History Globe
Question
Where was Ur of the Chaldees?
Ur of the Chaldees, the city Abraham's family left for Canaan, is usually identified with Tell el-Muqayyar in the far south of Iraq, 16 km south-west of Nasiriyah, where the lower stages of the ziggurat of Ur-Nammu still stand; the identification is debated.
Genesis says: "And Terah took Abram his son … and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there." In antiquity Ur stood on the Euphrates near the head of the Gulf; the river and the coast have since moved away. It was one of the great Sumerian cities, sacred to the moon god, and the seat of the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112–2004 BC in the middle chronology). Leonard Woolley's excavations of 1922–1934 uncovered its Royal Cemetery and the ziggurat.
Most scholars take this southern Ur to be the biblical one, but an old tradition points to Urfa (Şanlıurfa) in south-eastern Turkey, and some scholars have argued for an Ur in northern Mesopotamia, nearer Haran. The map shows the southern site. From there to Haran is about 925 km in a straight line.
Scripture: Gen 11:28; Gen 11:31; Neh 9:7; Acts 7:2–4
Sources
- C. L. Woolley, Ur Excavations II: The Royal Cemetery (1934)
- C. L. Woolley and P. R. S. Moorey, Ur 'of the Chaldees' (1982)
- C. H. Gordon, 'Abraham and the Merchants of Ura', Journal of Near Eastern Studies 17 (1958) (the northern Ur)
- M. Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East (3rd ed., 2016), ch. 5 (middle chronology)
Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.