Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1:2 (1991), 171-189 Of Priestesses, Princes and Poor Relations: The Dead in the Royal Cemetery of Ur Susan Pollock Archaeological discoveries of dead individuals, usually in the form of burials, have frequently captured the imaginations of public and professional audiences alike. In addition to tlie allure of exotic artefacts and seemingly bizarre funeral rites, burials offer rich passibilitiesforinvestigatingmyriad aspects Ti:i::- discussion focuses on one of the mere renowned archaeological excavations of an ancient cemetery, ihe Royal Cemetery of Ur. Consideration of who was and who was not buriedin the cemetery suggests that cemetery burial was the prerogative ofthose people who were closely attached to 'public' institutions. This leads to a number of observations on Summon treatment ofthedeadand attitudes toward death, as thesecan be approached from archaeological and textual sources. One of thL1 most celebrated findings from Sir Leonard Woolley's 12 years of excavations at Ur is she Royal Cemetery. In the five field seasons that he devoted to the Cemetery, Woolley excavated and recorded approximately 2000 grave?, spanning the Early Dynastic III, Akkadian, and Post-Akkadian periods . Thanks to the numerous popular accounts of his work which Woolley produced {for example, Woolley 1954) as well as more technical reports (Woolley 1934), the Cemetery immediately attracted the attention of a wide audience, including both archaeologists and the general public. Two seemingly unique features of the graves were responsible for capturing this attention: the incredible wealth of some of the burials, including the liberal use of gold, silver, bronze. Lapis lazuli, and carnelian in finely worked objects of a distinctively Sumerian style (Figs. 2 -4); and the evidence of human sacrifice in a small number of the graves. The wealth of information from the Royal Cemetery and the care with which Woolley excavated, recorded, and published This material enable us to address almost limitless kinds of questions using the Koyal Cemetery. In this article the discussion is confined to two issues: first, I pose the question of who was buried in the Cemetery, and suggest that in order to reach an answer we must also consider who was not buried there; and secondly, I consider the ways in which the dead were treated, as such treatment may bear upon Sumerian conceptions of death and the afterlife. To begin, let me set the stage through a brief background sketch. Background TheRoyal Cemetery was in continual useas a cemetery for approximately 500 years, fro m c. 2600 to 2100 BC, a period of time divided archaeologically into Early Dynastic (ED) III, Akkadian, and Post-Akkadian periods. The best-known of the graves - those famed fur their wealth and human sacrifices - date to the ED III period (c-2600-2350BC). ED ill has been characterized as the classic period of Sumerian city-states. Each city-state comprised one or sometimes a few large urban centres, in which much of the population resided, surrounded by a rural hinterland in which agriculture and pastoralism were the predominant pursuits. The city-states of southern Mesopotamia wore mutually interdependent economically, socially, and culturally. Nonetheless, they were politically distinct entities, although individual states frequently attempted to gain control over their neighbours, leading to much 171 Susan Pollock The Royal Cemetery of Ur flip ■ . ■'; Wlf Figure 2. Headdress of Pu-abt, the principal occupant of Royal Tomb SOQJnsitu. acrimonious rivalry. Ur, as one of these city-states, participated in these rivalries, and like many of the Others had its moments of glory and power. In the subsequent Akkadian period, Sargon of Akkad succeeded in wresting control from the individual city-states and creating a single political entity which has often been referred to as an empire. He and his successors managed to retain some degree of unified politicalcontrolforapproviniatelyacenhjry, despite frequent rebellions by many of the city-states. Finally, this political superstructure fell apart, reverting to a pattern of competitive city-states in the Post-Akkadian period, until southern Mesopotamia was once again drawn into an imperial formation around 2100 BC by the Ur III dynasty. Although we know something of the fortunes of Ur from the Early Dynastic to the Post-Akkadian period from texts, we have remarkably little additional informationabout the city from archaeological sources. The reasons for this are straightforward: Ur was occupied for nearly two more millennia, and in most of his work Wool ley concentrated on the later periods. In addition, the large-scale building programs undertaken by the rulers of the Ur DI dynasty often resulted in the destruction of earlier buildings, thus obliterating many earlier third millennium constructions. We do know that there was a ziggurat at Early Dynastic Ur - a staged mudbrick platform on which sat a temple and around which was a service area, with kitchens and workshops - and that nearby was a thick-walled building with construction and contents suggesting that it was of non-domestic (i.e. 