (UE2 p.168) but Woolley was uncertain whether to connect PG/1151 and PG/1156 above it into a single royal grave of the sort of complicated structure seen in PG/1050 and PG/1054. Both PG/1151 and PG/1156 were coffin burials with minor high-end materials and the PG/1151 coffin had a lyre leaning against it (recovered in plaster).
Beneath the coffins was a shaft filled with plano-convex bricks. At its base was a layer of pottery and then 58 skeletons. Woolley could identify no chamber with this death pit and proposed that it had been destroyed; he eventually decided the two coffins above were likely to be intrusive and unrelated to PG/1157 but published them together.:
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1
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This death pit is so near PG/1237 and at almost the same depth that Woolley wondered if the two might actually be one. There is a partial mudbrick wall separating the two that may have been placed to wall off an earlier grave struck by the later, however. Because he could find no tomb chamber associated with PG/1232, Woolley was inclined to place it with PG/1237, but that death pit has no chamber either and they likely are two separate graves. Which is the oldest is difficult to ascertain from the evidence.
PG/1232 seems mostly to have contained animals, i.e. oxen and a cart, but it was badly preserved and in a similarly disturbed state to the likes of PG/580, which also had few identifiable human remains and no discernible chamber.:
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1
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A large stone-built chamber (limestone rubble) with 4 inner rooms. In this it is very similar to the layout of PG/779. A looter's hole had caused a collapse at one end and much damage throughout the tomb, but architecturally this large chamber was better preserved than many others. Contents, however, were meager owing to ancient looters. Woolley believed this had been the tomb of a king, with attendants in some of the chambers. He traced the side of the pit more than 7 meters above the chamber and believed that a mud brick building above that had been a kind of chapel for rituals after the burial.:
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1
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This grave was essentially two superimposed death pits as it consists of two layers of approximately 20 bodies each about 1 meter apart in depth. Woolley believed they constituted one burial episode but could not completely trace the sides of the pit as parts were badly disturbed and condition in general was not good. No tomb chamber was discovered and Woolley suggested it had been completely destroyed but it is possible that none ever existed and perhaps even that each death pit represents a separate burial event.:
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1
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This grave consisted of a large wooden coffin in which lay the remains of a man wearing four 'brim' headbands. Remains of another headdress on what Woolley believed was a decayed wig were also found in the coffin. Outside the coffin were offerings and four skeletons in what constituted a small death pit.
In many ways this grave resembles PG/755 and PG/1422, neither of which was identified as 'royal' because in those cases there was no evidence of additional bodies.:
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1
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One of the smallest of the royal tombs, this grave had been almost completely looted. It consisted mostly of the remains of a rubble-built chamber that had originally been vaulted. The disturbed skeleton of one person was still inside but small space outside the chamber entrance held very little. Woolley presumed this would have held the remains of the attendants to the royal burial, though the space is small and it would have held only a few. Nonetheless, there was no remaining evidence of the human sacrifice that was so vital to his definition of a tomb as 'royal'.:
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1
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One of the smallest of the royal tombs, like PG/1631 it consisted of a built chamber with a small space outside the door. Inside the chamber was a wooden coffin containing a single skeleton. Outside the coffin but still inside the chamber were three other skeletons. The small space outside the chamber contained offerings and animal bones.:
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1
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House site outside the northwest wall of the Temenos, prolongation of XNCF:
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2
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NeoBabylonian cemeteries in area of NNCF:
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2
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Storage:
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2
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Chapel?:
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2
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In a partially excavated house South of No. 11 Paternoster Row.:
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2
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Area VI. :
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2
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Area I:
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2
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Area II:
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2
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1.50m. below pavement of Larsa bricks on town wall. Pavement bricks 0.27m. x 0.165m. x 0.055m.:
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2
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Under floor of a partially excavated house in EM area.:
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2
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NW Building, Square 06:
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2
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In western end of Room 4 court (chapel). :
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2
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A door cut through the NE wall led to Room 2, a very small room opening on to what seemed to be a court (Room 3).:
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2
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The chapel occupied a corner site fronting on Carfax; the main door of the chapel proper opened on Church Lane and a subsidiary entrance which served the little rooms probably appropriated to the officiating priests opened on Straight Street. Such changes as were made in the building during its existence did not involve any raising of its floor level; from the beginning this was well above the street. The walls, most of which had suffered severely, were of later date, constructionally, than those of the neighbouring house, No. 3 Church Lane, onto which they abutted.:
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2
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The northern sanctuary (Rooms 5 and 6) was a patchwork; the west wall was an addition which, properly speaking, did not belong to the building at all and the north wall was a mixture of burnt-brick and mud-brick construction not all of the same date; the east wall, north of the doorway, was of mud brick whereas the south door-jamb was of burnt bricks, but a base which projected north of the door was of burnt brick and yet bonded into the wall against which it stood; beyond this was a mud-brick table 0.40 m. sq. The wall between Rooms 5 and 6 was a flimsy screen of mud brick; the shallow niche in the south wall of Room 5 would seem to have been a recess intended to take the flap of the opened door, not a ritual niche; the pavement had been destroyed and there was no sign of a statue-base.
