427
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
Massimo Vidale
This article discusses the identity of the people buried in the Great Death Pit PG 1237,
a mass grave of the Royal Cemetery of Ur, and the ways they died and entered the shaft.
Admittedly, the evidence required to positively solve the many taphonomic and osteological
questions involved does not exist, because of the way the site was excavated and published
in the early twentieth century. Nonetheless, the original excavators’ skill and unquestioned
care in mapping and recording still prepares the ground for new alternative interpretations.
As the ‘Rams Caught in a Thicket’ (two statuettes found in the mass grave) may have been
the front parts of lyres, and almost all the dead might have entered the shaft impersonating
musicians, singers and dancers, the paramount importance of music in the funerals of
Sumerian elites is emphasized. New radiographic evidence recently suggested that some
of the buried persons were killed violently, refuting the traditional theory of a voluntary
mass suicide by poison. The bodies of the victims might have been formally prepared and
serially brought to the pit in burial groups. Stratigraphy and spatial distribution reveal
consistent depositional patterns dictated by specific rituals, as already proposed on the basis
of more limited evidence by other authors. Formal arrangement and ritualism, in turn,
support Woolley’s identification of the graves as sacred constructions and thus reaffirms
their royal character. The article ends by considering the historical meaning of the nature
of these impressive funerals at the verge of the political unification of Mesopotamia by the
house of Sargon.
anthropology (Molleson & Hodgson 2003; Soltysiak
2006), ethnobotany (Miller 1999; 2000; Tengberg et al.
2008), gender and role archaeology (Pollock 1991b;
McCaffrey 2008; Cheng 2009; Gansell 2007), history
of technology (La Nice 1995) and history and social
context of ancient music (Barnett 1969; Rakic 1998;
de Schauensee 1998; 2002; Cheng 2009; see also Aruz
& Wallenfels 2003; Zettler & Horne 1998; Irving &
Ambers 2002; and in particular Tinney 1998; Winter
2010).
The graveyard was situated in the centre of the
city thus making it better controlled by the seats of
power and reflecting the ideological and political
centrality of elite funerals (in the sense of McCauley
& Lawson 2007). The site was the burial ground of
various elite groups for a relatively long time (Pollock
1985; 1991a,b), as the most commonly accepted
State of the question
PG 1237, or the Great Death Pit (Fig. 1), was excavated
in Ur’s Royal Cemetery by Leonard Woolley, his wife
Katharine and a team of very skilled workers in the
winter of 1928–9 (Woolley 1934, 113–34). In terms of
excavation and field recording, Woolley, evidently
ahead of his time, stands out as one of the most successful
archaeologists of the twentieth century. The
importance of the discovery, and the quality of the
work done by the original excavators, is attested to
by the unbroken interest in the Royal Cemetery of
Ur which has resulted in new ideas in the fields of
stratigraphy, chronology and history (Pollock 1985;
Nissen 1966; Dyson 1976; Moorey 1977; Reade 2001;
2003b; Marchesi 2004), anthropology of state formation
(Pollock 1991a; 2007a,b; Cohen 2005), physical
Cambridge Archaeological Journal 21:3, 427–51 © 2011 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
doi:10.1017/S095977431100045X Received 3 Mar 2010; Revised 23 Nov 2010; Accepted 25 Mar 2011
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
428
Massimo Vidale
chronology for the Royal Cemetery ranges from 2600
to 2450 bc (Reade 2001; 2003a; McCaffrey 2008, 176).
The aim of this article is to develop the interpretation
of PG 1237 in terms of its formation and
taphonomy, an effort already begun for this and other
graves of the Cemetery by other scholars (Winter 2010;
Gansell 2007).
The Great Death Pit is a slightly irregular diamond
measuring 8.5 × 7.5 m with the corners oriented
to the cardinal points. Its plan (Fig. 1) was published
by the excavator in 1934 with north at the lower
right. While this orientation made the position of the
contents more easily understandable, it obscured the
actual geometry of the Pit and its burials in relation
to the cardinal points. Therefore in the present article
the same plan is published with north at the top (Fig.
2) and its sloping access on the eastern side of the
northern corner.
The upper part of PG 1237 had been disturbed
by later trenches. In the northeast edge and south
corner the walls were supported by mud bricks; floor
and walls were partially plastered with mud and
coated with mats. It was interpreted as the funerary
pit of a nearby rich royal grave which had been looted
and completely destroyed by robbers. This latter
might have been located 4 m to the southeast of the
eastern corner (Woolley 1934, 114), but only a heap of
limestone rubble and precious beads in a secondary
context were left in situ. An undisturbed ‘offering
table’ made of bricks coated with bitumen, built over
a very damaged mud-brick compartmented structure
(possibly part of the complex), was excavated to the
northeast of the eastern corner. Pit PG 1232, located
nearby to the southwest and containing a cart, skeletons
of animals and containers for food, may have
belonged to the same extended burial complex. The
excavators discovered the remains of 68 ‘women’ in
gorgeous ritual dress, set in discontinuous rows on
the floor and an isolated group of six ‘males’(Woolley
1934, 116). Some of the buried individuals (13–15, possibly
16) lay below a pile of four or five crushed and
corroded lyres (two in silver, one with gold fittings,
and possibly one or two similar wooden lyres with
copper stags in front: Woolley 1934, 123 & pl. 113).
The excavators, who saw the dead retinues as a
sign of the aspiration of the ruling houses to a semidivine
or divine status (1934, 33–42), notoriously
interpreted PG 1237 as the main scene of a ritual
mass suicide.1 The story, widely published with the
1. Paraphrasing Woolley, under the conditioning of their
belief in the afterlife and attachment to the dead kings
and queens, people would have dressed with care and
entered the shaft, row after row, in a ceremonial procession.
Here, dipping a small cup into a large communal
famous illustrations that appeared in the Illustrated
London News (Zettler 1998, 25) had a dark fascination,
somehow softened by the idea that people voluntarily
accepted a sedating poison and were buried alive, to
follow their masters into the afterlife. In Woolley’s
famous words
… There seems to have been no violence done to
the men and women who crowd the death pit, but
that they drank quietly of the drug provided and
lay down to sleep … it was a privilege rather than a
doom pronounced on them … (they) were translated
to a higher sphere of service (1934, 41–2).
This reconstruction was dramatized by the baroque
splendour of the personal attires, and by vivid narrative
details like the story of a woman who had no time
to fix a silver ribbon in her hair, and hurried to die with
her companions keeping the rolled ribbon clutched
in her hand (see Zettler & Horne 1998, cat. 46, p. 102,
although this might have been also a case of cadaveric
spasm, following Knüsel et al. 1996). Although this
version soon became very popular, it met a variable
fortune with the specialists. Opposition was immediate.
For Smith and Böhl (quoted by Woolley 1934,
38–40; see Marchesi 2004, 163–5), the main occupants
of the graves were not kings and queens but rather
priests and priestesses interpreting sacred marriages
with the city’s gods, the others being people sacrificed
for assuring the fertility of the land. Moortgat (1949,
65) while accepting the royal identity of the main burials,
proposed that kings and queens also interpreted
sacred marriages. The idea of high-ranking priests
and priestesses, refuted by Woolley in the excavation
report, was later resurrected in different forms by
Moorey (1977) only to be rejected again by Marchesi
(2004, 163–86) and more recently by McCaffrey (2008).
Kramer (1963, 129), while defining the buried
individuals as ‘human retinues’ did not comment on
the cause of death. His caution was later shared by
historians who ignored or understated the factual
evidence, partly for a lack of trust in archaeological
copper cauldron, they drank a powerful poison with
a sedating drug (opium or hashish), and took their
established place.After falling to the ground, everybody
was rapidly buried, with a mass of precious personal
ornaments, part of a highly decorated wooden frame of
a tent or ‘canopy’, and no fewer than four to five lyres
in gold, silver, copper and wood inlaid with semiprecious
materials. As the lyres and the ‘canopy’ were
found above the corpses, the excavator concluded that
somebody at the end had come down to arrange some
of the bodies and objects into their final position (Woolley
1934, 35). Finally, the Great Death Pit was gradually
filled in and paved at intervals with clay-plaster floors
for celebrating other funerary feasts there and leaving
more offerings.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
429
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
Figure 1. PG 1237, the general
plan as published by the excavator
(Woolley 1934, vol. II, pl. 71). The
arbitrary view allows an easier
appreciation of the details of the
burials, but it also obscures its
cardinal orientation.
Figure 2. The diamond of
PG 1237 after its cardinal
orientation (i.e. with the north
at the top) has been restored.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
430
Massimo Vidale
data not supported by textual evidence,2 and partly
because such cruel mass killings did not fit with the
general reverence of the ‘ethnic genius’ of the highly
evolved Sumerians (Kramer 1963). Childe, in contrast
(1969, 153–4), while comparing the royal graves at
Ur with those excavated at Abydos in Egypt, spoke
without ambiguity of ‘gruesome ceremonies’ involving
the mass killing of retinues.
In fact, the Royal Cemetery is not mentioned in
important manuals such as Nissen (1988), Liverani
(1988) and Postgate (1994); nor in recent works on
Mesopotamian religion and Sumerian funerary rituals
(Mander 2009; Katz 2007). McCaffrey (2008), who
spends forty pages defending the plausible thesis
that some of the principal female burials in the Royal
Cemetery belonged to ‘female kings’ (see Marchesi
2004), does mention the retinues and attendants buried
in the royal graves, but only incidentally refers to
their ‘sacrifice’. Once more, the attention goes to the
glittering show of the elite burials, and not to the mass
killing of many (presumably) lower-class individuals,
many of whom were probably women. From this point
of view, it is as if Woolley had never excavated there,
or as if the funerary rituals discovered in the Royal
Cemetery had nothing to do with Sumerian religion.
In contrast, many authors still accept the traditional
version of a mass suicide by self-poisoning (i.e.
everybody entered the shaft singing and planning to
die there: Pinnock 1993, 125; Pettinato 2007; Reade
2003b, 95; Black et al. 1992, 104–5 or Bertman 2003,
283). Pollock (2007a,b; and Irving & Ambers 2002)
also argues for some form of suicide. Others consider
Woolley’s explanations valid, but admit that ‘the
circumstances were a little romanticised’ (Crawford
2004, 154).3 Woolley’s cultic suicide theory is still very
influential.
2. According to Marchesi (2004, 160) a passage from the
Sumerian literary text ‘Death of Gilgamesh’, often
quoted to explain the burial practices of the Royal
Cemetery (e.g. Kramer 1944; 1960; 1963, 129–30) does
‘… not seem to refer to a rite of collective burial, nor to
show any relationship to the burial customs attested by
the Royal Tombs of Ur’. More relevant to the Ur burials
might be the (later) text conventionally known as ’Death
of Urnamma’ (Flückiger-Hawker 1999, 93–182; Cohen
2005, 94–5; Tinney 1998; a synthetic general review of
Mesopotamian funerary practices is given in Potts 1997,
220–35).
3. Ascalone (2005, 26), among others, while accepting the
theory of the funerary ritual mass killing, still tries to
minimize the evidence (‘… The burial rituals included
human sacrifices, but not many’). The attached burials
in the Royal Cemetery, as can easily be calculated from
the excavation report, amount in total to almost 350
individuals.
Some archaeologists state more simply that
retainers were killed in groups during the funerals
(e.g. Forest 1996, 216–17; Cohen 2005, 3). While
Gansell (2007, 29) openly defines the Royal Cemetery
as ‘… a site of human sacrifice’, Marchesi (2004,
154) rightly criticizes the use of this term. In fact, ‘…
sacrifice denotes the ritual killing of a living being
… as an offering to a deity to obtain or to maintain
the favour and the protection of the latter’, and, he
argues, there is no evidence of a similar aim in the
Royal Cemetery.
But interpretation goes on. Winter (2010, 228)
reviews the thesis that in Sumerian culture the dead
kings and queens, upon their arrival to the underworld,
were meant to present people and artefacts
as gifts to its rulers, a circumstance recalling the
funerary furnishings of the Royal Cemetery (see also
Cohen 2005; Tinney 1998). According to Charvát
(1993, 306–7; 2002, 226) most of the bodies belonged to
people who had died after the main occupant, joining
him or her in the graves over the course of time, thus
reaffirming their links to their leaders. He also suggests
that the bodies were manipulated and possibly
excarnated. Leick considers Woolley’s reconstruction
as an example of the ‘… power of narrative strands in
archaeological assessment’ (Leick 2002, 115) and the
voluntary-suicide theory as an expression of a Victorian
sensibility about death. He states that, ultimately,
none of Woolley’s evidence for his interpretation
stands up to scrutiny.