'public') character. Of the contemporary residential areas, however, we have almost no hint. Who was buried in the Royal Cemetery? Since the first rich burials were discovered tn the 1920s, there has been much speculation about the identities of the people who were buried in the Royal Cemetery. Let us consider some of these proposals. Amongthe 2000graves there are!6 that Woolley The Royal Cemetery of Ur considered to be distinctly different (mm the rest and which he named the Royal Tombs. These 16 graves, dating to the ED III period, all have built chambers of stone or stone and brick, in contrast to the remaining graves which contain coffins or mat-wrapped burials laid in an earthen pit. All of the Royal Tombs have evidence of'human sacrifice' - meintentionalkilling of additional individuals, from four or five to as many as 75, to accompany the principal deceased person to the grave. The 16 Royal Tombs also contained great ridies, but as Woolley noted thiswasalsotrtieof some of the Other graves that did not have built chambers or human sacrifices. Woolley (1934) argued that the people who were privileged to be buried with/this very distinctive pomp and circ umsta nee we re royal ty iv'ho we re accompan ied to their death by the members of their courts. The remaining graves, his 'private graves', conlained the burials of ordinary people or commoners of varying wealth and social position. Hes>ive -I'veralreasonsfor identifying the tombs as places where royalty were buried. On theonehand,heexpec ted kings and queens to be treated madistjnciivelydiffctviil v/ayfromotlier members of the community (whom he called the 'private: citizens' or 'commoners'). Wore importantly, in several of the tombs he found inscribed artefacts, usually cylinder seals, which mentioned the name of amanor woman followed by the term/wgj^aSumerian word translated as "king^or nin, Sumerian for "queen*. It would seem that wc could not ask for more! But .unfortunately, none of the artefacts mentioning kings were found in direct association with the body of the principal occupant of the tomb. For example, in Royal Tomb 1054 the principa I occupant, seerninglya woman, lay in her chamber at the very base of the grave shaft, while the seal inscribed 'Mes-kalam-dug the king'was found al-:-ng Willi two dagger? in n wocuVn box in J chamber built some four metres up the shaft (Fig. 5). There is no compelling reason to think that tliis seal was the seal of the tomb's principa! occupant, and it is perhaps more likely that it was an offering placed in the tomb by someone else. Although in one case (Royal Tomb 800) inscribed seals labelling a person as nin were found in direct association with the tomb's principal occupant, nin can also refer simply to a high status lady, without necessarily implying that that person was a queen. Other scholars have suggested that the individuals in the Royal Tombs were high priests and priestesses, with their retinues of attendants. Some have extended this argument to propose that these people were involved in the so-called sacred marriage ceremony, to ensure fertility and the annual cycle (cited in Woolley 1934, 33-40). However, Woolley argued quite convincingly that this latter possibility was unlikely. As for priests and priestesses, there is neither direct support for the identification nor any compelling evidence to counter the argument. My interpretation of the people buried in the Royal Cemetery hinges on the recognition that many inhabitants of Ur were not buried in the Cemetery. Woolley reported approxima tely 2000 graves from the Cemetery, most of which contained a single individual. Hefurther noted that he had encountered perhaps as many as 4000 more graves which were SO badly disturbed that he did not record them (Woolley 1934, 16). The Cemetery may, t hen, on gi na 1 ly ha ve con tained as many as 6000 people. At a size of approximately 50 hectares, weassumc that third millennium U r incl u ded at the very minimum 5000 inhabitants Et any time. Regardless of the figures we use for average life expectancy, it is obvious that far more than 6000 people must have lived and died at Ur during the 500 years that the Cemetery wasinuse. if this were not in itself su Ticiently convincing, we must also note that of the approximately 2000 burials recorded by Woolley, fewer than 50 are children. Wherever children "were buried, it was not, with rare exceptions, in the Cemetery.1 It would of couTse be desirable to supplement this argument by considering in greater detail the age and sex structure of the burial