:
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2
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Returning to the courtyard (2), the pavement on the north side was destroyed and the north wall was largely of mud brick; the northern section of the east wall also was of mud brick and it returned to make an entrance to Room 7 (paved) out of which a door whose east jamb had vanished led into the cupboard, Room 8.:
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2
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In the east wall, which was almost entirely destroyed, was the door of the reception-room, (4), which was a brick-paved room in such ruinous state that the existence of the cross-wall between it and Room 3 is conjectural, though the presence of a drain in the NW corner of the latter made the separation probable.:
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2
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The small Room 4 was wholly taken up by a large drain which rose to the level of the room floor above; it was surrounded with earth packing; in Rooms 6 and 7 there-had been similar drains.:
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2
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Rooms 2 and 3 also had clay floors; the door between them was very rough and apparently cut through the wall, not built; the back wall of the house was old and its burnt brick foundations lay beneath the present floor level.:
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2
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The SE end of this wall had been razed to floor level and the Room 2 and 3, probably the staircase and lavatory, had been completely gutted; under Room 2 was found the pot-burial LG/40. Much of the SE wall also was destroyed, only the SW jamb of the doorway being left.:
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2
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Field notes show this grave in relation to G153 and 154:
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2
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Courtyard:
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2
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The two annexes to Shulgi's mausoleum are a part of the larger BC context and it is unclear whether the designator AD applies to the north, south, or both annexes. The designator only appears on Legrain transcriptions of field cards for a small number of inscribed objects.:
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2
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Amar-Sin annex to Shugli Mausoleum:
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2
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Cemetery of entu priestesses:
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2
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Entrance to Ningal Temple:
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2
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Storage room?:
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2
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Storeroom with Tablets and seal impressions:
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2
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Storeroom with corbel vaulted grave:
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2
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Sanctuary:
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3
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In UE7, Woolley outlines an "early" and a "late" phase for this structure, while in the unpublished notes for many of the
graves a reference is made to "Period II». However, it is not possible to associate this Period II with either the early or the late phase, though it is certainly associated with one or the other. As a consequence, all of the graves in No. 12 with this reference can only be associated with the LP in general.:
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3
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On town wall.:
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3
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Remaining rooms in the south corner, 6, 7, 11 and 12, only the foundations of the party walls were left and their intercommunications could not be traced.:
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3
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Re-floored at higher level in later periods but walls reach original foundation.:
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3
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Store Room :
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3
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Antechamber to Ningal Temple:
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3
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Vestry:
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4
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Staircase:
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4
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Described in association with LG/14 in the AHG/158 notes; possibly associated with "latest" clay floor in Room 12, and almost flush with surface.:
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4
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Block C, SE Range, Square G8:
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4
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Storeroom:
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4
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Court:
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5
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below earth floor associated with the LP:
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5
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Five houses of the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian period infringed upon the ruins of the Shulgi Mausoleum and its Amar-Sin annexes. In fact, the houses were built almost directly above its remains and it is curious to think that the large and important mausolea would have faded so completely from memory that houses would be built here 100 - 200 years later. Woolley felt that the Elamite destruction had been severe enough to accomplish this.
The southwest wall of the mausolea remained to a height of 2 meters while the northeast wall was substantially ruined and it is this northeastern side that is most heavily built over. Woolley excavated these houses quickly in his effort to uncover the larger Ur III structure and numbered them as one unit, House 30. Later he separated the plans into individual houses, labeled House 30 A-E. All were badly denuded and few finds came from them, though typically there were also graves beneath the floors that are better recorded. These and drainpipes often disturbed parts of the ruined mausolea below.:
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5
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Kitchen:
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6
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LG/98.6A-F, all consist of infant burials, and are partially pictured on Plate 28b of UE7. Analysis suggests that LG/98.6A-F are associated with a LP occupation, though it is not possible to link these burials to either the "early" or the "late" phase. Exact locations of LG/98.6A-F are known.:
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6
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Analysis indicates that these burials are
associated with the "early" phase of two-phase LP occupational sequence. The approximate location of this group is known from Plate 28b and Figure 32 from UE7.:
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7
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House area.:
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7
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row of what were probably magazines belonging to the householder; that they were store-rooms seems to be shown by the fact that they required protection; at the entrance of the passage there was a little guard-chamber where a slave could sit and keep effectual watch on all comers. There were six store-rooms in all and they call for no description; to the first three (Nos. 2a, 3a, and 4a) which inter-communicated, no entrance could be found by us, the wall being in places completely ruined; No. 5a afforded access to Nos. 6a and 7a and was itself entered by a door prudently close to the front door of the house proper.:
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7
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Pictured on Plate 39b of UE7, which is
labeled incorrectly; the LG/38.7 group of burials all appear to be located on or through a LP floor; Woolley considered them all to be linked to this period although they were not assigned grave numbers; exact position of graves in Room 6 is known. In the unpublished notes,
Woolley states that these graves were "not worth entering in the Tabular Analysis" of UE7, even though they are associated with the LP; exact position of all of these graves is known.:
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8
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Storageroom?:
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8
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Guest Room:
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10
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Chapel. :
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15
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PFT:
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15
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Storeroom?:
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18
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Lavatory:
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24
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Entrance Lobby:
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27
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Chapel. Analysis indicates that these burials,
along with LG/101.8A, LG/101.8B, LG/101.9A, and LG/101.9B are associated with the "early" phase of a two-phase occupational sequence existing in this structure. Approximate locations of many of the burials in the LG/101.7A-BB group are known. :
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28
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Central Court:
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37
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Chapel:
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37
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