Meaning of UR OF THE CHALDEES

Abraham's hometown (Gen. 11:28, 31; 15:7; Neh. 9:7), located in Sumer, a country later called Babylon, which would eventually be dominated by the Chaldeans, currently called Tell al Muqayyar (Ar.: "hill of bitumen"), in Lower Babylon, on the western bank of the Euphrates.

To the northeast, not far away, was Uruk, and to the southwest was Eridu. In 1854 excavations began, directed by J. E. Taylor, who was the first to identify those ruins as Ur.

Sponsored by the British Museum, research was resumed in 1918 by H. R. Hall. Sir Leonard Woolley continued the explorations from 1922 until 1934, leading a joint expedition by the British Museum and the Philadelphia University Museum.

When Abraham left it (Gen. 11:28; Acts 7:2) it was a large and prosperous city, a great commercial center and seaport on the Persian Gulf.

Since then, deposition of materials in the gulf has advanced the coastline, leaving Ur situated far inland.

The famous royal tombs (from around 2500 BC) contained admirable treasures of goldsmithing and jewelry, weapons elaborately decorated with precious stones, harps with various ornamentations of precious metals.

The headdress that adorned the head of Queen Shubad is particularly famous. Other finds were more gloomy: the remains of many servants and servants in an attitude of service, who had been ritually murdered so that they would accompany their masters to the other world, among them nine ladies of the court, soldiers of the guard, servants, musicians, etc

This gives an indication of the sad state in which the idolatrous world of Ur was plunged, and which Abraham was called to abandon. Ur has become one of the best-known places in the southern part of Babylon.

Woolley gives a detailed description of the cult of Nannar, the patron moon god of the city, and of Ningal ("Abraham", 1949; "Ur of the Chaldees", 1952).

The excavations have also documented the high level of culture in that civilization, in the time of Abraham, with a very complex socio-religious structure, developed writing, and advanced mathematics; In addition to multiplication and division tables, exercises on square and cubic roots and practical geometry were found.

Based on the chronology of the Masoretic text, Abraham's life took place, at least in part, in the time of the New Sumero-Akkadian Empire of Ur-Nammu, the founder of the powerful III dynasty of Ur (around 2070-1960 BC). ).

These famous kings assumed the new title of "Kings of Sumer and Akkad."

The most considerable work of Ur-Nammu was the erection of the great ziggurat of Ur which Abraham surely knew, as did Joseph later the pyramids of Egypt. This ziggurat is the best preserved example of this type of architecture from early Babylon.

In the light of these discoveries we can better understand what it meant for Abraham to leave such a sophisticated and luxurious civilization, with its security and material means, to launch himself, humanly speaking, into adventure, to take the step of faith following the call of God, who separated him from that religiously and morally depraved place, to make him the repository of His revelation and the promises of redemption.