population represented in the Royal Cemetery. Sadly, thisis not possible, since Woolley neither recorded this information sy sterna tically nor kept the skeletons for future study. Only a very few skeletons were sent to a medical doctor for examination (see the report in Woolley 1934,400-10); otherwise Woolley confined himself to noting those bodies that were clearly sub-adult, i.e. Children. The gendeT of at least some individuals can be tentatively established from aspects of their mortuary treatment, principally the accompanying grave goods (Pollock 1991), with the proviso that socioculturally ascribed gender may not always correspond directly to biological sex. However, as 1 have argued elsewhere (Pollock 1991), the gender of people of lesser status does not seem to have been dearly marked in death, or at least not ina fashion that has survived archaeologically or is at present recognizable to us. To return to the question of the identities of the dead buried in the Royal Cemetery, 1 suggest that they were individuals who were aitached in some wayand tosomedegree to the 'public' institutions of the temple or palace. On (1 icbasis of contemporary written sources, such people could range from kings and queens, high Tlie Royal Cemetery- of Ul Figure 5. Section through Royal Tomb 1054. The burial of the principal occupant was located in the chamber at the base of the grave; the box cor. iairdng the daggers and the inscribed seal were found in the chamber built high up in the shaft. priests and priestesses, to menial labourers who 'belonged' lo these Institutions and received subsistence rationsin return for their labour. Between these extremes was a wide range of people who were partially attached to institutions and received rations acceding to the type and amounts of labour they provided (Gelb 1979). In distinction to those people attached to institutions were ir.di vid ual S whose pri rria ry a f fi 1 ia tion remained with their kin groups. There are indications from a range of sources that during the third millennium 3C the power and independence of kin groups was being progressively eroded by the palace and temple institutions] One of the most obvious forms that this took was the accumulation of large tracis of land by officials, thereby rendering many families landless (Gelb 1975; Zagaxcil 1986). The interpretation put forward here is that the principal burials in the Muyal Tombs are of people from the most elite social positions, whether these wcrekingsand queens, highprieslsand priestesses, or other high status positions of which we are unaware. Indeed, the considerable variability among the Royal Tombs - in construction, plan, number and types of 'sacrificial victims', and accompanying-grave goods (Figs.6&7) - Fiiaybep.irtlyattrifcute-Ieiodiffcrences intherolesthatthesepeiipleiil.iyc'din life. Furthermore, this interpretation propos;;^ that the individuals buried in the 'private graves' :i' ihe Ceu\cJ.:ry include range of other people attached to temple and palace institutions- Again, the^ I .trials exhibits tremendous diversity, from those with r,o crave goods, a few clay pots or a string of beads, to those tliat contain a wealth of objects and rival the Royal 'tombs in richness (fur example, the 'grave of Meska'arndug', PG 755). Such variation, which clearly indicates that the Cemetery was not exclusively used by the wealthy occupants of the city, can be attributed to thedi verse make-upof the personnel attached lo 'public' institutions. What of the remaining people, those whodid not receive burial in the Royal Cemetery? At least someof these people may have be<'n buried within their houses. The reason for suggesting within-housc burial is that such a practiceisa (tested atanumberof contemporary sites (Abu Salabikh: Martin et al. 1985; Postgale 1980; Khafajah: Delougaz et al. 1967; Fara: Martin 19SS). At noEarlyl>ynas;icsiteisthereunequivocalcvidenceof burialbothmcemeferiesandwimir.houses,but neither are there sufficient burials at any site to account for the number of people who must have lived and died there (Steele 1990). Burial beneath the floor of the house impliesclose and immediate association with the house, □ symbolic bond of some importance if these people '■vercinrierd assorting IV* I their primary ties were still in their kin groups rather than to public institutions. This may also t>e where many of the children were buried who died before reaching adulthood. Of course, burialincemete demand within houses does not exhaust the possible methods of disposing of the dead. Off-site cemeteries, disposal uf bodies in Ihe river, or simply exposing them to the elements could all have been practised, and sonte of these methods would leave no archaeological traces. Such practices must have been common in the preceding millennium, since only a handful of burials ha vc. been found dating to the Uruk period (c.3900-3100lit:). Only by ascertaining what proportion and what parts of Ihe population are represented in on-site cemeleries and house burials can we hope lo work out how many and what sort of people v. »;e -ks-* : of in other fashions (cf. Morris 1987). Treatment of the dead and Sumeři of the Afterlife -eptioi The burial sin the Royal Cc-nv. !erv exhibit tremendous variability in terms of thc-kirniso! goods placed in ihe graves to accompany the dead person and, to a lesser extent, in the treatment and placement of the body. Manyof tht'sedirfcrencosare a tlrihuLible to the gender, wealth.andsccialstandinpri'thei.