 | Royal Cemetery | PG | 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 too 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 others wanted to be buried nearby.
The cemetery lay outside 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 ED I and Uruk 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. | (none) |
 | Pit X | 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. | (none) |
