Angela Sutherland – AncientPages.com – Today, all we know about the ancient city of Ur comes from the written documents unearthed at Ur. The people of Mesopotamia, which Ur was part of, used the cuneiform system written on clay tablets, often broken and unreadable. Scholars have worked hard to decipher them.
The alleged Abraham house in Ur city, Dhi Qar, southern Iraq. Credit: Aziz1005 – CC BY 4.0
This historical material is, no doubt, the essential source of our knowledge about Ur. The city’s monuments have not survived until today, mainly because of the test of time. Built of mud brick – not as resilient building material like stone, widely used in ancient Egypt – the Sumerian structures could not survive.
Ur was once a large, wealthy, busy, and prosperous port located close to the mouth of the Euphrates River on the Persian Gulf, and much of Sumerian history is linked to this city.