beginning in the early nineteen twenties
1922 to be exact into the
nineteen-thirties there was a joint
excavation sponsored by the British
Museum in the University of Pennsylvania
which undertook the excavation of a site
believed and then later proved to be the
site of ancient Ur and these
archaeological projects were directed by
a very colorful individual by the name
of Sir Leonard Woolley and here's a
photograph of Willie this is the
archaeologists from the British Museum
sir Leonard Woolley he was the director
of the dig
and in this picture with sir Leonard
Woolley we have a couple of very famous
people we have seated next to fully Dame
Agatha Christie the great novelist and
next to her is her husband to be an
archaeologist by the name of Sir max
malin may not have known this but Agatha
Christie is actually the best-selling
novelist of all time she has over four
billion copies of her books that have
been sold and she wrote literally
hundreds of murder mysteries very famous
books Murder on the Orient Express death
on the nile Agatha Christie visited the
site of war in 1930 Christie had always
had an interest in archaeology in fact
she wrote in her autobiography the lure
of the past came upon me to grab me to
see a dagger slowly appearing with its
gold Clint through the sand was very
romantic the carefulness of lifting
posts and objects from the soil filled
me with a longing to be an archaeologist
myself in fact we're going to see a
picture of the dagger to what she's
referring in just a couple of slides on
this trip to the excavation site a door
in 1930s i mentioned she meant her
future husband sir max malin very famous
and distinguished archaeologists in his
own right but of course her fame as an
author far surpassed his fame as an
archaeologist tired meeting malin
Christie really had not had any
extensive brushes with archaeology but
once the two of them married they made
sure to go only two sites where they
could work together again in her
autobiography Christie wrote many years
ago when i was once saying sadly to max
it was a pity I couldn't have taken up
archaeology when I was a girl so as to
be more knowledgeable on the subject he
replied to me don't you realize
and at this moment you know more about
prehistoric pottery than any woman in
England
well if you're interested there's a very
fun book that was written by a guitar
Christy called murder in mesopotamia and
the action in this book takes place and
archaeological dig and although this
novel wasn't written until nineteen
thirty-six six years after the war
excavations that characters in the book
are clearly based on some of the
participants in the URL excavations and
the most obvious parallel can be made
between one of the lead characters in
the novel Louise Laettner she in the
story is a fascinating and very highly
assertive wife of the excavation later
much like the wife of sir Leonard
Woolley Catherine Willie at the actual
excavations at four in a line from the
book with christy is very famous lead
character and detective Monsieur Paul
you have the lead character of Louise
Leidner saying you would have made a
good archaeologists mr. peel all you
have the gift of recreate in the past as
i mentioned sir Leonard Woolley was
quite a dynamic character and there's
another very famous person that has some
interaction with Willie and his career
in archaeology and here are a couple of
pictures with sir Leonard Woolley and
fellow by the name of t e Lawrence
well te lawrence's of course the famous
swashbuckling character lawrence of
arabia portrayed in a great nineteen
sixties movie winner of seven Academy
Awards the story of Lawrence who studied
archaeology became an expert in medieval
pottery and Doug with sir Leonard
Woolley at very famous archeological
site called karke mesh in modern-day
Turkey and it's an old Hittite city that
was in 1911 and of course during the
years of world war one that's where
Lawrence really made a name for himself
helping to organize the arab revolt
against Turks who were siding with the
Germans in World War one and that was 11
years before the or excavation lawrence
and Willie team together to do
archaeological work at car kamesh
in his years of digging at or sir
Leonard Woolley uncovered a number of
fascinating artifacts and discoveries
and we'll take a look at some of the
artifacts in the next few slides but
after the excavation he wrote a little
book entitled digging up the past and
this was meant to be kind of popularized
account of the excavation geared towards
the general public
what you see here is a partial top plan
of a portion of the city of where the
city was quite large this is kind of the
main city center and you'll notice up in
the upper left-hand corner there's a
building called the ziggurats and we'll
take a look at that structure in a few
slides now let's take a look at a few of
the artifacts that were uncovered during
the years of excavation a door in this
first one is really one of the more
famous pieces it's known popularly as
the Royal Standard of or it's really a
box maybe about 18 inches long about
eight inches wide
that is inlaid with pieces of shell and
limestone and the blue is lapis lazuli
and it is done in such a way as to give
scenes from Sumerian life and culture
the Sumerians were the inhabitants of
lower Mesopotamia during this time
period were looking at about 2,500 BC
the date of this piece and kind of the
height of sumerian civilization and this
box has two sides one side is known as
the war scene top we see soldiers and
chariots and on the other side we have
the piece scene where the sumerians are
engaged in a variety of activities
