Fabled Royal Graves of Ur Exhibit Opens Nationwide Three-Year Tour in Southern California

By Pat McDonnell Twair

In 1922 the discovery of Tutankhamen’s treasure-filled tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings captured headlines the world over. Five years later, when news broke of Leonard Woolley’s entry into the royal graves of Ur in Mesopotamia, interest in the ancient world reached manic proportions.

Gold and exotic artifacts are one thing, but what Woolley’s discoveries established was insight into a highly sophisticated people—the Sumerians—who are credited with originating the world’s earliest form of writing in the southern part of the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers known today as Iraq.

Woolley’s excavations were jointly financed by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania. At the time, British author and explorer Gertrude Bell, who was assisting in the establishment of the Iraqi Department of Antiquities, also authored Iraq’s law of excavation. It was this law which stipulated one-half of all objects recovered at Ur would remain in Iraq, while the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania each would be allowed one-quarter of the artifacts. (Since 1967, no items over 100 years old have been legally permitted to leave Iraq.)

The priceless Ur artifacts which arrived in Philadelphia in 1928 have never since been seen outside their display cases. However, when the University of Pennsylvania announced plans to refurbish its 110-year-old museum and add another wing it decided to put its Ur collection on the road with stops in eight museums throughout the U.S. until May 200l.

The traveling exhibition opened Oct. 9 at Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, CA, where art enthusiasts thrilled to observe up close the objects most have only seen in art history books. Dr. Richard Zettler, who curated the traveling exhibition, was on hand from the University of Pennsylvania.

Insight into the discovery of the royal tombs and the flamboyant Woolley were offered by Dr. Zettler. The enormous mound at Tell al-Muqayyar, south of Baghdad, had drawn the attention of archaeologists from the mid-19th century, but it remained relatively undisturbed until after World War I.

In 1922, the British Museum and University of Pennsylvania embarked on a joint expedition in Iraq and selected Woolley as the director. The Muqayyar tell—near the present-day Iraqi city of Nassariyah—which H.C. Rawlinson had identified as Ur of the Chaldees, was chosen over Nippur in the fall of 1922.

With the help of his faithful Arab assistant, Hamoudi, Woolley opened two trenches at Ur on Nov. 2, 1922. Ironically, his workmen intruded into the royal cemetery in the early days of that initial season, but Zettler noted that Woolley was more interested in studying the architecture of the site. Five years later, after clearing the architectural remains from later periods, including a wall built by Nebuchadnezzar, two ditches were cut from Trench A. Woolley realized he was in a cemetery more than 4,500 years old and that some of the chamber tombs contained remarkably lavish funereal gifts along with mass burials.

Aware of the sensation his discovery would create after the hysteria of King Tutankhamen’s rich burial, Woolley wired his news in Latin to the University of Pennsylvania. Remarkably, reporters weren’t alerted by Western Union of the exotic use of Latin and they remained oblivious to the mind-boggling contents of the message dated 6:43 a.m. Jan. 4, 1928. Translated, his message read:

“I found the intact tombstone built and vaulted over with bricks of Queen Shubad adorned with a dress in which gems, flower crowns and animal figures are woven. Tomb magnificent with jewels and golden cups.”

Woolley estimated that originally there were two to three times the 1,850 intact burials he uncovered in the ancient cemetery, which was slightly smaller than a football field.

Most of these were individuals who had been wrapped in reed matting and simply placed on their sides with legs slightly bent. However, he estimated 16 were “royal” because of the richness of the artifacts interred with the deceased or, in three instances, the mass interments of retainers.

Objects in this exhibition chiefly come from what Woolley referred to as the “Death Pit” because it contained 73 retainers presumably buried with their leader, in burial PG789, which Woolley theorized had belonged to a king and held 63 skeletons, oxen and evidence of two carts; and burial PG800, the tomb of Lady Puabi, her servants, musicians, oxen and a wagon.

Zettler commented that Woolley had a penchant for creating romantic anecdotes about the Sumerian elites he had uncovered. Epigraphers identified Puabi’s name from a cylinder seal in her grave (earlier, Woolley had named her Shubad). The identity of the wealthy fellow buried in PG789 was unclear because the tomb chamber had been looted in antiquity. Woolley theorized he died first and Puabi, his widow, had requested to be buried near him. Seven decades later in an era of female liberation, one might conjecture that Puabi perhaps was a queen in her own right and no one’s widow, particularly since her tomb was so lavishly appointed.

Objects from Puabi’s tomb are the centerpiece of this exhibition because her tomb was untouched by grave robbers—just as Tutankhamen’s tomb was undisturbed.

Both tombs offer a window into the life of royals in antiquity, but Puabi’s tomb was much older, dating to the Early Dynastic III A, around 2600 bc. She stood barely five feet tall and died around the age of 40. Her body had been placed on a bier whose top was elevated about two feet above the floor of the tomb chamber. She wore her royal headdress and jewelry, and cosmetic cases and golden cups were at arm’s reach.