Leick also gives credit to Charvát’s theory of
secondary burials. A similar explanation is given by
Sürenhagen (2002), who suggests that the ‘attached’
bodies (those accompanying the principal grave)
were progressively extracted from the main chambers
to make space for the new burials. The Death
Pits, in this view, would be collective, and not multiple
graves, where bodies could decompose in empty
spaces (terms after Duday 2009). If that were the case,
PG 1237 would have been a large subterranean hall,
but Charvát and Sürenhagen would need to explain
how the roof of such a large buried space could
stand for long periods without columns or other
architectural supports, the evidence for which has
never been found. This is impossible also because,
in PG 1237 and in other graves, many skeletons
of attendants are undisturbed primary depositions.
Woolley may have indulged in narrative and
romance, but his reconstructions of the graves’filling
processes are detailed, sound and reasonable and
cannot be questioned by similar abstract considerations.
Furthermore, the accompanying burials often
represented complementary technical or social roles,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
431
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
such as soldiers, musicians or wagon attendants,4
and their burial was necessarily simultaneous (as
cogently argued in Marchesi 2004, 155).
More recently, Cohen (2005, 150) discussed the
Royal Cemetery as the site and the ritual show of an
elite banquet, materializing a strong ‘palace ideology’.
Pollock (1991a; 2007a,b) while agreeing that feasting
and distribution of food and drinks was an important
activity, saw the main burials as belonging to preeminent
leaders of elite households. Fully reflected
in the elite burials of the Royal Cemetery, public
feasting would have enhanced a psychological and
behavioural connection between the mundane and
the ritual, thus enforcing the relationships of power
and submission that might explain the acceptance of
a premature death by a mass of participants.
Both Winter (2010, 231) and Gansell (2007)
focused rather on the evidence of ritualism. According
to Gansell, the deposition of jewellery with the
dead within tombs and across the Royal Cemetery
demonstrates that stock articles were worn in standard
configurations. Besides signalling collective affiliation
and possibly initiation, such recurrent assemblages
would indicate distinct sub-groupings of individuals
(2007, 31). Her figures 2–4 clearly show that rows of
individuals with various formal identities and probably
different ranks occupy segregated positions in
some shafts. This fits with the suggestion of Winter
(2010, 227–9) that deposition followed a precise ritual,
and that such symbolically and culturally meaningful
behaviour (in her terms ‘appropriate grave-side
protocols’) can be reconstructed upon the basis of such
spatial patterns. She noticed, for example, how groups
of ritual containers used for libations were often
discarded in northern and northwestern points of the
funerary shafts. Stating (on the basis of ancient texts)
that in Mesopotamian cosmic geography ‘… “north”
and “northwest” constituted a conceptual unity’
(Winter 2010, 252). Winter tentatively refers such ritual
behaviour to offerings made to netherworld deities
4. A peculiar ‘ethnic’ perspective was added by During
Caspers, when she noticed (1994) the similarity between
the elaborate, flower-laden headdresses of Harappan
ceramic figurines and the precious gold and silver diadems
worn by the retinues of the Royal Cemetery. Later,
Tengberg et al. (2008) identified the form of some of the
Ur gold leaves as representing those of Dalbergia sissoo or
pipal, a species native to the Indo-Pakistani Subcontinent.
At Kunal (Haryana, India) a jewellery hoard with large
and showy silver flowers, was found dating to c. 2600 bc
(Khatri & Acharya 2005). Are we dealing with specific
cultural contacts between Ur and the Indus valley, or,
as suggested by Kenoyer (1997, 274–5; 2003) were the
victims slaves imported from this latter region?
and demons associated with specific winds coming
from such cardinal directions.
All this might sound quite speculative, but the
perspective is intriguing. Funerary beliefs, ideology
and ritual actions might have had little to do with
what we presently understand as religion (Fogelin
2007, 59; historical examples in Ariès 1977). However,
in spite of their ambiguity, the archaeological patterns
detected by Gansell and Winter, like those identified
in the rest of this article, can only be explained by
reference to formal rituals, and these latter, obeying
more general ideological frameworks, must have been
important components of Sumerian religion.
How far we can reconstruct on similar evidence
alone the detailed dynamics of ritual actions, their
possible meanings, and move towards understanding
the underlying religious background, is a longdebated
question (e.g. Insoll 1999; Biehl & Bertemes
2001; Kyriakidis 2007) that exceeds the scope of this
article. In Mesopotamian archaeology, given its historical
reliance on very partial written sources, and
the total absence of any relevant ethnographic and
ethnohistorical information, this task appears even
more demanding than in other contexts.
Rams and lyres: musicians for the dead
The skeletons found in this and other contexts of the
Royal Cemetery were very poorly preserved. Only a
few were recovered, saved and brought to London
or Philadelphia for further study (Woolley 1934, 121).
These include waxed earthen blocks containing postcranial
skeletal parts and some crushed skulls with
jewellery or encased in flattened copper helmets.5
5. Woolley (1934, 121) states that ‘Four of the betterpreserved
skulls well provided with ornaments were
waxed together with all the beads, hair-ribbons, &c.
and removed for exhibition; they illustrate clearly
the arrangement of the head-dress’. In 1992, Irving &
Ambers (2002, 210–11) X-rayed two other blocks from
PG 1237 discovering that they contained crushed jewellery
and not human remains. Molleson & Hodgson
(2003, 93, fig. 16) mention a single waxed package
from PG 1237 at the British Museum’s Department of
the Ancient Near East, Gallery 56: the crushed skull of
a ‘female attendant’ with rich jewellery that partially
covers the tibiae of individual 67. This find can easily
be located in the published plan (second inner row from
the southwestern side, centre). Describing the skull and
its radiograph, the authors ascribe it to an adolescent/
young female (Table 2), while on p. 111 they suggest an
age of 20–30 years. However, the sex attribution of the
other skeletons is based only on the ornaments.Another
waxed block encasing the crushed skull of a jewelled
‘woman’from PG 1237 is conserved at the Penn Museum.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
432
Massimo Vidale
Woolley’s aim was to document the conditions of the
remains at the time of the discovery and show the
visitors what he had found and what the conservators
so successfully reconstructed.
The sex of the individuals buried in PG 1237 was
inferred from the ornaments and other accompanying
objects,6 rather than from the bones. Woolley
It is one of the two specimens X-rayed in Philadelphia
(Fig. 3). Another illustration of a waxed block from the
Great Death Pit is published by Woolley (1934, pl. 148b,
caption refers to p. 116 of the report).
6. Woolley (1934, 30) lists the types of ornaments preferentially
associated with men (rings of gold and silver chain,
large beads on the headdress) and women (gold hairribbons,
wreath of gold and lapis beads with pendants,
large gold lunate ear-rings, hair-rings of coiled gold
wire, gold and silver combs, floral tips). Both Gansell
(2007) and Pollock (1991a,b) developed Woolley’s suggestions,
ultimately concluding that ‘… people wearing
vegetal wreaths are gendered as female, and those
wearing “brims” [i.e. showy headbands with beads] are
identified as male’ (Gansell 2007, 37–8). Almost all the
burials in PG 1237 would therefore qualify as females
(see her fig. 4), thus confirming the excavator’s original
view.
determined there were 68 female and 6 male burials.
Their age was generally ignored, with the exception of
burial 9, isolated to the west of the piled lyres, which
was described as a very young woman (Woolley 1934,
117). In fact, the main concern of SirArthur Keith (1934),
Woolley’s physical anthropologist, was rather the racial
ascription of ‘queen Shub-ad’ (Pu’abum) and Meskalamdug
(Molleson & Hodgson 2003; Soltysiak 2006).
The discovery of lyres and harps in PG 1237, and
in other grave shafts of the Royal Cemetery, infers
that some retainers were musicians and people who
practised singing and/or dancing.
The attire of the dead is fully compatible with
similar roles. In fact, Cheng observes that the elaborate
headdresses of most individuals, in PG 1237 and other
royal graves, suggest long hair, in Early Dynastic art
associated not only with women, but also with singers,
and, in ritual contexts, with castration and eunuchs.
Moreover, contemporary cuneiform texts indicate
that in the Early Dynastic world, the gala (professional
singers) may have been eunuchs, transvestites
or homosexuals (Cheng 2009, 165–6, 171). As Pollock
(1991a) pointed out, sex in this cemetery should not
be confused with gender. Woolley’s identification of
the skeletons as female solely on the basis of their
costume and accessories, and not on physiological
measurements, is open to serious questioning (McCaffrey
2008, 177–83; Cheng 2009, 168). Thus, at present,
it is impossible to state that the apparent feminine
characterization of most burials in the Great Death
Pit matched with biological sex.
In this article, without proper osteological information,
I will use the conventional expression ‘women’
and ‘male-servants’(with quotation marks) to refer to
the individuals thus identified by the excavator.7 The
7. A careful reading of the excavation report reveals a
minor contradiction. At least one individual in the
list of Woolley’s 68 ‘women’, might have been a male.
Individual 21, in fact, wore a limited set of ornaments
a single silver hair-ring, a necklace of silver and lapis
beads, a copper pin, while a copper axe might have
belonged to this burial or to the nearby individual 22.
Although the lists of the previous footnote are clearly
an over-simplification, they would qualify individual
21 as male rather than female. In the excavation report,
the list of objects associated with this burial also mentions
a copper axe. It is the only weapon found among
the ‘women’ of the mass burial; however, Pollock, who
carried out a careful check of Woolley’s notes, informs
me that this axe is not present in the original document,
but a copper axe is recorded on the hip of skeleton 22.
This latter only has two necklaces and a copper pin; it
is possible that Woolley confused the two burials, and
it is also possible that both (21 & 22) were originally
‘engendered’ in the mass burial as males.
Figure 3. The skull of a woman from PG 1237 with a
rich array of ornaments (gold hair-ribbon, gold lunate
earrings, lapis lazuli hair-string with pendant leaves,
silver stem with raised rosettes, ‘dog-collar’ of lapis lazuli
and gold, necklace of lapis lazuli and gold fluted beads).
It is one of two skulls recently analysed by CT scan in
Philadelphia (Courtesy of the Penn Museum, image
#193965).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
433
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
68 ‘women’are aligned with the southwestern wall of
the shaft opposite the entrance. The diamond (Fig. 2)
may be divided by a line into a larger southwestern
part hosting the rows of 68 ‘women’ in variable ceremonial
costume, and a northeastern strip that hosted
a row of six isolated skeletons (individuals 1–6), a pile
of lyres plus three other bodies (7, 8 and 9). While the
knee angle, in the bodies buried in the southwestern
part, ranges from 30–40°, in individuals 9–12, the last
row in front of the entrance, the same angle is about
20–30°. It seems that the lower limbs of these ‘women’
were purposefully pushed up to the hip, probably to
leave the access free or to give more space to the row
of individuals 1–6, identified as the ‘male-servants’
(Woolley 1934, 116). While ‘women’were buried with
their heads to the southwest, the six ‘male-servants’
were oriented to the northeast and looked northwest.
At this point, interpretation of the well-known
‘Rams Caught in a Thicket’in the western corner of the
Figure 4. PG 1237 showing the location of the two
Rams in the western corner of the diamond. The different
decoration of the bases (a decayed silver strip on the
uppermost specimen, a mosaic of coloured stones in
the other) suggests that the rams belonged to different
objects. The lower specimen is presently on exhibit
in London (U. 12357A: © The Trustees of the British
Museum, image 00032584001) and the upper one in
Philadelphia (U. 12357B: Courtesy of the Penn Museum,
image #152054).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
434
Massimo Vidale
shaft becomes crucial. The ‘Rams’ are two composite
images made of wood, lapis lazuli, red limestone, shell,
copper, gold and silver (Woolley 1934, U. 12357Aand
12357B, pls. 77, 88, 89; pl. 90a, b; Hansen 1998, 61–3,
cat. 8; 2003). Found in the same corner of the shaft
(Fig. 4), they represented two goats with a thick mane
and lapis lazuli cork-screw horns, climbing on a low
tree or bush.8 Animals or mythological creatures in
heraldic positions beside ‘mountains’and ‘plants’are
common from Uruk period (e.g. Frankfort 1939, pl.