^/CL'Used (scc.among others, Woolleyl934;Mooreyl977;Pollockl9S3,1991). While there is enormous scope for exploring the relationship between the treatment of the dead and their gender, wealth, and social position, 1 wish in the present discussion to steer a rather different course. My concern here is how the treatment of the dead related lo Sumerian beliefs about death and life after death. As we shall see, Sumcrian lilerary sources relating to these subjects - of which there are only a limited number - offer insights that are of gTeat help in interpreting the archaeological evidence. Butat the same lime, archaeology offers i-limpscs of customs and beliefs for which the textual sources in no way prepare us. The Sumerians envisioned the Underworld, the place to which mortals descended at their death, as a dismal place. According to The Epic of Gilgamesh', it was a place where dirt is their drink, tin--,- rrxsd is of clay, where, like a bird, they wear garments of feathers, and light cannot be seen, they dwell in the dark, and upon ihe door arid bolt lies dust. (Kovacs 1939,65: Tablet VII lines 179-82) An individual's only hope of a decent existence in the Underworld seems to have been lo bring their own Susan Pollock jii.ivlh]i>n», tin well us (;ifis with which to placate or IiiIIh' llit' jwiwrfM-Uiiil-boof the Underworld (seealso MdiiH'y VIV7), I'miii this, we can begin to understand imi' i.-(i-hhi why nearly every individual was buried with vi'.tM'h of some sort, whether of clay, stone, or mi'Ml: they served ns con miners for food and drink. In wii tu-cases, remains of food - fish or mammal bones, frroln, legumes, date stones - were found in vessels in the graves (Woolley 1934,144; Ellison ct at. 197S). IJoth in death and in life, the Sumerians viewed nakedness as synonymous with powerlessness. In iconographic representations, captives are shown naked whereas their captors are always dressed (for example on the Standard of Ur: Woolley 1934, pi. 92). In .i literary text entitled Inanna's Descent to the .Wilier World' (Kramer 1950,1957), [hegoddesslnanna Niiiki'Hii journey to the Nether World in an attempt to cvlmcl favours from her sister (he queen. To prepare fur lhe trip, shedresscs in her finest clothes and jewels: of ihc plain, she put upor I.... ks [iif hair) she fixed Upon her forehead. The measuring rod (and) line of lapis lazuli she gripped in her hand, Snull kipis lazuli stones she lied about her neck. Twin nunu/.-Mones she fastened to her breast, A Ruld ring she put about her hand, Thabrviistplate 'Man, come, come!' shebound aboui her breast, Withthepala-garmenl, tin1 garment of ladyship, she covered her body, ■ The ointment 'He (the man) shall come, he shaii come', she daubed on her eyes. (Kramer 1951,2: lines 17-25) As she passes through the seven gates thatlead through the Nether World, she is systematically stripped of her clothesandherjcwellery.rinally,sheisbroughtbefore the queen, naked and also powerless. This metaphor which contrasts nakedness and powerlessness withbeingdressed and bejewelled arid thus powerful can help us-to understand many of the objects that accompanied burials as part of 'dress' in the broadest sense. Most artefacts in the graves fall within the domainsof dress, jewellery, and symbols of position and power. For example, we find that both women and men were equipped with bead necklaces, earrings of gold, silver, or copper, and metal pins apparently used to fasten clothing. Females of importance were buried with elaborate headdresses of gold or silver ribbon, wreaths of gold or silver leaves, nngs suspended on;;trmgsofIapisandcarnelian beads, and ornamental spikes (called 'combs' by Woolley) of gold or silver with inlaid rosettes that were worn at the back of the head (Fig. S). Males of importance also had distinctive headgear, in this case usuallya string of three large elongated beads attached, to gold or silver chains which were worn around the forehead. Male!, also frequently wore a daggeror knife at the waist and might carry an axe in the hand (Fig. 9; Pollock 1983). While this picture is necessarily oversimplified and homogenized, it serves to illustrate the kinds of artefacts fliat were commonly buried with thedeceased. Some of these, such as