Description (Catalog Card): Clay cone. Fragment. A Larsa king, unidentified or new. HC.181     
Find Context (Catalog Card): Town Wall     
Material (Catalog Card): Clay2     
Measurement (Catalog Card): 65 x 65mm     
Text Genre: Royal/Monumental      
Dates Referenced: Sin-iddinam     
[1] Woolley's description
[2] Material as described by Woolley
[3] Barrett. 1976. Near East Section, Ur, Inscribed Objects

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Locations: 15071 Export: JSON - XML - CSV

Location Context Title Context Description Description (Modern)
City Wall | CLW 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). (none)
Temenos Wall | TW 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). (none)
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Media: 15071 Export: JSON - XML - CSV Woolley's Catalog Cards

Media Media Title Title Label Author Omeka Label
Woolley's Catalog Cards Woolley's Catalog Cards Card -- BM ID:194 Box:61 Page:137 Card -- BM ID:194 Box:61 Page:137 (none)
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Context

Ur >> City Wall | CLW

Ur >> Temenos Wall | TW


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