IV.j) to Early Dynastic (see Frankfort 1939, pl. XIII.h;
8. While the position of the Rams would immediately suggest
a grazing posture, Woolley saw them as trapped
within a bush, like the animal that Abraham killed as
a substitute for his son Isaac (Genesis 22, 3–10). He
observed that ‘When found each animal had a silver
bond, apparently a chain, round his front fetlocks
attaching him to the branches of the tree (these were
reduced to soft chloride and fell away), so that he was
perhaps conceived as hobbled to the tree rather than
resting against it …’ (1934, 265). As a rule, in fact, in
the Royal Cemetery ‘… silver was in nearly every case
reduced to a purplish powder…’ (1934, 121). The biblical
reference perfectly fits the ideological climate of the
time, but at present may be considered with scepticism.
The silver chains or bonds mentioned by the excavator
and recently resurrected by Hansen (1998, 49) were not
preserved or otherwise documented by Woolley, and
remain an open question.
Moortgat 1969, pl. D.1) and later Mesopotamian art
(e.g. Frankfort 1939, pl. XVII.h; Muscarella 1981, 83, fig.
38; 119, fig. 77; 143, fig. 104). In many artefacts of the
Royal Cemetery, bulls, ibexes, stags and antelopes(?)
climb bushes or plants on small elevations, to form
‘trees of life’, in which flowers and leaves are exactly
opposed: a single rosette-like flower in the centre, the
‘leaves’ symmetrically displayed at the sides of the
animals. An example is the shell engraving of Figure
5 (Woolley 1934, vol. II, 91, pl. 100, U. 10917A). The
same motif appears on the inlaid gaming boards of
PG 789 (U. 10557, pl. 96) and PG 779, Chamber D (U.
11162, pl. 97). Variations also appear on the inlays of
lyre sound-boxes (U. 1057, pl. 104; U. 10478, pl. 98, b).9
The plant of the Rams is conventionally represented
as a shrub of some strength (otherwise it could
not withstand the animal’s weight). Its flowers have
large eight-petal corollas (quite rare in nature) in the
form of symmetrical radiating lozenges.10 Rosettes
— very common in the Early Dynastic repertoire —
appear as abstract signs on many other artefacts of the
Cemetery (e.g. the inlays of the famous game-boards,
pl. 95, U. 10478 and U. 9000, where red and blue petals
regularly alternate giving the probable numeric value
of ‘eight’, to the bottom of the gold fluted beaker found
in grave PG 1054, pl. 157 c, U. 11902: in short, both
caprids and rosettes are often repeated in the substantial
figurative repertoire of the Royal Cemetery). In the
Ur rams, flowers appear on the end of naked branches,
perhaps suggesting a late winter–early spring blossoming.
The elongated and concave vegetal elements
on the end of other branches might be leaves, but also
fruits or buds, another symbol (in a funerary context)
of fertility and resurrection.11
Because of the cork-screw horns and the thick
9. The symmetry of these shell engravings recalls a split
representation: ideally, one of the Ram statues, vertically
cut along its main axis and projected onto a twodimensional
plane, would produce exactly the same
image.
10. Costantini, a leading ethno-botanist of South Asian
archaeology (pers. comm.), agrees that it is hard to
establish if such images are realistic, and actually
referred to a precise species, or were simply conventional
(in both cases symbolism might have played a
major role). The same opinion is shared by Miller (2000).
The rosette is generally assumed to be one of the main
symbols of the goddess Inanna. Some scholars see the
statuettes as symbols of the sacred marriage between
the ruler and Inanna (e.g. Cohen 2005, 151).
11. ‘The leaf shape may represent a flower on the end of
a branch or twig, or perhaps a stylized bud that will
become the rosette, or a simple fruit, the consequence
of a fertilized floral spadix.’(Pittman 2003, 122; see also
Hansen 1998, 49, 62).
Figure 5. Shell engraving (U. 10917A: Woolley 1934,
91 and pl. 100; © The Trustees of the British Museum,
image 00032405001). The motif closely reflects the
posture and setting of the two Rams, but the rosette and
‘leaves’ of the plant occupy opposite positions.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
435
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
mane, I wondered if the portrayed animal could be a
markhor (Capra falconeri),12 the powerful goat-antelope
of the Hindukush region (Fig. 6).13 In fact, markhors
12. This suggestion had been already advanced by Hall,
in a letter to Jayne on January 31, 1930, as reported in
Tinney 1998, 31.
13. Although the ancient habitat of the markhor is unknown,
assuming that the present sparse distribution includes
patches of an original continuous area, we may hypothesize
that in the past it moved in a wide crescent
from the Dushambe valleys to Pamir, Karakorum
and its lower valleys, including Chitral, Swat and the
whole Sulaiman range to end in Quetta (Roberts 1997).
Badakshan and the Kokcha river valley (the source of
lapis lazuli exploited in the Bronze Age) cut a west–east
axis approximately through the centre of this crescent.
This would mean — if the present distribution of the
animal infers that of 5000 years ago — that whoever
was mining and trading lapis lazuli probably had many
opportunities to hunt and capture markhors.
are rare but well-recognizable subjects in Sumerian
Early Dynastic Art (e.g. Aruz & Wallenfels 2003, nr. 41,
82). According to Meadow (pers. comm.), a reputed
archaeozoologist of South Asia, the mane, limited to
the shoulders, is more likely a heavy fleece, and the
floppy ears suggest a domesticated animal. As the
horns of the Ur figures twist in a clockwise direction,
while those of markhors always twist anti-clockwise
(Fig. 6), the figures are domesticated sheep or goats,
like the stuffed specimens currently sold in Mazandaran,
Iran (Fig. 7).
Woolley explained in detail how the two statuettes
were carefully recovered and reconstructed with
modern supports. Presently, one is in Philadelphia
(U. 12357B), and the other in London (U. 12357A) (Fig.
4). One has a base surrounded by a silver sheet, while
the sides of the other bear a geometric mosaic similar
to that of its upper surface. They look very similar,
but a recent critical restoration of the Philadelphia
Figure 6. A markhor (Capra falconeri) and the horn
variations of the species (Roberts 1997). In each case the
horns twist anti-clockwise.
Figure 7. A stuffed goat with long hair and corkscrew
horns on sale in Mazandaran, Iran, along the southeastern
Caspian shore. The position is the same as that of
the two Rams found in PG 1237, showing the enduring
popularity of this heraldic motif. The horns, as in all
domesticated goats, twist clockwise.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
436
Massimo Vidale
Ram (Rakic 1998; Penn Museum 2007; Hansen 1998)
singled out a set of minor differences, confirming that
they belonged to two different objects.
The function of these statuettes was never well
understood. Woolley spoke of ‘applied art, the decoration
of a piece of furniture’(1934, 265). This idea is still
repeated in most publications. For example, Pittman
(2003)14 interprets the gold-sheet tubes protruding from
the neck of both statuettes as coatings for the wooden
uprights or legs of a lamp, a burner or a small tray,
while Hansen (1998, 63) speaks of the ‘lower part of a
stand’, as if the two statuettes belonged to a single object.
It is easy to see that in the Royal Cemetery wooden
furniture (even the enigmatic ‘canopy’ laid near the
southern corner of PG 1237, see Fig. 1) was buried and
decayed in situ, and there is no evidence that objects
were intentionally broken apart; nor can a tray be supported
by only two legs. Not only do their differences
indicate different objects, but so does their separateness
14. Pittman discusses the possible representation ‘piece
of furniture’ in a contemporary marble cylinder seal
at Berlin (see Aruz & Wallenfels 2003, fig. 37; Hansen
2003, 43) where a bull in the same position supports
a horizontal element. I would agree rather with other
sources (quoted by Pittman in the same context) that
the object in this seal is actually a lyre.
in the corner of the shaft. In the well-known watercolour
by Louise Baker (U. 12357A, see the title-page
of Woolley 1934, vol. I, text, and pl. 87) the upper
extremity of the upper gold tube is capped with an
imaginary gold disk, but this reconstruction is dictated
only by aesthetic reasons and by the need to minimize
the apparent anomaly. Underneath the tail of the Philadelphia
Ram it is possible to see a gap in the gold foil
showing the location of a regular hole: a wooden shaft
crossed the figure along its whole length, neck to back.
Gansell (2007, 41) has suggested that the shafts
across both rams might have been the oblique uprights
of two small lyres. If we compare the setting of the
Philadelphia specimen with the large silver lyre found
near the entrance of PG 1237 (Woolley 1934, U. 12355,
pl. 112; de Schauensee 1998; 2002) the structural and
iconographic similarity is striking. In front of the
fully preserved oblique upright, another animal (a
stag) climbs a similar shrub bearing the same pointed
leaves or buds. Woolley himself thought that the two
damaged copper stags below the silver and gold lyres
might originally have been placed in front of wooden
lyres in the same position (1934, 123, pl. 113).15
15. The analogy and reconstruction are not free of problems.
In the silver lyre the stag places the hind legs on the
Figure 8. PG 1237, eastern corner of the shaft. The gap between individual 60 (right), 61 (centre), 62 (left) and the wall
may be filled by a reconstructed lyre bearing one of the ram figures on its front. We can also conceptualize a vertical lyre
between 60 and the wall of the pit; in this case, too, the ram statue would fall in the proper setting.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
437
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
Is it possible that the trace left by the decayed
wood of these hypothetical lyres was not recognized?
I think so, because in similar cases the excavator confesses
to a serious uncertainty.16 The records (Woolley
1934, pl. 77) show that one of the Rams (U. 12357B), near
individual 61, lay on its side near the floor. The other,
near individual 60 (U. 12357A), rested on its back near
the corner of the pit. The row of bodies 60–68 along the
wall is interrupted only near individual 61, where the
contour of a lyre put on the ground (Fig. 8, right) would
fit perfectly. The void between individual 60 and the
corner of the shaft (as carefully mapped by Woolley),
may also correspond well to the decayed wooden frame
of a second lyre, if vertically placed against the earthen
wall (Fig. 8, left). Here, it would have been harder to
trace the cut line of decayed wood when excavating, in
spite of Woolley’s field experience and the standardized
practice of filling the voids that appeared under
the spades with plaster and waxing the most delicate
elements with paraffin (described in detail in Woolley
1934, 70, 75, 123; see also Tinney 1998, 31).
plane of the sound-box, while the bush and anterior part
of the body stand above a low but evident step, which
also hosts the base of the upright. In contrast, the almost
vertical Rams would be entirely contained within the
limits of two rectangular bases, and we have to assume
that the upright’s shaft was inserted outside the base,
directly into the plane of the sound-box. The angle of
the gold foil tube to the base of the goat matches with
this reconstruction. There might be a formal analogy
between the raised step of the silver instrument and the
small platform or base of the Rams. Another difficulty
for the lyres hypothesis is that the inhomogeneous core
of the Rams and their applied parts might have created
vibrations and deteriorated the sound (Dumbrill pers.
comm.). The argument is a serious one, but also the
silver ‘Boat-Shaped’lyre from the same Death Pit has a
composite frontal silver stag made of wood, copper and
silver, climbing a bush (de Schauensee 1998; 2002). Here,
too, unpleasant vibrations might have been difficult to
avoid. Furthermore, it is hard to say if and how far the
ritual would have enhanced the ceremonial display to
the detriment of the quality of the sound.
16. In the Royal Cemetery, other lyres were set vertically
against the shafts and near corners of the funerary pits
(like in PG 789 and 800, see in particular Woolley 1934,
69, n. 1 & pl. 29; and also in PG 1332, 125). The excavator
states that in PG 789 two wooden musical instruments
with metallic animal masks were not recognized as such
but misinterpreted as statues. Barnett (1969) found that
Woolley had mistaken two superimposed instruments
for a single one. Together with the couple of badly
corroded copper stags found aside the ramp of access
(Woolley 1934, pl. 75a), which may have been one or
two front pieces for other lyres, the Rams suggest that
not all the instruments originally buried in the Death
Pit were actually well interpreted by the excavators.