components of the elaborate headdresses, have never or only rarely been found in contemporary burials elsewhere. I suggest that some of these objects may have been perquisites of institutional attachment and cemetery burial, specifically designed to coerce people gently into a relationship of greater dependency on these institutions. Just as enlightening are the kinds of things that are not placed with the dead. Royal Cemetery graves, whether rich or poor, almost never contain objects related lo mundane, economic activities such as toqls used fn agricultural or pastoral tasks, artisans'. equipment, or artefacts associated with textile manufacture. \>t these were the a.tivitiss'that forme;! the backbone of the Sumerian economy; If seems that? ordinary work, a person's manual occupation, was not appropriate or relevant at death; what was important was their rilual or political position. One of the most famed aspects of the Royal Cemetery is its evidence for the practice of what Woolley called human sacrifice. This involved the ap pa ren 11 y delibera te killi ng of a n u mber o f i ndiv 1 d ual s to accompany the principal occupant of each Royal Tomb to the grave. The deliberateness of the killing -whether coerced or'voluntary' - is argued for by the large number of such individuals in several of the tombs (for example, 63 in Royal Tomb 789; 28 in Royal Tomb 800; 75 in Royal Tomb 1237), which makes it highly unlikely that all of these people had happened to die simultaneously. Nor, in the absence of any eviceri. :o su^r,"'5t e-thct preservation of corpseson the model of Egypt or secondary burial, is it likely that bodies of people who had died earlier were 'saved' until the death of a paramount figure. Neither burial evideneefromothersitcsrior texts offer us comparable practices or an explanation for them. It is possible that the practice was confined to a relatively short period of time, early in ED III (Nissen 1966; Pollock 1985), and to only one city, Ur, although wecannot rule out the possibility that similar tombs at Other sites have simply escaped archaeological discovery. It would seem that the practice is best The Royal Cemetery of Ur Figure 8. Jewellery found on thehriyofGnetflkeiwnyfema'esxbsidiaryburkhiri other items were a gold leaf wreath, gold ribbons, large gold earrings, necklaces, and L Tin- Koy.il t "rini-n-iy <>l Mi _ Figure 9. Objects from Royal Tomb HIS, mmrdy associated with the principal occupant, including (our sets of distinctive hs.Mgar of k bends -old chains, and a dagger. understood as a short-lived and extreme form of display of the power of certain individuals - in their Capadtyaslugh-rankingmpiiibcrs of public institutions - over the Hvw of others. The idea that the subordinates buried in these tombs were vie wed in some respects as merely another variety of the grave goods with which the tombs were liberally endowed has already been suggested by Woolley himself 0934,38). Indeed, this practice might be a further indication of the lengths to which the leaders of the competing, power-greedy institutions of the temple and palace were willing to go in displaying to themselves, to each Otherand to the restofthepopulace then-ability to control their subjects. As Woolley clearly described, the RovalCemeterv was located in a garbage dump. This is hardly the place where we would expect people io be buried, especially people whose burial involved much pomp and circumstance, not to mention wealth. Nor, most probably, was this simply an abandoned dump; rubbish continued to be thrown there at least shortly after the dtggingofgraves,ifnotexact]ycontempornry with them." The texts thai we have do not offer us any rliiesas to the meaning of thlspraeiiee. ButaKitudeslo garbage - perhaps particular kinds of garbage - and/ or attitudes to death in Sumerian rimes must clearly have been significantly different from ours! Another phenomenon for which the texts do not specifically prepare us and which runs counter fo our culturally-bound assumptions about In;-atment of the dead is grave disturbance. In the Royal Cemetery, and in'dJothercontemporarycerncteriesandhoiiseburicls, a large proportion of the burials were disturbed in some way in antiquity. This usually seems to have involved removal of some of the objects placed in the grave,andsohasbeen termed by archaeologists grave looting or robbing. In some cases the disturbance appears to have occurred when an earlier grave was encountered in the digging of a later one, while in Others it was apparently more deliberate (Woolley 1934,16-19). In thecourseofthedisturbance,undesired objects (for example, clay pots) and even bodies were often tossed aside. In some cases, all or parts of bodies ,,ri. uimpli'li'ly ,|llr. 11(11 1V('"' p'1'1''!