Puabi’s torso was covered with semi-precious stones which Woolley rethreaded and called a beaded cape which would have shimmered and resonated musically as she walked among her courtiers. Three attendants were interred in her tomb.

In an adjoining “Death Pit” were two rows of 10 women facing each other, their golden headdresses and jewelry suggesting they were ladies-in-waiting; some may have been musicians, as a harp and lyre were placed atop them. A chest inlaid with lapis lazuli and shell probably contained garments which had disintegrated over the millennia. Other skeletons probably were guards, grooms and the driver of a wagon that had dissolved into dust.

The elite of Sumer evidently lavished money on the appearance of their women—so much so that they could bury them in gold and gems that would be worth a fortune today and must have been even more precious in an agrarian society. The gowns of these women were caught by elaborate jewel-encrusted gold pins.

The primary focus apparently was upon ornate coiffures, probably enhanced by hairpieces. Ribbons of gold were twined and looped over the hairdos topped by crowns and wreaths of golden leaves.

Visitors will be struck by the sophistication, intricate jewelers’ techniques and stark simplicity of Sumerian art that almost seems contemporary in its avoidance of baroque geegaws. This is best exemplified by the Great Lyre from PG789. At first glance, it looks like a modern sculpture. Equipped with 11 strings (as opposed to the four-string Egyptian lyre), it is 1.40 meters long and its upright back arm reached 1.17 meters. The sound box is covered with a masterpiece of art containing four registers of mythological shell figures topped by a magnificent bull’s head with full beard of lapis lazuli.

Dr. Zettler points out that Woolley was a genius when it came to reconstructing destroyed artifacts. The wood frame of the lyre had disintegrated, but the archeologist poured plaster into the impressions left by the wood and was able to recreate the musical instrument.

Much of the same painstaking reconstruction went into repairing a 20-inch tall sculpture recovered from the “Great Death Pit” which Woolley named the “Ram Caught in a Thicket.” There are two sculptures of this goat which stands on its hind legs, nibbling on golden rosettes which were the symbol of the goddess Inanna—one reconstruction is in the British Museum, the other belongs to the University of Pennsylvania. Painstaking measurements were taken of the crushed sculptures. The golden goat whose fleece is replicated in precious shell, its golden face bearing features of lapis lazuli, has become an icon of the Royal Tombs of Ur. Dr. Zettler theorizes the goat may have served as a ceremonial stand as a rod behind its back could have held a small dish for liquid or burning incense.

A Sacred Re-enactment?

Burying servants with a deceased king is known in many societies from Sipan in the Andes to ancient Nubia and the Scythians in prehistoric Ukraine. But the sheer numbers of Sumerians buried in at least three tombs at Ur have fascinated scholars for decades. Anton Moortgat theorizes the mass burials may have been the re-enactment of a sacred marriage in which the royalty of Ur played the roles of Dumuzi and Inanna to ensure the reappearance of fertility in the spring. P.R.S. Moorey suggests the entombment of retainers may have been related to a cult practice honoring Nanna, the moon god, who resided at Ur.

Dr. Zettler pooh-poohs the idea that the mass burials were akin to Heaven’s Gate cultists who committed suicide in California in 1997. He reasons the death scenes also were too neat for servants to have swallowed poison ù la Jonestown in 1978 Guyana. The bodies were neatly positioned for their trip to the beyond. Most likely they were drugged willingly to travel with their rulers to the next world and then were placed in the tombs.

More fascinating is the question of who the non-Semitic Sumerians were. Where did they come from? How did they become an early agrarian power in an area devoid of precious metals and stone and develop the world’s first writing system, literature such as the Legend of Gilgamesh, a sophisticated priesthood and become a trading base from Indonesia to Anatolia?

Woolley’s discoveries at Ur and his meticulous restorations have enabled people of the 20th century and beyond to catch a glimpse of what life must have been like among the rich in 3rd millennium bc Sumer. His discoveries also earned him a chance at immortality.

Woolley’s contemporaries, however, didn’t find him to be a charming Indiana Jones. After encountering him in 1922, Gertrude Bell wrote that he was “a tiresome little man, but a first class digger.”

Less favorable was the impression he made on fellow archaeologist Max Mallowan, who called Woolley a tyrant, probably because Woolley worked in his office until 3 a.m. and was at the excavation site one-half hour after sunrise and expected his co-workers to follow suit. British mystery writer Agatha Christie, who met Mallowan at Ur and subsequently married him, used Woolley’s wife, Katherine, as the neurotic harpy in her mystery entitled Death in Mesopotamia.

It is a marvelous exhibition and the only time this century—and perhaps the next—that it can be viewed at the following venues:

Frank H. McClung Museum, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, Feb. 5, 1999–May 9, 1999

Dallas Museum of Art May 30, 1999–Sept. 5, 1999

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC, Oct. 17, 1999–Jan. 17, 2000

Cleveland Museum of Art Feb. 20, 2000–April 23, 2000

Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City, May 2000–Sept. 2000

Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago,Oct. 15, 2000–Jan. 28, 2001

Detroit Institute of Art March 2001–May 2001

Pat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer based in Los Angeles.