Both theories — supports for furniture vs parts
of lyres — lack any factual grounding. However, the
lyre hypothesis is supported by analogy with the same
finds nearby and, more importantly, is a good explanation
for the two anomalies in the spatial setting of the
burials, by invoking the simple taphonomic process
of the decay of the wood of which they were made.
On the whole, it is more likely. It would also fit with
Woolley’s original suggestion (1934, 252) that in the
funeral procession people had played sets of lyres with
different tones, symbolically attached to different animals.17
Perhaps the largest and low-pitched lyres were
assimilated to bovines in a normal horizontal position;
medium-sized instruments had stags climbing shrubs
in oblique positions, and the ‘Rams caught in a thicket’
stood almost vertical in front of the highest-pitched and
possibly smallest instruments. The setting or angle of
the animals’bodies to the plane of the lower supporting
boxes (and their decreasing body size) might have been
related to the pitch of the instruments.18
As the bearers of the hypothesized Ram lyres
were buried along the opposite wall of the shaft,19 and
the pile of 4–5 lyres was found near the entrance, the
entire group might have been preceded and followed
by lyre-players. Moreover, as already suggested by
Moorey (1977, 35) the large copper container laid near
the instruments, instead of a cauldron containing the
poisonous drug, could well have been a large drum
abandoned nearby together with the great lyres.20
In this view, all the ‘women’in the southwestern
part of the Pit, and not only the people deposited
near the lyres, could have been musicians capable of
playing lyres and drums, dancing and/or singing.21
17. The semantic and symbolic associations between
music and animals in the ED III period are thoroughly
explored in Cheng 2009.
18. The weight of similar large instruments is demonstrated
by the player’s image in the ‘peace’ side of the ‘Ur Standard’(Woolley
1934, pl. 91). Beside a long-haired singer,
a man carries a lyre with the help of a leather belt that
hangs from his shoulder. The belt supports the box of
the lyre from below and turns around the neck of the
cow or bull front figure like a leash, strengthening the
visual reference to a powerful domesticated bovine. In
the lapis lazuli seal of individual 7, PG 1237 (U. 12374,
in Woolley 1934, 338, 22; pl. 194, 22) the lyre is carried
by two dwarf-like figures or boys moving below the
soundbox. See also Table 2.
19. Stratigraphic analysis confirms that individuals 60 and
61 were among the first to be buried in PG 1237.
20. Some copper drums are on exhibit in the ethnographic
showcases of the Haradi Museum, Kerman, Iran.
21. The ornaments (and objects in general) accompanying
each ‘woman’ of PG 1237, seem to differ noticeably in
wealth. A rough classification of the burials in terms of
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
438
Massimo Vidale
Were the victims executed?
The second question is how the ‘musicians’, or their
bodies, entered the shaft.22 Since the effects of heavy
jewels and ornaments, implicit in Woolley’s inventories,
suggests that the ‘women’ in PG 1237 might have been
buried in two-rank couples (‘lady’ — ‘lady servant’?)
followed by a minor group of attendants. The testing
of this impression would require the examination of
Woolley’s original field notes, photographs and actual
materials, and this is impossible at present, and out of
the scope of this article. Susan Pollock, who analysed
the context in detail, came to largely comparable
conclusions (pers. comm.). Gansell (2007) carried out
a systematic study of the association of the personal
ornaments buried in PG 1237 and other graves of the
Royal Cemetery. She stated that: ‘… selection and configuration
of jewellery on bodies across the cemetery
[represented] visual communication within an encoded
repertoire expressing information about the identities
of the deceased’(2007, 37). She recognizes as the richest
assemblages (often worn by the main, royal occupants
of some graves) those including the ‘gold wreath sets’
(2007, 32). Along the southwestern wall of the shaft
(Gansell 2007, fig. 4) a row of burials with this gorgeous
attire is segregated from a parallel unbroken row of
‘women’ with less-showy ‘choker-based ornaments’.
Upper-ranking attendants, in this view, are spatially
distinguished from lower-ranking ones. The pile of
lyres finally abandoned near the eastern corner of PG
1237 — if the copper stags, as I believe, were actually
parts of such instruments — might be inspired by a
precise threefold ‘metal hierarchy’ of gold, silver and
copper. The same obvious hierarchy is evident in the
series of spears (gold, silver and copper) deposited in
the Death Pit of Grave 789 (‘The King’s Grave’: Woolley
1934, 69). This symbolism might also be identified in
other series of objects in other contexts. One wonders
if such metallic hierarchy was related to the rank scale
suggested by the attached burials.
22. M. Vidale ‘Royal Graves of Ur: Patterns in Death’(lecture
drugs and deadly poisons on a large group of panicking
people expecting to be buried alive are hardly
compatible with the apparent strict formality expected
in such a formal ceremony, we may consider the possibility
that the retinues in PG 1237 were killed violently
before interment. Perhaps the victims were strangled
(one of the most expedient and common techniques of
execution in the ancient world)23 or their throats were
cut. The first doubts derive from the published plan of
PG 1237 (Figs. 1 & 2). The rotation angle of the cervical
vertebrae of a few bodies (like 62, 68 and 70) seems to
exceed the biomechanical range of a living individual
(Fig. 9; Duday 2009, 42). The perfect preservation of
the weakest joints, completely undisturbed, indicates
a very rapid burial; therefore the unnatural rotation of
skulls, as in individuals 66 and 68, cannot be ascribed
to slow, gravitational (taphonomic) displacement after
decomposition. In skeleton 53, moreover, the distance
between the skull and the post-cranial skeleton seems
anomalous. Burials 10, 18 and 28 also might show
anomalous angles between the last cervical vertebrae
and the base of the cranium.According to the excavator,
while kings or queens rested in sealed empty chambers,
the retainers of the Death Pits had been rapidly buried
and their bodies decayed in earth-filled environments.
The evidence which Woolley provided in the report is
generally consistent with such an hypothesis.24
given on 27 March 2009, Penn Museum, Philadelphia).
The nice title is due to Holly Pittman, who bravely
invited me to speak about the Royal Cemetery in front
of people who knew the most celebrated treasures of
the Museum much better than I could ever dream of.
23. Strangling is normally detected from a fracture of the
hyoid bone. Given the state of heavy fragmentation of
the skeletal remains found in PG 1237, even this possible
indicator would probably have been useless.
24. Not always though. While describing the Death Pit of
grave PG 789 Woolley (1934, 68) stated that the bodies in
Figure 9. A detail of the skeletons along the southwestern side of the shaft. The circles single out possible anomalous
positions among the skull, cervical vertebrae and post-cranial skeleton. For discussion see text.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
439
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
Nonetheless, bone displacement could be more
simply a result of the peculiar burial processes
reconstructed by the excavator (Woolley 1934, 36).
Some shafts were temporarily paved at increasing
heights, and funerary feasts with offerings and libations
were celebrated there. At the beginning of this
process, corpses may have been indirectly trampled
and heavily compressed, breaking and partially
displacing the joints between some skulls and the
supporting vertebrae. The sole evidence of the plan,
the level of accuracy of which, at present, cannot be
evaluated,25 is hardly conclusive.
A study carried out for the new exhibit ‘Iraq’s
Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur’s Royal Cemetery’
(Philadelphia, 25 October 2009) later reported new
relevant evidence (e.g. Penn Museum 2009; Hurdle
2009; McCarthy 2010; Baadsgard et al. 2011).26 Baasthe
open shaft had been buried seated against the wall,
so that they ‘… had fallen forward and the skulls lay at
all angles among the leg-bones’. This accurate observation
would imply (at least in this case) a burial within an
empty covered space, slow processes of decomposition
and gradual collapse of the skeletal parts.
25. While the plan — the best ever made in the Royal
Cemetery — shows the skeletons in almost complete
forms, Woolley states that in some cases the bones
were so badly preserved that the original position of
the bodies was inferred from the position of the skull.
Note also how the skulls, in many cases, are drafted as
having a volume and three-dimensional orientation,
while the sampled specimens are so flattened that such
reconstructions today appear arbitrary.
26. Lemonick (2009) stresses how the new discovery — by
two women scientists — dismissed the old theory of
the mass painless suicide, ascribed to Leonard Woolley.
However, the idea had been advanced by Katharine,
and accepted only later by her husband, as openly
acknowledged by Woolley (1934, 35). Actually, in The
Sumerians (1965, first published in New York on 31
December 1929), Woolley stated without ambiguity
that the retainers had been ritually slaughtered. At the
time, after the first two campaigns in the Cemetery, the
team had excavated PG 580, 777, 779, 789, 800 (Pu’abum),
and Meskalamdug. PG 1050, 1054, 1236 and 1237 were
excavated in the 1928–9 season. It is thus clear that the
suicide theory was inspired by Katharine to Leonard
during the long excavation of PG 1237, while The
Sumerians was already in print. Katharine’s suggestion
was that the dead looked too peaceful, ordered and
perfectly dressed to have been violently killed on the
spot. It was the peak of the Neo-Romantic movement,
when the ideal of a peaceful, painless suicide by selfpoisoning
was still popular among leading artists and
poets (see Minois 1999). It was also an obvious reaction
to the naturalist canon that dominated literature in the
second half of the nineteenth century, exemplified by
the ‘embarrassingly graceless death’ (Ariès 1977) of
gard, Zettler (curator of the Near East Section) and
Monge (a physical anthropologist at Penn Museum)
brought the two crushed skulls kept in Philadelphia (a
skull with jewellery from PG 1237 (Fig. 3) and a guard
with helmet from grave PG 789) to the University of
Pennsylvania Hospital and scrutinized them using CT
scans. On the jewelled skull they found a blunt-force
trauma. In the other block, below a helmet that looks
intact, the skull showed two holes surrounded by
radiating fractures, interpreted as peri-mortem blows
from an axe.27 If this skull turned out to be damaged
below an intact copper helmet (as there is no evidence
of a corresponding hole in the metal), this individual
at least had been re-dressed after execution. The X-ray
image furthermore reveals that the Penn Museum
helmet was replaced backwards, the front to the rear
of the skull.28 Preliminary evidence thus strongly supports
the view that the victims were executed, cleaned,
recomposed and carried into their mass grave before
rigor mortis took place.29
In this view, Dickson’s (2006) definition of
these funerals as ‘state-sponsored theatres of cruelty’
would seem particularly appropriate. The suicide
theory might have clouded another case of political
violence in the rise of archaic states. In fact, if all the
victims had been executed, royal funerals at Ur, as in
other early states, chiefdoms and hierarchical tribal
societies of the Bronze and Iron Ages of Eurasia
and Egypt (Tinney 1998, 29–30), would appear to be
Emma Bovary’s suicide with arsenic in the masterpiece
by Gustave Flaubert (1856).
27. Baadsgard et al. 2011, 36–8, figs. 6 & 7; Penn Museum
2009. Looking at the X-ray plate of the skull of individual
46 from PG 789, in London (Molleson & Hodgson
2003, fig. 13), one sees two or possibly three holes with
an oval contour, two of which surrounded by concentric
and radiating fractures (see for comparisons Burns
1999, 162–5). Their appearance matches the preliminary
description of the new Philadelphia radiographs. Are
these holes, too, the mark of a similar weapon? Molleson
and Hodgson do not remark on the evidence. At any
rate, the skulls are so badly shattered that doubtless
caution is mandatory.
28. Is this casual? A previous X-ray image (Molleson &
Hodgson 2003, fig. 13, from PG 789, n. 46, a soldier’s
head with copper helmet, see their footnote 2) shows
the helmet in its proper setting (see also Woolley 1934,
pl. 218, PG 789 b). As we have, at present, only these
cases, it is hard to say, but the helmet at Philadelphia,
in its reversed position, was certainly replaced on the
body of the victim.
29. The study also revealed traces of cinnabar in the jewelled
crushed skull from PG 1237 (as reported in Penn
Museum 2009). The substance might suggest an attempt
at preserving the body and/or a residue of a cosmetic
treatment.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
440
Massimo Vidale
immersed in a recurrent political and/or religious
fanaticism.