^ reniovi\l with iiirir jewellery or other objccti »till on them. While ihe fact of Ihe disturb*net and removal of objects seems undeniable, the connotations of this behavior are open to question. We can begin by questioning how easy it would be to covertly rob large graves located within - and perhaps quite centrally within - the dty.a If this is not in itself sufficiently unlikely, the phenomenon of grave-disturbance in houses makes the practice even more problematic. In at least some cases, for example Grave 234 at Abu Salabikh (Matthews & Postgafe 1987; Steele 1990), a person was interred below the floorof a houseand the grave subsequently 'robbed' with no apparent cessation in the occupation of the house. If, as seems reasonable, people were buried below the houses in which they and their families lived, why rob the grave of one's own kin? I cannot pretend to have a definitive answer to this issue of grave disturbance. However, it may be useful to rephrase thequestion entirely and begin with the assumption tha t this was not robbing or looting in ihe sense that we think of it at all. Instead, the objects placed with the dead may have been thereon loan, to help the individuals negotiate their entrance to the Underworld. .A free come period of time, objects could be retrieved by the living and returned to other uses, probably ir,cli:o;:ii; inheritance by the living, This is not to say that 'borrowing' back from the dead was considered ideal; rather the practice may have been accepted even though not particularly desirable. Indeed, it is qui;ee.y toinr.^inehow'sucli a practice could ha vebecn abused,espe-dally since we hear from the text eniiOcd The ReformsofUruiniingina'CSteible 1982) that priests had been abusing their prerogatives by demanding exorbitant pay for their services at funerals. Concha ding remarks AcomprehensiveinLurprctationoi'thoKoyElCemetery is well beyond the scope of a short essay such as this and requires attention to many more attributes of the deceased, their treatment, and Sumerian society more generally than have been touched upon here. What 1 have tried to do is to show some of the ways in which the Royal Cemelery burials can be understood as expressions of and responses to normative altitudes concerning death. At the same time, theburialsfonried part of the power struggles among various sectors of Sumerian society, struggles which themselves doubtless contributed to the shaping of normative attitudes. Thus, for example. a cultural dictum that to wield rxwer one miisll^ipprnprialely dressed makes understandable many of the objects with which the Royal Cemetery dead were provided; it also indicates a means by which people could be manipulated through their cooptionby powerful institutions which, among other things, offered to provision them with certain desired materials at critical junctures in life -such as death. The Royal Cemetery has served as a source of manyof our ideas nboutearly humeri an civilization, at thesametimeasithast*"viiseesrasaiMuqiie>!i -eoverv. Thissome^vliatCOntradicton'atlitudehighli;,lit:-:oiiie important points. On the one hand, there are notable similarities between the treatment of Ihe dead in the Royal Cemetery and at other contemporary sites, for example in the [ositioning and trealment of the body and in the categories of objects that accompany the deceased. Yet, while recognising these similarities (which no doubt reflect the participation of Ur in the larger socialand cultural sphere of Sumer and Akkad), wemust not fail to recognize the unique characteristics of the Cemetery. Moorey (1977, 39) has commented with insight that some of the features that mark the Cemetery as distinct, most notably characteristics of the Royal Tomb burials, may be aspects of a local cult, perhaps specific to Nanna, the moon god and patron dei ty of Ur. That the cult of Nanna was an important tradition at Ur has been strongly argued by Winter (1987) in a consideration o( the art historical evidence. Pursuing these arguments offers us a possible avenue toward investigating the particular, local differences between city-states, rather than viewing all of Sumer as one homogenous whole, Notes 1. II is, of course, possible that children figured among the graves that were not recorded by Woolley. Comparisons withothcr ED sites, however.suggest that children are routinely under-represented in excavated burial populations (e.g. Kish: Mackay 1925; Abu Salabikh: Steele 1990). 2. Woolley believed that a significant period of time elapsed between the use of the area for a cemetery and the next episode of rubbish disposal (Woolley 1934, 218-27). It is not clear that this must be so, however; it is unfortunate tha t Woolley's reporting of the details and stratigraphy of the rubbish heaps is not all that it might be. He was also influenced by his own feelings about the relationship between garbage and burial:1... it is a moral probability that such desecration of theold graveyard as is involved in the use of it as a rubbish-dump only took place Susan Pollock The Royal Cemetery of Ur after a decent interval since the date of the last interment(Woolley 1934, 220). 