The Ur Harps (Part 2)

As mentioned in the previous post, the "harps" found at Ur had a bull's head on their front for decoration. The bull's head pictured here is made of gold with a Lapis Lazuli beard, and is currently in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia.

The Ur “Harps”

Sir Leonard Woolley’s excavations at the city of Ur turned some harps (or lyres). They were made of wood and decorated with gold and Lapis Lazuli bull’s heads. They range in size from small ones, which could be held in the arms while being played, to large ones that needed to be set on the floor to be played. The picture here was taken in the British Museum.

When these musical instruments were found they wood had completely decomposed. Woolley carefully poured plaster into the places in the dirt where the wood had once been, thereby preserving the shape of the instruments.

Currently, a team is attempting to create a modern replica of the ancient lyre. A website devoted to this project can be found here. The website is very interesting and I would recommend you take a look at it.

References:
C.L. Woolley and P.R.S. Moorey, Ur of the Chaldees, revised edition Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, (1982)

The “Ram” in the Thicket

I have been going through some very old photographs that I took twenty to twenty-five years ago. Some have seen their colors begin to fade and I am scanning them to try and preserve them.

Some of the photos were of objects found by Leonard Woolley in has excavations of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur. The photo in this post is of the “Ram” in the Thicket (more properly a goat, not a ram). The statue is one of two found by Woolley in the 1928 – 9 season and is currently in the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia. The mate of this statue is in the British Museum.

The two statues were found in the “Great Death Pit” at Ur. Originally they were of wood covered with gold foil and inlaid with a semi-precious stone called Lapis Lazuli. When found, the wood had decomposed and the gold foil had been flattened by the soil it was buried in. A support at the rear of the statue may once have supported a bowl or some other object (for offerings to be made?).

References:

C.L. Woolley and P.R.S. Moorey, Ur of the Chaldees, revised edition, Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, (1982).

Information on some conservation work done on this object can be found here.

An Enjoyable Pyramid Book by the Head of Egypt's Antiquities Service

Zahi Hawass, the head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, has written an informative book, The Mountains of the Pharaoh's, on the pyramids of Giza. The book contains a great deal of interesting material on the pyramids, their associated temples and the kings who built these amazing monuments.

The book also devotes some space to the recent excavaion of the tombs and villages of the workers who did the actual work of building these huge monuments. Dr. Hawass describes their sleeping quarters and dining facilities, as well as some of the physical ailments they suffered from as a reult of their back breaking work.

This book is well written and easy to read. It contains plenty of interesting and useful information. It is written for a lay audience and is not a ponderous "scholarly" work at all. My only criticism is of the pictures in the book. The color photos are not well reproduced (the colors are off)and are pretty much the same photos we have seen in any of dozens of other pyramid books. In spite of this criticism, I still would recommend this book to anyone interested in the Great Pyramids.

Second Dynasty Tomb Found at Lahun

Egyptian archaeologists have found a Second Dynasty tomb at Lahun, in the Fayum. This is an important discovery because Egyptologists had previously thought that the first building in the Fayum had occurred in Dynasty Twelve.

A coffin, some spears and a bed made from wood imported fom Lebanon were found in the burial chamber.

More details are available here.

Digital Hammurabi

Scholars have been working on a project, called "Digital Hammurabi", to "scan" cunieform tablets and publish them digitally. This is necessary because many, many known tablets have never even been read, much less published. To read a tablet, scholars all too often must fly to the city where the tablet is physically located. Then they must laboriously copy and translate the tablet.

Several links are available that provide information on this project. The ones I have found to date are:

1) An article in John Hopkins Magazine, September 2003.

2) An article in the Baltimore Sun.

3) Applied Optics magazine did an article on the science of scanning cunieform tablets in 2007.

4) John Hopkins University has a website devoted to the project. The small pictures on the right are links to other pages with some interesting content, including a short "movie" of how a cunieform "word processor" can be used. Another link provides progress reports on the project that have been published over the course of several years.

This is an interesting project, particuarly to anyone interested in technology as well as ancient history.

Some New Links

I have found two more interesting links for those of us interested in the Ancient Near East. The first I want to share is the website of Dr. Zahi Hawass, who is the head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service. The site has article written by Dr. Hawass, photographs and press releases relating to new discoveries in Egypt. One especially interesting item on the site is a film taken inside the Step Pyramid of Djoser. An Egyptian team of workers has cleared the burial chamber and found a tunnel under the royal sarcophagus.

Another site I found has a post describing the Temple of Dedera. There are numerous photos of the temple on the site, including a photo of the famous portrait of Cleopatra and her son by Julius Caesar.

Incidently, I try very hard to find interesting links to sites dealing with Mesopotamia, but I have located very few. A search for sites devoted to Ancient Egypt turns up hundreds of hits. I recognize that there is more interest in Ancient Egypt in general, but the disparity in interest is striking.