However, stating that the victims had been
executed does not necessarily imply that they were
violently forced to die. Both Pollock (2007b) and
Cohen (2005), in fact, argued that ideology could
have been a powerful ‘inclusive’ tool, bonding subordinates
and victims to the elites by the means of
impressive formal rituals pivoted on public feasting,
drinking and pervasive soundscapes. And such feasts
might have been effective in creating consent to the
gruesome practice of ritual mass killing, even to the
point of promoting and justifying self-immolation.
This is entirely possible, but in strictly archaeological
terms, given the very limited osteological evidence,
we are presently unable to ascertain whether or not
the victims accepted their fate without struggling.
On the other hand, while ideology doubtlessly
had a cardinal role to play, it might have been more
‘exclusive’ than ‘inclusive’. Even a superficial reading
of the Shang oracular bones from Bronze Age China
(Keightley 1978; Chang 1980) reveals how early state
communities sometimes developed a strong sense of
limited and constrained identity that made outsiders,
and with them servants, prisoners and slaves, little
more than animals that could be killed by the hundreds
in a single day.30 The practice might also have
signalled a growing political power. In fact, when
enemies or foreigners were killed in public, chiefs and
rulers openly claimed and displayed, at the same time,
immunity from the ensuing feuds, and this immunity
was probably perceived as a measure of the radius of
territorial control and degree of military security of
the ruling house.
Were the retinues of the multiple graves foreign
slaves or servants? And if so, how long had they
served at Ur as musicians, dancers and singers before
their execution? If, instead, they were prisoners, this
status (at least for similar large groups) would hardly
be compatible with a narrow professional specialization,
and the question would get even more intricate.
The process of deposition
If ‘musicians’ and their companions were killed outside
and entered the shaft as dressed corpses, in which
order were they laid? Common sense would dictate
that deposition started from the side of the diamond
opposite the entrance and continued towards the
northeast, i.e. towards the access ramp.As we shall see
later, the evidence of physical superimposition among
the human remains fully supports this view. The first
bodies may reasonably be expected to be those along
the walls and in the southern corner opposite the
sloping entrance. The bodies were transported along
a north–south axial pathway joining two opposing
corners of the diamond (the entrance at the northern
corner and the southern end).
This pathway is still recognizable as a partially
free, ‘S’-shaped strip, about one and half metres wide
(Fig. 10) obstructed only by four isolated corpses with
the same orientation (from the north, individuals
9, 41, 55 and 56). These ‘women’ (together with the
hypothetical musicians near the piled lyres and the
copper vessel) might have been among the last victims
to be deposited into the mass grave. They may have
obstructed the pathway only after all the bodies were
finally in.
In order to reconstruct the sequence of deposition,
I defined as a ‘burial group’ a series of bodies
set in limited or discontinuous rows, having the
same orientation, or, in a few cases, symmetrically
opposed in an evident pattern. Isolated bodies were
30. See for example the following statement: ‘The people of
Ch’iang Fang, a country probably to the west of Shang,
were the frequent source of war captives by the Shang
… and these captives were frequent victims in Shang
ancestral rites, used as offerings in the same order as
cattle, sheep, and kids, as the oracles related’ (Chang
1980, 228–9).
Figure 10. The diamond of PG 1237, and the north–
south pathway probably used while shifting the bodies
into the Pit (modified after Woolley 1934, vol. II, pl. 71).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
441
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
also considered burial groups.Almost all corpses were
placed lying on their sides, and the orientation of each
case was defined by the post-cranial skeleton, rather
than after the orientation of the skull. The resulting
hypothetical burial groups were then considered as
‘steps’ of the deposition sequence.
This subdivision is partly subjective.31 The only
reliable way of establishing a sequence is the relative
stratigraphy among the excavated burials. While the
relationships of superimposition seem to have been
systematically recorded in the published plan,32 not all
the skeletons have direct physical contact. The western
part of the diamond retains consistent relationships
31. For example, Woolley (1934, vol. I, 116) in the southern
corner of the diamond associates six ‘women’ to the
‘canopy’. He probably meant individuals 72–4 and
57–59. This wooden object might have been associated
with 73, 74, 32 and 17. Also, the inclusion of individual
34 in burial group j is somehow subjective. As in other
steps of the present analysis, uncertainty can hardly be
ruled out.
32. Woolley made clear that in PG 1237 the bodies were
arranged in rows, and that such rows were often
superimposed one onto the other. Note the following
statement (1952, 46): ‘They were disposed in regular
rows across the floor, every one lying on her side with
legs slightly bent and hands brought up close near the
face, so close together that the heads of those in one row
rested on the legs of those in the row above.’
of superimposition, while the interpretation of the
eastern part is more conjectural.
Sometimes, on the basis of geometrical order
alone, the sequence of deposition recognized for some
skeletons was arbitrarily extended to a whole row or
burial group.Although a search for spatial patterns on
these grounds may be easily questioned as uncertain,
preliminary results are encouraging. In Figures 11 and
12 the groups are labelled with letters (a–v) (Fig. 12).
Table 1 outlines the attributes of each group (composition,
location and face orientation) and, where possible,
it details when one group covers another. The stars in
the last column distinguish the 29 bodies with gold
hair-ribbons as indicating the richest attire (as opposed
to silver ribbons and other ornaments). Stratigraphic
relationships are summarized in the Harris diagram
of Figure 13.
All the burials face northwest or southeast; and
as previously noted, all bodies are oriented with their
heads towards the southwest, except for the six ‘males’
(1–6), whose heads are oriented to the northeast (these
patterns alone are inconsistent with the traditional
theory of a funerary cortège collapsing to the ground
in agony and, in contrast, strongly suggest a ritual
arrangement of the bodies).
Figure 12 shows that almost all the groups along
the walls contain bodies which face northwest, while
in the core of the diamond they face southeast, or
Figure 11. PG 1237, bipartition of the pit and the
proposed subdivision of the bodies by burial groups. Lines
were drawn differently only to enhance the visibility of
the rectangles.
Figure 12. PG 1237, subdivision by burial groups,
numbered from a to v. In the majority of the groups
deposited along the walls the bodies look northwest, while
those deposited in the centre (along the pathway) look
southeast (modified after Woolley 1934, vol. II, pl. 71).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
442
Massimo Vidale
Table 1. PG 1237 by burial groups and their main features.
Burial group Individuals Location Orientation Stratigraphy Remarks
a 60, 61 W corner Both NW covered by f (?) lapis seals, 2 rams, 61*
b 62–8 NE side NW covered by f, g
c 69–72 NE side SE covered by i 69, lapis seal
d 73, 74 S corner 73 NW, 74 SE covered by i canopy, 2 non-functional spears?
e 33, 46 NE side NW covered by f 33*, 46*
f 47–50 centre, W 47, 48 NW, 49, 50 SE covered by j 47*, 48*, 49*, 50*
g 51–4 centre, W 51, 52 NW, 53, 54 SE covered by j 51*, 52*, 53*
h 55–6 pathway, S SE covered by k 55*
i 57–9 SE side NW covered by l near canopy?
j 34–40 centre, W 34, 35, 40 NW; 36–39 SE covered by m, n 34*, 35*, 36*
k 41 pathway, centre SE – 41*
l 42–5 centre, E SE covered by h, o 43*, 45*
m 18–21 NE side NW covered by q 21, a man (?) with a copper axe; 19*, 20*
n 22–8 centre, W SE covered by r 24*, 25*, 26*, 27*
o 16, 29–31 centre, E SE covered by s 16*
p 17, 32 SE side NW covered by o 17, calcite seal
q 10–12 NW side SE – 10*, 11*
r 9 pathway, centre SE – 9*
s 13–15 centre, E NW covered by t 14*, 15*
t (4–5 lyres) SE side NE, SW, E –
u 7, 8 E corner NW – 7, lapis seal
v 1–6 NE side NW – 3 men with weapons; 4, shell seal
Figure 13. PG 1237. Stratigraphic sequence of the burial groups expressed as a Harris diagram.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
443
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
contain bodies with both orientations. The first to enter
were groups a, b, e (to the west) and perhaps, p and u
(with no physical contacts to the other series) to the
east. The two corners, west and east, might have been
filled with corpses before the other spaces of the shaft.
Here, the bodies face exclusively northwest. Burial
group d, in the southern corner of the diamond, is
mixed: one body faces northwest and the other, symmetrically
opposed, faces southeast. Figure 12 and
the Harris diagram (Fig. 13) indicate that the bodies
were laid in the southern corner, starting from group
d, with steps being retraced along the path until this
was finally obstructed, as stated above, by the isolated
bodies labelled as groups h, k and r (individuals 9, 41,
55 and 56).
In this second step of deposition, all bodies were
deposited facing southeast (with the possible exception
of f, g and j, in the centre-west of the diamond,
that are mixed). In summary, spatial analysis suggests
that the first bodies were set into the corners and quite
probably along the walls, and faced to the northwest;
then the rest of the bodies gradually filled the centre,
their face turned in the opposite direction, to the
southeast. This sequence was possibly closed when
the six ‘male-servants’were set along the northeastern
wall, their faces looking to the northwest like the other
bodies put along the sides of the diamond.
This looked like an interesting but isolated conjecture,
until I considered the evidence of nearby PG
1332 (the other large Death Pit excavated in the Royal
Cemetery). Here, Woolley found
… two layers of bones, separated by an earth stratum
1.10 m. thick, representing in the upper layer 23 and
in the lower 20 human bodies. In the top layer the
bodies were arranged fairly regularly in rows of five
across the pit’s axis, the rows, measured by the heads,
being about 1.00 m. apart; in the lower layer the
arrangement was less orderly and at the north-east
end there was only one body which, judging from its
position in relation to the lyre, may have been that of
the musician of the party; in the upper layer all the
bodies lay with their heads to the north-east, in the
lower all lay with their heads south or south-west
except the ‘musician’, whose head was in the north
corner of the pit. (1934, 124).
The sequence of events is here revealed without
ambiguity by a substantial stratigraphic gap. The first
(lower) burials in the pit faced south to southwest
while the last (or upper) ones faced northeast. In summary,
in both cases (PG 1327 and PG 1332), people
were buried with a long two-step process, the first
burial groups looking westwards, the last ones facing
eastwards. The coherence of the rituals is striking, also
in the light of the discovery in the same funerary Pit
(Woolley 1934, 127–8) of a wooden lyre with a copper
bull head, set vertically against the wall of the shaft,
together with two copper wands plausibly interpreted
as musical instruments and described as ‘… castanets,
long clappers of metal mounted on wood’. PG 1332
contained the remains of another cortège of people
involved with music, and buried with a similar ritual.
Searching for other patterns: burials in pairs
in the corners?
If the subdivision in sequential burial groups is an
approximation of reality, we recognize many pairs of
victims at the three corners of the diamond (the northern
one is occupied by the sloping corridor and the
ramp). Isolated in the eastern corner are individuals
7 and 8: they were buried with abundant gold (earrings,
hair-rings, finger-rings, gold and silver pins, rich
gold and lapis lazuli collars and necklaces of various
fashions) and a lapis cylinder seal (nr. 7: Woolley 1934,
pl. 194, 22, U. 12374). In the opposite corner (west) we
find the couple with the Rams, individuals 60 and 61.
Burial 60 has gold ear-rings, a necklace and a silver
pin, and a lapis seal (pl. 194, U. 12387). Individual
61 belongs to the series of 28 ‘women’ having a precious
headdress of gold ribbon. The list of ornaments
(wreaths of leaves and rings, gold rosettes on silver
stems, gold hair-rings and finger-rings, gorgeous
necklaces and collars of gold, carnelian and lapis,
bracelets of gold, carnelian and lapis, silver pins and
a comb in the same metal) is among the longest in the
PG 1237 inventory. Individual 61 had another lapis
cylinder seal (pl. 195, 39, U. 12380).
In the southern corner, two bodies (73 and
74) were arranged symmetrically, one facing to the
northwest, the other to the southeast. Burials 73 and
74 had similar ornaments (silver ribbon, hair-rings and
frontlet) and the same belt of shell rings. Both skulls
are covered by a shaft of the mysterious ‘canopy’.