3. The location of the Royal Cemetery relative to the rest ofihediyisproblematic.W'oolley look pains to point out that the Cemetery's apparent location in immediate proximity to the much later Temenos area need not have any direct relationship to its position in the Early Dynastic town (Woolley 1934, 13-14). However, Woolley's assumption - that so long as the site of the Cemetery contained no buildings and was used as a rubbish dump, it must have Iain outside the city proper - does not seem justified. Other indications suggest that Ur may have reached its full size of some50 ha at this time (Wrightl981,327),inwhichca«theRoyalCemetery would have been well within the city limits and quite probably near its centre, The ideas in this paper were first presented as a public lecture at the American Museum of Natural History (New York), in a lecture series on Ur (February 1989). I would like to thank Reinhard Bembeck, Maude de Schauensee, Caroline Steele, Henry Wright and the Editor for their comments on the manuscript version, as well as students at SUNY-Binghamton who commented on an oral presentation of the article. The article was substantially revised during my tenure as Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung at the Freie Universität Berlin. Susan Pollock Department of Anthropology SUNY-Binghamton Binghamton, NY 13$02-6O0O U.Sj\. From P.R.S-Moorey, Ashmoten n Museum, Oxford A decade ago the editor of a set of conference papers on Death inMesopotamia remarked that 'the fact that the Gilgamesh Epic was mentioned frequently, but the royal burials at Ur very seldom, reminds us of the many riddles that still remain unsolved' {Alster 1980). Since then, Susan Pollock has thoroughly re-analysed theRoyal Cemetery at Ur, perceptively redefining the primary questionsit raises; but the riddles predictably endure since it remains unique. Although it would be unwise to assunu-t hat Woolley's excavations revealed the whole of this cemetery, subsequent work else where in Sumer certainly suggests, as Pollock argues, that the excavation of contemporary houses at Ur might well yield domesticbu rials, particularly of children, as was the case there later. We are still far from explaining the variety of Sumerian urban burial customs. When graves are in houses, it is by no means always clear whether the houseCor thatpart of it) wasorwas not inhabited at the time. When graves concentrate in cemeteries, often over many generations, it is not yet evident whether they were intramural orextramural and, if the former, whether location was haphazard or controlled by proximity to the central city shrines (as arguably at Kish-Hursagkalama and Ur) and whether admission to such a burial place was a matter of institutional affiliation or status, as Pollock argues, or of piety. Heroes, martyrs and saints, and the eternal felicity conferred by burial as close as possible to them, may be older phenomena i n Iraq than iscurrently assumed. The relative ease with which excavated grave groups may be ranked by constructing histograms of wealth scores has combined with a modern preoccupation with power and status to emphasisze socio-politicalsu-atificationat theexpenseof mortuary differentials less readily quantified or less accurately recorded by excavators. How are we to test whether burial practices in Sumer, or elsewhere, do or do not correlate more closely wiih aspects of ideology than with social structures? Pollock rightly invokes the evidence of texts and iconography to elucidate Sumerian eschatology, but what little there is serves only to demonstrate that local 'theologies' were as prevalent as city-states and no more coherent. Even if we accept with her that r»ud i ty wa s synonymou s with powerlessness in life, it does not follow that it was so in cult or in death. Libation scenes illustrate the ritual nudity of priests in the presence of the deity. Representations of nude or partially nude women (?goddesses) suggest that Inanna's disrobing as she passes through the Underworid has a more subtle cultic interpretation than Pollock allows, as may the rich attire (and presence) of attendants in the 'royal' graves. Indeed, Sumerian grave equipment may have had more to do with arriving in the Underworld, with the rites of passage, than with lifestyles - past or hoped for. Controversial spurifics apart, Pollock has wisely concentrated on two fundamental points not always sufficiently re cognized in recent mortuary archaeology: that no single cemetery may rw assumed to provide a representative sample of the local population; and thatmarked variatiansinthetxenrrncntofthe dead are as much to be expected within as between cultures. FromThorkildJacobsen, Bradford, New Hampshire