pastoral and agricultural and these
scenes give us really great insight into
how the Sumerians pictured themselves
you're on the right you see a close-up
of a portion of the Royal Standard
before and you can see the inlaid
materials and just the beauty of the
piece and this is a fabulous
archaeological discovery in a couple of
ways but notice what's going on here
you've got a scene of Sumerian fellow
playing a harp and the harp as is
decorated as a full well during the
excavation not only did they find the
Royal Standard of or but they actually
found this exact piece the harp itself
look at the photo in the lower left and
there's sir Leonard Woolley himself
removing the harp having been just
discovered in the upper picture on the
left is actually it's a replica of what
was found the real peace can be found in
the British Museum today
well here's the structure they found
that will entitle the ziggurats within
the center of the city of ancient war
and on the left the black-and-white
photo you can see the cigarette as it
appeared shortly after the period of the
excavation and what you see in the
pictures on the right are a restored
version of the ziggurats of or a
cigarette of course is a kind of a
stepped pyramid structure that was
common to Mesopotamia really you get the
classical sort of pyramid structures in
Egypt although there is one particular
Step Pyramid in Egypt that's quite well
known but in Mesopotamia the ziggurats
the Step Pyramid form pretty much
predominated and this is probably the
best example of a cigarette from ancient
mesopotamia and the pictures at the
right show this reconstructed form of
the ziggurats in fact when saddam
hussein was in power in Iraq ancient
were located within the boundaries of
what is modern-day Iraq Saddam Hussein
was interested in trying to believe it
or not create some tourist trade for
Iraq he invested time and energy and
trying to refurbish the ancient site of
the ziggurats and hoped that
would be a tourist attraction of some
appeal and bring people into Iraq to
spend money as tourists
well here is an overview of the site of
the proposed tourist attraction of the
reconstructed cigarette down in southern
Mesopotamia southern Iraq this is prior
to the US invasion in january of 1991
but you can see where they've actually
built a road into the site little
parking lot there and it was hoped that
this would attract tourists into Iraq to
come and see the wonderful exotic
ancient ziggurats of the city of or that
had been excavated by sir Leonard
Woolley back in the nineteen twenties in
nineteen thirties one of the great
discoveries by sir Leonard Woolley
and/or was a huge cemetery it became
known as the Royal cemetery a door and
the material found in the cemetery dated
from what's known as the classical
Sumerian period probably about 2500 BC
and immediately they uncovered huge
amount of spectacular finds artifacts of
gold and silver and lapis lazuli and
just wonderful things that they've
discovered will take a look on the next
line of a few of the artifacts that were
found but it was kind of overwhelming
for Willie and in fact he made an
executive decision as the director of
The Dig to delay excavation even though
they were finding these spectacular
items and artifacts he wasn't happy with
the archaeological method and the
recording system that they had been
using it was kind of being overwhelmed
by the amount of material that they were
finding and so he actually delayed the
excavation of the cemetery for a couple
of seasons while he better refined the
technical aspects of excavation so that
he could proceed in the cemetery and
really carefully document all these
spectacular finds that were coming to
the surface as they were beginning to
uncover this area of land which
was clearly a cemetery here are a few
examples of some of the types of
artifacts that were found in the Royal
cemetery
we've already seen the bowl decorated
harp which was portrayed on the Royal
Standard of or and then the actual harp
itself was found i mentioned Agatha
Christie and i read a short passage from
her autobiography or she was describing
the allure of archaeology of uncovering
a gold digger
well what you see pictured here is the
actual golden dagger that was discovered
while Agatha Christie was at the site
and that certainly inspired her to the
great thrill of the archaeological hunt
and then you can see this wonderful
golden helmet that was discovered these
are just some of the examples of things
they found in the Royal cemetery
here's an example of a typical grave
they found at the Royal cemetery this
particular one they use the notation of
PG 755 to designate exactly which
gravesite they're talking about here but
as you take a look at the drawing it's
rendering a grave of about
two-and-a-half by 1.5 meters in size the
there's one human body in the grave site
and from the bones they can tell that
it's a young man about five foot four
inches about my size and within the
grave there's a number of artifacts that
were found to stunning discoveries
golden helmet golden lamp an electron
acts electron is kind of a soft metal
that they were using back then some
golden bowls the golden dagger that I
showed on the previous slide that taketh
Christie saw a whetstone and if you
don't know what a whetstone is that this
is a good word to know to great scrabble
word whetstone is what's used to sharpen
a knife and there was a lot of pottery
found a pile of cups and so you get the
sense that this cemetery was just loaded
with ancient artifacts and serve Leonard
Woolley really made
spectacular discovery in uncovering this
site of four