Broad leaf-shaped points (considered by Woolley as
ornaments, and not true weapons) are visible near
the knee of individual 74. The wooden frame of the
‘canopy’ extends along the southeastern side to cover
the face of a third individual (32) buried with the back
to the shaft, and further onward there is another body
(17) precisely in the same position. In Table 1 and in
the plans (Figs. 11, 12) burials 17 and 32, with the same
setting, are considered a single group. Individual 32
is linked to the couple 73–4 by the contact with the
‘canopy’. Burial 17, like 73 and 74, had (among other
objects) silver ornaments, simple copper ornaments
and utensils, and a smaller calcite cylinder seal (Woolley
1934, vol. II, pl. 195, 40, U. 12371). Burial 32 had
similar silver ornaments, the same copper items (a pin
and a bowl) and a gold and lapis lazuli necklace. Woolhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X
Published online by Cambridge University Press
444
Massimo Vidale
ley thought that such a ‘canopy’could have been part
of four-poster frame over the biers (in other graves
he had found post-holes around the coffins). Was it a
kind of stretcher used to carry the bodies of the victims
into the shaft? If this was the case, we should probably
keep in the same group corpses 73, 74, 32 and 17.
In summary, a couple with two lyres and two
lapis lazuli cylinder seals was laid in the western
corner; another couple with silver ornaments and a
similar cylinder seal lay in the eastern corner; a couple
with silver ornaments and belts made of shell ringlets
below the canopy in the southern corner, perhaps
related to a fourth couple with simpler ornaments,
and the four latter individuals might have carried this
large object, which is still unidentified.
The bearers of cylinder seals as ‘gate-keepers’
The spatial arrangement of the six individuals bearing
cylinder seals, far from being random, seems to have
followed another precise ritual arrangement (Fig. 14,
Table 2).33
Gansell (2007, 31) remarks that ‘… Various studies
have established that lapis lazuli seals bearing
banquet imagery were characteristically female possessions’.
According to Pittman (1998, 76) ‘… Double
register banquet scenes seem more often associated
with women involved in the internal workings of the
court’. A different interpretation of the burials with
cylinder seals in PG 1237 and other graves of the
Royal Cemetery, stressing the authority these tools
would imply, rather than a subordinate administrative
responsibility, is discussed by Gansell (2007). The
author remarks that in the Royal Cemetery:
… [s]eals were found with attendants wearing all
types of jewellery sets but were far less common
among the secondary interments than among
primary occupants and those buried singly. This
disparity may reflect an emphasis on group affiliation
over personal distinction among attendants;
and it may mean that attendants were derived from
a less prominent social rank (2007, 40).
In PG 1237, all bearers of cylinder seals were
laid along the sides and in the corners of the shaft: in
fact, no other seal was found with the inner groups.
33. When Gansell (2007, fig. 4) maps the distribution of
seals, she places the lapis cylinder seal found by Woolley
with individual 69 on individual 70, probably because
it was found near the hand or arm of the former (look
carefully at the plan in Fig. 1 and consider Woolley 1934,
120). This partially obscures the geometrical pattern
of the seal’s distribution, shifting the location of the
seal towards the corner. Compare my Figure 14 with
Gansell’s figure 4.
In such a formal context, this pattern cannot be casual.
The most important seals (in lapis lazuli, with complex
banquet and symposium scenes in two registers) were
symmetrically placed with their owners in the western
(U. 12387, U. 12380) and eastern corner (U. 12374).
The seal in lapis lazuli (U. 12427), and the calcite one
(U. 12371) have simplified symposium scenes on a
single register. They are located respectively near the
centre of the southwestern and southeastern sides.
The last cylinder seal (U. 12390) was made of shell.
Badly preserved, it was found near the centre of the
northeastern side.
During the Bronze Age, from Egypt to the Indus
Valley, seals were used (among other functions) to
close and unlock jars, baskets, furniture and doors
(Ferioli et al. 1979; Fiandra & Pepe 2000; Perna 2005).34
Seals with inscriptions that qualify associated burials
of the Royal Cemetery as scribes, priests, porters and
cooks (Gansell 2007, 40) were probably used by attendants
in the daily administration of the palace’s facilities
and goods. While placing non-inscribed cylinder seals
(and the possibly female administrators or attendants
in charge) along the walls and in the corners of the
shaft of PG 1237, people who performed the burial
might have been signalling the location of imaginary
axial gates. If the main funerary constructions of the
Royal Cemetery were indeed imagined — as Woolley
proposed (1934, 141–2) — as sacred underworld
buildings, the invisible accesses of PG 1237 in key
points of the diamond might have been controlled by
the bodies of six ‘gate-keepers’. The location of such
imaginary gates in the corners would match with
the actual entrance to the diamond itself (set in the
northern corner). The imaginary accesses could be
related symbolically to different supernatural loci or
axial directions, or reserved to different spiritual or
psychological components of the dead (see Bottéro
2001, 105–10; Mander 2009, 62–5; Katz 2007).
The ‘male-servants’ as possible executioners
As stated above, the row of individuals 1–6 were
identified by Woolley as ‘male-servants’ (1934, 116)
not only because they lacked the most visible ‘female’
ornaments such as large ear-rings, combs or floral
tips, but also because three of them were buried with
copper weapons (burial 1, a dagger and its whetstone;
burial 5, a dagger; burial 6, a copper blade). Although
34. Potts more specifically states that in the mid-thirdmillennium
bc, the sealing of doors and movable
containers was very common, while the use of seals on
administrative and legal documents appears to have
been extremely rare, to become frequent again in the
Ur III period (1997, 243).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
445
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
Table 2. Description, context and spatial distribution of the six cylinder seals found in PG 1237. See also Figures 12 and 14 and Pittman 1998.
Ind. Identification Material Registers Woolley’s description of the subject Location
60 U. 12387
pl. 194, 23
lapis 2 ‘Man and woman seated at a banquet of wine, attended by one servant.
The man raises a cup. The woman drinks through a tube from a jar
set on a stand containing two extra pipes. Their seats are different.
The sideboard below is richly loaded with legs of lamb, loaves, or jars.
Two servants bring in a heavy jar swinging from a pole across their
shoulders. A solid rope or net is tied around the jar. The crossed sticks
above may be a stand.’
western corner
61 U. 12380
pl. 195, 39
lapis 2 ‘Banquet of wine and contest of animals. Three women are seated
cup in hand. A maid stands by a board loaded with more cups. Two
crossed lions attack a herd of antelopes (goats ?)…’
western corner
7 U. 12374,
pl. 194, 22
lapis 2 ‘Symposium with music…The high-priestess (?) attended by one maid
sits apart, cup in hand. Two men drink through pipes from a jar set
on a stand and containing three extra pipes or air tubes. Bird heads
and scalloped skirts as usual. The more elegant seat may mark the
better rank. The female choir below, led by one man, staff in hand,
consists of one harp-player, two cymbalists, and three singers clapping
their hands…The five-string harp, has a sounding-box shaped like a
standing bull and is carried by two boys, each with an arm round its
legs.’
eastern corner
69 U. 12427,
pl. 193, 14
calcite 1 ‘Symposium reduced to two seated archaic figures, two pipes, one jar
on a stand. Extra pipe in the middle. One scorpion in the field.’
southwestern
side
17 U. 12371,
pl. 195, 40
lapis 1 ‘Ritual symposium. Man and woman with servants. They sit and drink
through long pipes. A palm-tree suggests dates and palm wine.’
southeastern side
4 U. 12390 shell nd Nd northeastern side
Figure 14. PG 1237. Seal-bearing
bodies were deposited in the east
and west corners and along the walls
of the diamond. Void large circles = the largest,
two-register lapis lazuli cylinder seals. Full circle =
a simpler, one-register lapis lazuli cylinder seal.
Solid lozenge = calcite cylinder seal; solid square = badly
decayed shell cylinder seal (see also Table 2). This regular,
symmetric distribution suggests that individuals with
seals were placed at key geometrical points of the diamond,
perhaps as ‘keepers’ of invisible supernatural gates (modified
after Woolley 1934, vol. II, pl. 71).
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
446
Massimo Vidale
impossible to demonstrate, Woolley’s hypothesis,
on the whole, seems reasonable. Woolley recorded
similar homogeneous groups of ‘male’ victims
buried with their weapons in segregated spaces in
other graves, like PG 789 (individuals 19–22, four
daggers and a whetstone; heads oriented towards
east and looking to northeast) and 800 (five burials
into a narrow rectangular pit in the sloping entrance,
with daggers and a razor; heads to the southeast). All
these attached burials provided with copper blades
are strictly spatially segregated; in two cases, they are
also oriented in directions contrasting with those of
the other associated burials. They are all found near
the entrance, presumably being the last, or among the
last, to be deposited in the shafts.35 These correlations
suggest the possibility that such groups of armed
‘male-servants’ in the funerary scenes of the Royal
Cemetery were the actual executioners of the others.
Another reconstruction
So far, the fascinating theory that the victims were
softly ‘translated to a higher sphere of service’ (Woolley
1934, 42) supported, in an implicit but authoritative
way, the idea that retinues died willingly in their mass
graves, under the coercion of a totalitarian ideology.
The theory of a voluntary self-immolation of crowds of
retinues by the means of a ‘sweet poison’is probably a
neo-romantic myth, deeply rooted in the culture of the
late nineteenth century. It also implied that the order
of the bodies in the Death Pits would have reflected
that of an official funeral procession, instantly ‘frozen’
at the time of death without major traumas, to wait
undisturbed for the shovels of the excavators. The
Woolleys were early and illustrious victims of what
Binford and others called ‘The Pompeii premise’, i.e.
the illusion that the archaeological record in optimal
conditions should reflect ‘… the remains of a once
living community stopped, as it were, at a point in
time’ (Binford 1981, 196; consider, in Woolley 1934,
the plan of PG 789 in pl. 29, and the famous graphic
reconstruction of pl. 30, the caption of which reads
‘The persons and objects are drawn in the position in
which their remains were found’).
If, in contrast, deposition was the result of a
35. In PG 789, this group is buried along a wall, near
soldiers, a wagon and wagon attendants, not far from
the entrance (this latter seems to have been guarded by
rows of armed soldiers). In PG 800, the group is buried
in a rectangular pit, sunk at the foot of the sloping access
ramp, and doubtless the last to be buried the whole
funerary Pit (Woolley 1934, 62–91, pls. 29–43). The
burials with blades and weapons are also commented
upon by Gansell (2007, 41).
prolonged ritual, the Royal Cemetery should be
imagined as a quite different scenario. Fogelin (2007,
58) defines the basic elements of ritualism as formalism,
traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance,
sacral symbolism and public performance. Not all of
these characteristics are immediately evident in the
archaeological record of the Cemetery. Traditionalism,
for example, is hard to evaluate because of the
lack of other and more ancient royal cemeteries (the
prevailing view, on the contrary, is that these graves
are an historical anomaly); invariance, in such a highly
decayed record, is at least doubtful; rule-governance
and public performance are quite likely, but not
demonstrable. In the cognitive theory developed
by McCauley and Lawson (2007), religious rituals
are transitive (including agents doing something to
patients such as objects, plants, animals or persons):
participants need to have selected qualities, acquired
by the means of previous engagements, belonging to
a wider network of past and future ritual events. Rituals
also presuppose contact with divinities through
leading and strictly qualified intermediaries. These
preconditions might fit generically with the evidence
of the Royal Cemetery, where — as assumed by Winter
and others — pits and spaces, bodies and objects were
structured according to precise links and obligations
with gods and goddesses of the netherworld.
In this view, the evidence of a powerful sequence
of highly formal mortuary performances is revealing.
The digging and fast refilling of the Death Pit required
the movement of not less than 500–600 cubic metres
of soil (assuming an original depth of the Pit of about
8 m, and without accounting for the lost grave and
the accessory pits that might greatly increase this
estimate). The preparation of the shafts thus required
substantial collective efforts. Various types of service
and craft specialists were involved and the ritual must
have followed a carefully planned program, perhaps
directed by managers and leading officers.
