 | TTD | 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. | (none) |
 | SM | 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. | (none) |