Dr Pollock's paper raises interesting and relevant questions about the Royal Cemetery at Ur and offers stimulating suggestions for answering them. A few comments based on textual evidence may be added. Dr Pollock points out that the cemetery could haveaccommodatedonlyafractionofUr's population after death and suggests that it wasreserved forburial of Temple and Court personnel only. Other inhabitants of Ur may have been buried in their houses or in off-site cemeteries, exposed to the elements, or disposed of in rivers. Of these possibilities, that of exposure can probably be discounted given the Sumerians' intense abhorrence for having bodies lie unburied, even those cf enemies. The others are all viableand one might add that of drowning or getting lost in the marshes. Of these various possibilities, the one most likely to have accounted for large numbers of bodies would seem to be that of additional off-site cemeteries, as there is no necessity to assume that cemeteries were restricted on a basis of institution or class. Of interest for cemetery burial are UruKAgina's Reform Texts from the end of ED III. They show that tradition had established standard fees for funerary services as follows: Thebeerof a corpse going to tin? cemetery was seven jars, the loaves four hundred and twenty. One hundred and twenty quarts of ha-zibarley,onecloth, one headrest, one bed and one chair did the 'Shark-guise' (officiant) take away. Sixty quails did the 'expert' takeaway. The beer and bread of the corpse are clearly to go info the grave. Other texts suggest that the furniture mentioned was apparently used in the final rites. The next following section in the decrees begins 'After a man had gonein to Enki'sreeds', that is, was lost in the marshes. It lists the same costs as those for burial in the cemetery, which seems uncalled for with no corpse to rest on the bed or use the chair. UruKAgina, accordingly, cancelled all demands for furniture in this case. Relevant for seeing theRoyal Tombs incontext is apa5sage in the tale The Death of Gilga mesh' published by Kramer. I think it is possible to get a little further than did Kramer in his very careful and cautious pioneer translation. With slight emendation of the reading of two damaged signs I should translate it.as follows: When his beloved spouses, Ms beloved children, his beloved first wife and this) young concubine, his musician and air'i.^.-^.'his beloved barber, his belongings his bc[lt>vedl servants (!?) in attendance in the palace, his beloved ... things had been laid down in their plates in the palace founded on stone in the midst of Uruk, did Gilgamesh, son of Ninsuna, checkout their greeting gifts to Ercshkigal. As will be seen - and was noted already by Kramer -there are here definite points of contact with the actual findings in the Royal Tombs at Ur. There too the deceased was followed in death by the deceased's household including musicians, as testified to by the harps, and ordinary servants such as guards and grooms. An unusual feature is the use of stone besides clay in their construction. The designation of Gilgamesh's tomb as The palace founded on stone' may suggest the use of the same odd technique there. Possibly it had ritual implications. A difference is that in the Gilgamesh passage his family follows hirn in death;such seems not to have been the caseatUr. Also, while some of the objects found in the Royal Tombs may have constituted greeting gifts, there is no way to demonstrate this. The rather fuller picture given by the Gilgamesh passage helps greatly to clarify how the Sumerians in ED III saw the death and burial of a king or queen. In death the king moved with his family and household to another city-state - that of Ercshkigal * to settle there. Accordingly hebrought greeting gifts, standard procedure for calling on people of importance and essential for establishing proper relations with the dignitaries of the Nether World in which he expects to be accorded a position consonant with his rank. Gilgamesh wasmadeajudgeintheNetherWorld,and so was Ur-Nammu. Lastly, I must admit that explaining the household following their master in death as evidence of'competing, power-greedy institutions of the temple and the palace ...displaying to themselves, each other and the rest of the populace their ability to control their subjects' strikes me as anachronous. The Suttee is a better comparison From Hans J. Nissert, Seminar fur Vorderasiatische Altertumskunde, Berlin The sensational discovery of the Royal Tombs at Ur occurred only a few years after the even more sensational find of Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt with its tremendous wealth of precious objects. Both cases displayed a host of objects of both artistic and material value which had accompanied the dead on The Royal Cemetery of Ur iii-iiu»iifi"..iii.[rilii.iK.i'tliL>li]tiL>