More than 2,000 years ago, the Euphrates River changed its course, moving away from the ancient city of Ur in the south of present-day Iraq, which was abandoned forever.
Founded around 3800 BC, its existence as a powerful city-state is documented since the 26th century BC, its first king being Mesanepada, who appears in the list of Sumerian kings as founder of the first dynasty of Ur.
The ruins of the city have been visited throughout history by many travelers. However, European scholars did not identify the place now called Tell el-Muqayyar with ancient Ur until Henry Rawlinson, the father of Assyriology, deciphered some inscriptions found at the site in 1849.
The first excavations, which brought to light the ziggurat and other structures, were those of John George Taylor between 1853 and 1854. However, they did not continue and the place was exposed for 75 years, the ancient bricks of the unearthed buildings being reused as construction material by the inhabitants of the area. Until the British Museum resumed work in 1918.
Excavations were carried out in 1922 by Leonard Woolley, who began by digging a few test trenches to get an idea of the city's layout.
Over the course of two years he would make important discoveries, such as a large courtyard surrounded by rooms, two large buildings, one of which was the dwelling of the high priestess, and so many gold objects and pieces of clay and pottery that he hardly had time to discover them. catalog them.
But the fourth year found something unexpected, a huge cemetery of 1,850 burials, of which 16 were so large and lavish that Woolley considered them royal tombs. , the resting place of the kings of Ur. They dated from around 2600 BC, the period of the first dynasty of Ur, and consisted of large chambers with brick or stone walls surmounted by vaults.
In each of the royal tombs there was a main body and a number of companions , as well as abundant objects, among which pieces as important as the Banner of Ur or the Meskalamdug helmet were found. But practically all the tombs had been looted since ancient times. Only one of them appeared completely intact, that of Queen Puabi, whose name indicates one of the seals found inside.
Puabi, who may have been a queen, a priestess or both, was Akkadian and may have been the second wife of King Meskalamdug, although no documentary evidence exists. That is why some think that she would have reigned alone and in her own name.
Entering the tomb, Woolley found in the center of the chamber a cart and what was left of a chest of toiletries, under which a hole and ramp led to another room. Along that ramp were buried 63 assistants , servants and guards equipped with copper helmets and swords.
The path led to a grave in which 74 people had been buried, 68 of whom were women, dressed in elaborately detailed headdresses. Remnants of reed mats covered the bodies to avoid contact with the ground. There were also horses and lions. All of them with the aim of serving the lady of him in the afterlife.
Two meters below that grave, a sepulchral chamber built in stone, which had no door and whose only entrance was through the roof, housed four bodies, one of them, the most important, that of Queen Puabi. Her body was easy to identify by her jewelry of gold, silver, lapis lazuli, carnelian and agate beads. The other three were her personal servants, and each had their own adornments.
Some of all these bodies, recently analyzed at the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, show traumatisms that indicate that they could have suffered a violent death.
The tomb contained an astonishing number of objects, including a magnificent heavy gold headdress made with jewels, rings and gold plates, possibly a crown inspired by nature, with floral motifs; a lyre complete with a bearded bull's head inlaid with gold and lapis lazuli; abundant cylindrical beads of gold, coral and lapis lazuli, a profuse gold tableware; a chariot adorned with lioness heads made of silver; and rings and bracelets made of silver, lapis lazuli and gold in impressive quantities.
Modern analyzes found that the tomb contained traces of cinnabar and mercury vapor, possibly used to prevent or slow decomposition during funeral rites. Puabi's remains are preserved in the Natural History Museum in London.
The Royal Cemetery at Ur was in operation for at least three centuries in the second half of the third millennium BC. Remarkably, excavations below the level of the royal tombs found another layer of alluvial clay some 3.5 meters thick. This layer covered the remains of earlier dwellings, where pottery from the Ubaid period, the first stage of settlement in southern Mesopotamia, was found.