The occupants of PG 1237 appear in the funerary
scene like a chorus accompanied by professional players
and dancers, including ‘cross-dressed lamentation
specialists’ (as suggested by Cohen 2005, 148) or part
of a royal harem. We will never know if these people
had to perform during the funeral. It is possible that,
before death, the victims were forced or persuaded
to enact powerful soundscapes, with a deep emotional
impact on the hundreds of participants that
surrounded the Pit. Through a socially encoded
‘choreographed event’ charged with an overwhelming
‘transformative power’ (terms after Winter 2010),
music, performance and feasting (all archaeologically
invisible ritual components) may have accompanied
and celebrated in public the transition of the Sumhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X
Published online by Cambridge University Press
447
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
erian lords to their afterlife, creating around them
a halo of transcendence, and fostering consensus to
the claimed relationships of power. If this was the
case, such high levels of ‘sensory pageantry’ might
be correlated with the expected low frequency of
performance (McCauley & Lawson 2007), as a royal
death was a major, uncommon event. On the other
hand, the mortuary representation of music might
have been entirely symbolic. The retinues might have
been dressed like musicians, without being skilled
specialists and, in this case, to assume that music and
dance were necessarily performed during the funerals
might be arbitrary. Given this uncertainty, and the lack
of information on the standards for royal funerals in
Mesopotamia in previous and later periods, any cognitive
approach, in spite of its potential, will remain
quite a tricky effort.
Strong emotions were certainly stirred by the
killings, possibly performed in two consecutive steps
(first the mass of the victims, then their executioners).
If people were serially killed, washed, re-dressed and
deposited in burial groups (as the new CT scans make
likely, although we might never be able to come to a
final solution) we should search in the mass burial for
spatial patterns created by a long series of actions. The
funerary scene is not simply the output of the collapse
of a procession, when everybody fell where he or she
was at the moment of death, but the result of a long
ritual with repetitive depositions.
Music belonged to palaces and temples. Following
Woolley, we may hypothesize that the diamondlike
shaft was conceived as an underworld building.
In the east and west corners, and on three sides of the
diamond, six individuals bearing cylinder seals were
possibly buried as the ‘keepers’ of the gates of this
imaginary construction. Their role might have been
to keep the dead ‘musicians’inside their last residence,
and/or to allow them (or part of their supernatural personae)
to reach their proper supernatural destinations.
Three pairs of individuals with different artefacts and
attires may have been placed, in the first steps of the
mass deposition, in the three corners opposing the
entrance.
The mass of Woolley’s ‘women’ was deposited
in the southwestern part of the shaft. Deposition
of corpses started from the corners and the sides,
continuing in the centre. In the first phases the dead
looked to the northwest, while in the second stage
they were set looking to the southeast. The ritual
(or religious) reasons for this mysterious funerary
model, clearly replicated, as discussed above, in the
nearby mass burial PG 1332, are open to speculation.
A row of ‘male-servants’ was placed to the northeast,
near the entrance, in a contrasting setting. Some of
them had copper blades, presumably those used for
executing their companions. They might have been
killed, in turn, in the last moments of the ceremony,
and placed into the shaft near the entrance, with the
role of supernatural guards.
Socio-economical implications
Rituals and their repetitive, predictable actions, as
expressions of human ‘material engagement’ (Renfrew
et al. 2008, 1937), are social signs par excellence
and possibly the most archaeologically visible form
of intensive social interaction. Their performance
requires and creates at the same time highly structured
environments, both in terms of artefacts and stratigraphic
units. Among various approaches (Fogelin
2007), rituals and their symbols may be considered
from a political viewpoint. Ritual artefacts may be
viewed as materialized ideology. In fact, the ‘… construction
of a sacred building by a king is an avenue
toward sacred power; limiting access to the same
building affirms that sacred power is restricted to a
select few’. In particular, archaeologists may observe
‘… how symbols are appropriated and manipulated to
achieve specific ends … [assuming] ... that the role of
ritual is enacting long-lasting cosmological orders that
legitimize the ruling elite’ (Fogelin 2007, 65). These
statements fit very well with the evidence of PG 1237,
the lay-out and furnishings of which (as observed
for the selective location of the cylinder seals) were
dictated by cosmological principles, even if it was a
mortuary ‘music hall’ rather than a royal dwelling.
Whether performed at the funeral or not, when
music and dance were ‘killed’ at the mouth of the
shafts, these activities probably became physical
furnishings for the dead. After the funerals and
the executions, bodies, ornaments, carts, animals,
weapons, ritual containers and musical instruments
were abandoned in the ‘Death Pits’ — perhaps, as we
have seen, for following the kings or queens to their
underworld palaces, as provisions or even as gifts to
the local divinities, or just because they were ritually
contaminated by the slaughter — the price paid by
many for a more prestigious afterlife of a few.
These rituals, reflected discontinuously in the
archaeological record, in addition to their immediate
ideological functions, were also a systematic, ritualized
destruction of wealth. In 1978, Redman (quoted
in Tinney 1998) stated that at Ur the weakness of the
institution of regality had required lavish and costly
funerals to maintain the authority of shaky ruling
houses. On the same lines, Pollock (1991a; 2007a)
offered a holistic explanation of the Royal Cemetery,
proposing that the richest graves symbolically marked
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
448
Massimo Vidale
the end of entire prominent households after the death
of their charismatic leaders. The custom of burying
valuable goods in these graves would have stopped
after the institutional consolidation of kingship, when
wealth could be officially inherited, together with the
role of queen or king, along kinship lines. Actually,
in economic terms, the burial of a mass of precious
objects, to a large extent made with rare exotic materials
imported from the eastern Iranian Plateau and the
Indus trade network, appears as a manifest absurdity.36
Douglas (1986) showed that the triumph of an
institution is its successful nesting into collective consciousness,
being actually invisible; a deeply rooted
institutional inequality avoids or limits such extreme
forms of social display. In contrast, similar rituals
denote an archaic attachment to a ‘symbolic capital’
relevant as far as it could be displayed in public: when
kingship and the attached material and ideological
resources could not be passed without conflicts
to the next generation, nor could it be legitimately
transformed into new values and effective political
strategies.
The serial executions, waste of highly skilled
labour, highly repetitive iconography, and strong ritualism
encoded in the deposition processes, as revealed
by the detected spatial patterns, share a pervasive
dimension of redundancy. As proposed almost thirty
years ago in an influential article by Pollock (1983),
redundancy in behaviour (and, in terms of material
culture, in style) may be the most obvious solution to
uncertainty in ancient and contemporary information
systems. The evidence thus supports Redman’s and
Pollock’s view that the rationale behind these incredibly
elaborate, dramatic funerals was the display of
wealth and socio-ritual status by households who
actually felt politically weak, and not entirely legitimized
to royalty by their own urban community. The
claim of a supernatural status by the means of these
celebrations might have been perceived as a shortcut
to deification of kingship (Woolley 1934, 33–42;
Marchesi 2004, 165–9).
History says that shortly after these funerals, the
lords of Uruk and later the house of Sargon, while
struggling for the political unification of the country,
had found more intelligent and pragmatic ways of
investing their growing wealth, and soon were able
36. Two or three of such funerals in a row (in the case of
a similar contingency) would have bankrupted any
royal house in Memphis, Ur or Yin-Anyang. Perhaps in
such graveyards the buried treasures were unofficially
recovered and recycled by the households or courts who
owned the graves, rather than looted by clandestine
robbers (see for a provocative discussion Pollock 1991a,
181–2).
to defeat and conquer Ur. The dead musicians and
performers who accompanied their rulers in the Ur’s
Cemetery, willing or not, were victims, but their killers
will be remembered by history as those who lost the
most important and final fight — the one for political
supremacy in a new, super-urban state.
Acknowledgements
Constructive criticism by the anonymous referees and the
patience of the editors greatly improved earlier and very
defective drafts of this article. Another revised version was
completed during a short study visit to the Department of
Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, Madison (USA), in
October 2010. For this, I gratefully acknowledge the help
and generous hospitality of Jonathan Mark Kenoyer. Richard
Meadow and Lorenzo Costantini gave me important advice
on the two Rams. I am very grateful to Susan Pollock, Sandro
Salvatori, Greg Possehl, Chris Thornton, Gianni Marchesi
and Nicola Laneri for their inputs and comments. I also
thank Holly Pittman for her generous invitation to Philadelphia,
and Maude de Schauensee for her explanations
during an unforgettable private visit to the Ur exhibit in the
Philadelphia Museum.
Massimo Vidale
Department of Archaeology
University of Padua
Piazza Capitaniato, 7
35139 Padua
Italy
Email: massimo.vidale@beniculturali.it
References
Ariès, P., 1977. Essais sur l’histoire de la mort en Occident: du
Moyen Âge à nos jours. (Collection Points Histoire.)
Paris: Edition Seuil.
Aruz, J. & R. Wallenfels (eds.), 2003. Art of the First Cities:
the Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the
Indus. (Metropolitan Museum ofArt Series.) New York
(NY): Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Ascalone, E., 2005. Mesopotamia Assiri, Sumeri e Babilonesi.
Milan: Mondadori Electa.
Baadsgard, A., J. Monge, S. Cox & R.L. Zettler, 2011. Human
sacrifice and intentional corpse preservation in the
Royal Cemetery of Ur. Antiquity 85, 27–42.
Barnett, R.D., 1969. New facts about musical instruments
from Ur. Iraq 31, 96–103.
Bertman, S., 2003. Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia.
New York (NY): Facts on File.
Biehl, P. & F. Bertemes (eds.), 2001. The Archaeology of Cult
and Religion. Budapest: Archaeolingua.
Binford, L.R., 1981. Behavioural archaeology and the
‘Pompeii premise’. Journal of Anthropological Research
37, 195–208.
Black, J., A. Green & T. Rickards, 1992. Gods, Demons, and
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
449
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: an Illustrated Dictionary.
Austin (TX): University of Texas Press.
Bottéro, J., 2001. Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia. Chicago
(IL): University of Chicago Press.
Burns, K.R., 1999. Forensic Anthropology Training Manual.
Upper Saddle River (NJ): Prentice Hall.
Chang, K.-C., 1980. Shang Civilization. New Haven (CT): Yale
University Press.
Charvát, P., 1993. Ancient Mesopotamia: Humankind’s Long
Journey into Civilization. (Dissertations Orientales 47.)
Prague: Oriental Institute.
Charvát, P., 2002. Mesopotamia Before History. London:
Routledge.
Cheng, J., 2009. A review of Early Dynastic III music: man’s
animal call. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 68(3), 163–78.
Childe, V.G., 1969. New Light on the Most Ancient Near East.
New York (NY): W.W. Norton.
Cohen,A.C., 2005. Death Rituals, Ideology, and the Development
of Early Mesopotamian Kingship. Leiden: Brill.
Crawford, H., 2004. Sumer and the Sumerians. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Dickson, D.B., 2006. Public transcripts expressed in theatres
of cruelty: the Royal Graves at Ur in Mesopotamia.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal 16(2), 123–44.
Douglas, M., 1986. How Institutions Think. Syracuse (NY):
Syracuse University Press.
Duday, H., 2009. The Archaeology of the Dead: Lectures in
Archaeothanatology. (Studies in Funerary Archaeology
3.) Oxford: Oxbow Books.
During Caspers, E., 1994. Vanity portrayed in clay: the
female terracotta figurines from Harappa, in South
Asian Archaeology 1993, vol. I, eds. A. Parpola & P.
Koskikallio. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakademia,
183–91.
Dyson, R., 1976. Sir Leonard Woolley and the excavations at
Ur, in The Legacy of Sumer, ed. D. Schmandt-Besserat.
Malibu (FL): Undena Publications, 119–27.
Ferioli, P., E. Fiandra & S. Tusa, 1979. Stamp seals and
functional analysis of their sealings at Shahr-i Sokhta
II–III (2700–2200 bc), in South Asian Archaeology 1975,
ed. J.E. van Lohuizen-de Leeuw. Leiden: Brill, 7–26.
Fiandra, E. & C. Pepe, 2000. Typology and distribution of
the administration indicators in the eastern residential
area of Shahr-i Sokhta during Period II (2800–2600 bc).
The sealings, in South Asian Archaeology 1997, eds. M.
Taddei & G. DeMarco. (Orientale Roma XC, 1.) Rome:
Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 467–83.
Flückiger-Hawker, E., 1999. Urnamma of Ur in Sumerian
Literary Tradition. Fribourg: University of Fribourg.
Fogelin, L., 2007. The archaeology of religious ritual. Annual
Revue of Anthropology 36, 55–71.
Forest, J.D., 1996. Mesopotamie l’Apparition de l’Etat. Paris:
Méditerranée.
Frankfort, H., 1939. Cylinder Seals: a Documentary Essay on
the Art and Religion of the Ancient Near East. London:
Macmillan.
