Two Great Households of Old Babylonian Ur

Visitors to the ruins of Ur venturing into the residential area south of the ziggurat and royal cemetery are confronted with a reconstructed “House of Abraham” (fig. 1), named after the city’s most famous putative resident. It is not clear who decided that this particular structure was the ancestral...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Stone, Elizabeth C. 1949- (Author) ; Charpin, Dominique 1954- (Author) ; Einwag, Berthold 1959- (Author) ; Otto, Adelheid 1966- (Author) ; Zimansky, Paul E. 1946- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: University of Chicago Press 2021
In: Near Eastern archaeology
Year: 2021, Volume: 84, Issue: 3, Pages: 182-191
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Ur / Household / Babylonia (Süd) / Abraham, Biblical person / Woolley, Leonard 1880-1960 / Ziggurat / Tourism
IxTheo Classification:HB Old Testament
TC Pre-Christian history ; Ancient Near East
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:Visitors to the ruins of Ur venturing into the residential area south of the ziggurat and royal cemetery are confronted with a reconstructed “House of Abraham” (fig. 1), named after the city’s most famous putative resident. It is not clear who decided that this particular structure was the ancestral home of the patriarch, but it was certainly not Sir Leonard Woolley, who closed his celebrated excavations here in 1934. While he was convinced that this city was indeed the Ur of the Chaldees of the Bible—a claim that has not gone unchallenged—and even wrote a book postulating that the Old Babylonian houses here shed light on the origins of Yahwistic religion (Woolley 1936), he doubted that archaeology could ever link Abraham to a specific artifact or building. The massive brick structure one sees today was actually erected only two decades ago to promote tourism in anticipation of a papal visit that was delayed until March 2021. It was built on the ruins of half a dozen individual houses that Woolley had excavated in the area he called AH, generally following their ground plans but connecting the units with doorways to create a single edifice many times larger than any private residence of the early second millennium BCE (fig. 2). If the idea of naming this new creation after Abraham was to promote tourism, it has been a success: Among the thousands who visit Ur every spring, some even come to pray in these rooms, ignoring all warnings that the association with the family of Abraham is suspect., Drone image of Ur facing northward, House of Abraham in foreground and ziggurat in the background. Photograph by Berthold Einwag., Woolley plan (in red) on drone image of modern reconstruction of “House of Abraham.” In the reconstruction internal doors were used to join separate houses into one large structure. The geometry does not match precisely. Drone photograph by Berthold Einwag.,
ISSN:2325-5404
Contains:Enthalten in: Near Eastern archaeology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1086/715346