Word: ur
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...sunset last Monday, Jay Garner climbed to the top of the 4,000-year-old ziggurat in Ur in southern Iraq and looked down over the remains of the city of Abraham's birth. The former three-star general, assigned to invent a democracy from scratch, was preparing to preside the next morning over the first freely convened meeting of Iraqi leaders in memory. "There we were, at the birthplace of civilization, and we were about to create a democracy," says Garner. "I had tears in my eyes...
...known to be missing. Among them: a 3-ft. carved alabaster vase, circa 3200 B.C.; a black, headless statue of the Sumerian King Entemena, circa 2430 B.C.; a Sumerian sacred cup, circa 2600 B.C.; a copper head of an Akkadian ruler, circa 2350 B.C.; and a gold lyre from Ur, circa 2500 B.C. What else might be gone is anybody's guess...
Among the missing objects is a solid gold harp from the ancient city of Ur, a carved bird dating from 8000 B.C.E., and priceless Arabic texts and cuneiform tablets. For scholars with interests ranging from the earliest signs of civilization to the art and literature of the medieval Muslim world, the loss of such a collection is a disaster...
...fate of the musuem’s artifacts will have great implications for the cultural heritage of “your average mid-western American,” Winter says. She points out that Iraq was home to the ancient city of Ur, the birthplace of the the Biblical patriarch Abraham...
...Ancient Sumeria was the birthplace of mathematics and astronomy in both Asia and Europe. It was of profound importance to polytheistic cultures to the east, in India. That is why we are talking of a great loss to world culture. It’s not just about Abraham at Ur...