Gansell, A.R., 2007. Identity and adornment in the thirdmillennium
bc Mesopotamian ‘Royal Cemetery’at Ur.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17(1), 29–46.
Hansen, D.P., 1998. Art of the royal tombs of Ur: a brief interpretation,
in Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur, eds.
R.L. Zettler & L. Horne. Philadelphia (PA): University
of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology, 43–72.
Hansen, D.P., 2003. Rearing goat with a flowering plant, in
Art of the First Cities: the Third Millennium B.C. from the
Mediterranean to the Indus, eds. J. Aruz & R. Wallenfels.
New York (NY): Metropolitan Museum of Art, 121–2.
Hurdle, J., 2009. Penn Museum Show Casts New Light on
Ancient Iraq. http://www.reuters.com/article/idustre59m2y220091023.
Accessed 2 September 2010.
Insoll, T. (ed.), 1999. Case Studies in Archaeology and Religion:
the Proceedings of the Cambridge Conference. (British
Archaeological Reports, International Series 755.)
Oxford: Archaeopress.
Irving, A. & J. Ambers, 2002. Hidden treasures from the
Royal Cemetery at Ur: technology sheds new light
on the Ancient Near East. Near Eastern Archaeology
65(3), 206–13.
Katz, D., 2007. Sumerian funerary rituals in context, in
Performing Death: Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions
in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. N. Laneri. (Oriental
Institute Seminars 3.) Chicago (IL): The Oriental
Institute, 167–88.
Keightley, D.N., 1978. Sources of Shang History: the OracleBone
Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. Berkeley (CA):
University of California Press.
Keith,A., 1934. Chapter XXIII. Report on the human remains,
in Ur Excavations, vol. II: The Royal Cemetery. A Report
on the Predynastic and Sargonid Graves Excavated between
1926 and 1931. Text and Plates, ed. C.L. Woolley. Oxford:
Publications of the Joint Expedition of the British
Museum and of the Museum of the University of
Pennsylvania to Mesopotamia, 400–409, pls. 268–9.
Kenoyer, J.M., 1997. Trade and technology of the Indus
Valley: new insights from Harappa, Pakistan. World
Archaeology 29, 262–80.
Kenoyer, J.M., 2003. Female figures with headdresses and
jewelry, in Art of the First Cities: the Third Millennium
B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus, eds. J. Aruz &
R. Wallenfels. New York (NY): Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 391–2.
Khatri, J.S. & M. Acharya, 2005. Kunal excavations: new
light on the origin of the Harappan civilization, in In
Search of Vedic–Harappan Relationship, ed. A. Agrawal.
New Delhi: Aryan Books, 104–17.
Knüsel, C.J., R.C. Janaway & S.E. King, 1996. Death, decay
and ritual reconstruction: archaeological evidence of
cadaveric spasm. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 15(2),
121–8.
Kramer, S.N., 1944. The death of Gilgamesh. Bulletin of the
American School of Oriental Research 94, 6.
Kramer, S.N., 1960. Death and nether world according to
Sumerian literary texts. Iraq 22, 59–60.
Kramer, S.N., 1963. The Sumerians: their History, Culture and
Character. Chicago (IL): The University of Chicago Press.
Kyriakidis, E. (ed.), 2007. The Archaeology of Ritual. (Cotsen
Advanced Seminars 3.) Los Angeles (LA): Cotsen
Institute of Archaeology, UCLA.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
450
Massimo Vidale
Leick, G., 2002. Mesopotamia: the Invention of the City. New
York (NY): Penguin Books.
Lemonick, S., 2009. Work by Women Scientists featured in
Exhibit (Part II). http://www.underthemicroscope.com/
index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=395&
Itemid=54. Accessed 2 September 2010.
Liverani, M., 1988. Vicino Oriente: storia economia società.
Rome: Laterza.
Mander, P., 2009. La religione dell’antica Mesopotamia. Rome:
Carocci.
Marchesi, G., 2004. Who was buried in the royal tombs of
Ur? Orientalia 73(2), 153–97.
McCaffrey, K., 2008. The female kings of Ur, in Gender
through Time in the Ancient Near East, ed. D.R. Bolger.
Lanham (MD): Altamira Press, 173–215.
McCarthy, K., 2010. Life and Death in Ur. http://www.upenn.
edu/gazette/0110/gaz06.htlm. Accessed 2 September
2010.
McCauley, R.N. & E.T. Lawson, 2007. Cognition, religious
ritual, and archaeology, in The Archaeology of Ritual,
ed. E. Kyriakidis. Los Angeles (CA): Cotsen Institute
of Archaeology, 209–54.
Miller, N.F., 1999. Date sex in Mesopotamia! Expedition
41(1), 29–30.
Miller, N.F., 2000. Plant forms in jewellery from the Royal
Cemetery at Ur. Iraq 62, 149–55.
Minois, G., 1999. History of Suicide: Voluntary Death in Western
Culture. Baltimore (MD): Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Molleson, T. & D. Hodgson, 2003. The human remains from
Woolley’s excavations at Ur. Iraq 65, 91–129.
Moorey, P.R.S., 1977. What do we know about the people
buried in the Royal Cemetery? Expedition 20(1), 24–40.
Moortgat, A., 1949. Tammuz: Der Unsterblichkeits in der altorientalischen
Bildkunst. Berlin: Verlag Walter de Gruyter.
Moortgat, A., 1969. The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia. London:
Phaidon.
Muscarella, O.W. (ed.), 1981. Ladders to Heaven: Art Treasures
from Lands of the Bible. Toronto: McClelland and
Stewart.
La Nice, S., 1995. Depletion gilding from the third millennium
bc Ur. Iraq 57, 41–7.
Nissen, H., 1966. Zur Datierung des Königsfriedhofes von Ur:
unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Stratigraphie der
Privatgräber. Bonn: Rudolf Habelt.
Nissen, H., 1988. The Early History of the Ancient Near East
9000–2000 bc. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago
Press.
Penn Museum, 2007. Conservation of ‘The Ram in the Thicket’.
http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/exhibits/galleries/ram/ramconservation5.shtml.
Accessed 1 June
2010.
Penn Museum, 2009. Scanning the Deadheads. http://www.
penn.museum/sites/iraq/?page_id=233#. Accessed 2
September 2010.
Perna, M. (ed.), 2005. Studi in onore di Enrica Fiandra.
Contributi di Archaeologia Egea e Vicinorientale. (Studi
Egei e Vicinorientali.) Paris: Boccard.
Pettinato, G., 2007. I Sumeri. Milan: Bompiani.
Pittman, H., 1998. Cylinder seals, in Treasures from the Royal
Tombs of Ur, eds. R.L. Zettler & L. Horne. Philadelphia
(PA): University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology,
75–84.
Pinnock, F., 1993. Ur. La città del dio-luna. Rome: Laterza.
Pittman, H., 2003. Rearing goat with a flowering plant, in
Art of the First Cities: the Third Millennium bc from the
Mediterranean to the Indus, eds. J. Aruz & R. Wallenfels.
New York (NY): Metropolitan Museum of Art, 121–2.
Pollock, S., 1983. Style and information: an analysis of Susiana
ceramics. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
2(2), 354–90.
Pollock, S., 1985. Chronology of the Royal Cemetery of Ur.
Iraq 39, 269–99.
Pollock, S., 1991a. Of priestesses, princes and poor relations:
the dead in the Royal Cemetery of Ur. Cambridge
Archaeological Journal 1(2), 177–89.
Pollock, S., 1991b. Women in a men’s world: images of
Sumerian women, in Engendering Archaeology, eds.
J.M. Gero & M.W. Conkey. Cambridge (MA): Basil
Blackwell, 366–87.
Pollock, S., 2007a. Death of a household, in Performing Death:
Social Analyses of Funerary Traditions in the Ancient
Mediterranean, ed. N. Laneri. (Oriental lnstitute Seminars
3.) Chicago (IL): The Oriental Institute, 209–22.
Pollock, S., 2007b. The Royal Cemetery of Ur: ritual, tradition,
and the creation of subjects, in Representations
of Political Power: Case Histories in Times of Change and
Dissolving Order in the Ancient Near East, eds. M. Heinz
& M.H. Feldman. Winona Lake (IN): Eisenbrauns,
89–110.
Postgate, J.N., 1994. Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy
at the Dawn of History. London: Routledge.
Potts, D.T., 1997. Mesopotamian Civilization: the Material
Foundations. New York (NY): Cornell University Press.
Rakic, Y., 1998. Rescue and restoration: a history of the
Philadelphia ‘Ram Caught in a Thicket’. Expedition
40(2), 51–9.
Reade, J., 2001. Assyrian king-lists, the royal tombs of Ur,
and Indus origins. Journal of Near Eastern Studies
60(1), 1–29.
Reade, J., 2003a.Appendix: problems of third millennium-bc
chronology, in Art of the First Cities: the Third Millennium
bc from the Mediterranean to the Indus, eds. J.
Aruz & R. Wallenfels. New York (NY): Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 496–8.
Reade, J., 2003b. The royal tombs of Ur, in Art of the First
Cities: the Third Millennium bc from the Mediterranean
to the Indus, eds. J. Aruz & R. Wallenfels. New York
(NY): Metropolitan Museum of Art, 93–6.
Renfrew, C., C. Frith & L. Malafouris, 2008. Introduction.
The sapient mind: archaeology meets neuroscience.
Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society Series B
Biological Sciences 363, 1935–8.
Roberts, T.J., 1997. The Mammals of Pakistan. Revised edition.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
de Schauensee, M., 1998. The ‘boat-shaped’ lyre. Restudy
of a unique musical instrument from Ur. Expedition
40(2), 20–28.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press
451
PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death
de Schauensee, M., 2002. Two Lyres from Ur. Philadelphia (PA):
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology.
Soltysiak,A., 2006. Physical anthropology and the ‘Sumerian
problem’. Studies in Historical Anthropology 4(2004),
145–58.
Sürenhagen, D., 2002. Death in Mesopotamia: the ‘royal
tombs’ of Ur revisited, in Of Pots and Plans: Papers on
the Archaeology and History of Mesopotamia and Syria
Presented to David Oates in Honour of His 75th Birthday,
eds. L. al-Gailani Werr, J. Curtis, H. Martin et al. London:
Nabu Publications, 324–38.
Tengberg, M.D., T. Potts & H.–P. Francfort, 2008. The golden
leaves of Ur. Antiquity 82, 925–36.
Tinney, S., 1998. Death and burial in early Mesopotamia: the
view from the texts, in Treasures from the Royal Tombs
of Ur, eds. R.L. Zettler & L. Horne. Philadelphia (PA):
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology
and Anthropology, 26–8.
Winter, I.J., 2010. Reading ritual in the archaeological record:
deposition pattern and function of two artifact types
from the Royal Cemetery of Ur, in On Art in the Ancient
near East, vol. II: From the Third Millennium bce, ed. I.J.
Winter. Leiden: Brill, 227–55.
Woolley, C.L., 1934. Ur Excavations, vols. I–II: The Royal Cemetery.
A Report on the Predynastic and Sargonid Graves
Excavated between 1926 and 1931. Oxford: Publications
of the Joint Expedition of the British Museum and
of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania to
Mesopotamia.
Woolley, C.L., 1952. Ur of the Chaldees. Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books.
Woolley, C.L., 1965 [1929]. The Sumerians. New York (NY):
W.W. Norton.
Zettler, R.L., 1998. The Royal Cemetery of Ur, in Treasures
from the Royal Tombs of Ur, eds. R.L. Zettler & L.
Horne. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology, 21–5.
Zettler, R.L. & L. Horne (eds.), 1998. Treasures from the Royal
Tombs of Ur. Philadelphia (PA): University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology.
Author biography
Massimo Vidale teaches taphonomy and funerary archaeology
at the University la Sapienza, Rome, and archaeology
of craft production at the University of Padua (Italy). His
research interests include the formation processes of the
archaeological record and the reconstruction of ancient technologies,
by combining stratigraphy with micro-stratigraphy
of artefacts. He published The Archaeology of Indus Crafts
(IsIAO, Rome, 2000) and recently co-authored ‘The Iceman
as a burial’ in Antiquity 84 (2010), 681–92.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S095977431100045X Published online by Cambridge University Press