XV - Buried in Grandeur

Four thousand years after the nuclear calamity, in A.D. 1922, a British archaeologist named Leonard Woolley came to Iraq to dig up ancient Mesopotamia.

Attracted by the imposing remains of a ziggurat that stood out in the desert plain (Fig. Ill), he chose to start excavating at the adjoining site locally called Tell el-Muqayyar. As ancient walls, artifacts, and inscribed clay tablets were unearthed, he realized that he was digging up ancient Ur - Ur of the Chaldees.

His efforts, lasting twelve years, were carried out as a Joint Expedition of the British Museum in London and the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia. Some of those institutions’ most dramatic exhibits consist of objects, artifacts, and sculptures found by Sir Leonard Woolley in Ur. But what he had found may well transcend Anything that has ever been put on display.

As the arduous task of removing layers of soil that desert sands, the elements, and time accumulated over the ruins progressed, the contours of the ancient city started to emerge - here were the walls, there were the harbor and canals, the residential quarters, the palace, and the Tummal - the artificially raised area of the sacred precinct.

Digging at its edge, Woolley made the find of the century: A cemetery, thousands of years old, that included unique ‘royal’ tombs.
 

The excavations in the residential sections of the city established that Ur’s inhabitants followed the Sumerian custom of burying their dead right under the floors of their dwellings, where families continued to live.
 

Figure 111
 

It was thus highly unusual to find a cemetery, with as many as 1,800 graves in it.

They were concentrated within the area of the sacred precinct and ranged in age from pre-dynastic times (before Kingship began) through Seleucid times. There were burials on top of burials, intrusions of graves into others, even instances of apparent reinterments in the same graves. In some instances, Woolley’s workers dug huge trenches going down almost fifty feet, to cut through the layers and better date graves.

Most were hollows in the ground, where the bodies were placed lying on their backs.

Woolley assumed that these different ‘inhumations’ were accorded on the basis of some social or religious status. But then, in the southeastern edge of the sacred precinct - within the walled area - Woolley discovered a group of entirely different burials, some 660 of them.

In them, with sixteen exceptions, the bodies were wrapped in reed matting as a kind of a shroud, or placed in wooden coffins - an even greater distinction, for wood was in short supply and quite expensive in Sumer. Each one of those dead persons was then laid to rest at the bottom of a deep rectangular pit, large enough to hold them.

The people thus buried, both male and female, were invariably placed on their sides - not on their backs as in the common burials; their arms and hands were flexed in front of their chests, their legs were slightly bent (Fig. 112).

Figure 112

Laid out beside the bodies or on them were various personal belongings - jewelry, a cylinder seal, a cup or bowl; these objects enabled dating these graves to the Early Dynastic Period, roughly from circa 2650 B.C. to 2350 B.C.; it was the period in which central kingship was in Ur, starting with Ur’s First Dynasty ("Ur I"), when Kingship was transferred thereto from Uruk.

Woolley reasonably concluded that the city’s ruling elite was buried in these particular 660 tombs. But then Woolley unearthed the special sixteen tombs grouped together (Fig. 113) and landed an unprecedented find.

They were entirely unique - unique not only in Sumer, but throughout Mesopotamia, throughout the whole ancient Near East; unique not only for their period, but for all periods.
 

Figure 113
 

Clearly, Woolley surmised, only someone of the highest importance had been buried in such-special tombs and unique burials; and who was more important than the king or his consort, the queen?

Cylinder seals in which names were combined with the titles Nin and Lugal convinced Woolley that he had discovered the Royal Tombs of Ur.

His greatest single find was the tomb designated PG-800. Unearthing and entering it was an event in the annals of Mesopotamian archaeology comparable to the discovery and entering of Tut-Ankh-Amen’s tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings by Howard Carter in 1922. To protect his unique find from modern robbers, Woolley notified his sponsors of the find by a telegram written in Latin; the date was January 4, 1928.

Subsequent scholars have accepted that logic and continue to refer to this unique group of tombs as the Royal tombs of Ur, even though some have wondered - because of what those tombs contained - who in fact was buried in several of them. Since to such scholars the ancient ‘gods’ were a myth, their bewilderment stops there.

But if one accepts the reality of the gods, the goddesses, and the demigods - one is in for a thrilling adventure.

* * *

To begin with, the sixteen special tombs, far from being simple pits dug in the ground large enough to hold a body, were chambers built of stones for which a large excavation was made; they were set deep in the ground, and they had vaulted or domed roofs whose construction required engineering skills extraordinary for those times.

To those unique structural features was added one more: Some tombs were accessible via well-defined sloping ramps that led to a large area, a kind of forecourt, behind which the actual tomb chamber was located.

Next to the exceptional architectural features, the tombs were unique in the fact that the body they held, lying on its side, was sometimes not just in a coffin but at times in a separately constructed enclosure.

To all that was added the fact that the body was surrounded by objects of extraordinary opulence and excellence - in many instances, one- of-a-kind anywhere, any time.

Figure 114

Woolley designated the Ur tombs by a "PG" (‘Personal Grave’) code and number; and in a tomb designated PG-755, for example (Fig. 114), there were more than a dozen objects beside the body in the coffin, and more than sixty artifacts elsewhere in the tomb.

The objects included a splendid golden helmet (Fig. 115), a superb golden dagger in a magnificently decorated silver sheath (Fig. 116), a silver belt, a gold ring, bowls and other utensils made of gold or silver, gold jewelry with or without decoration with lapis lazuli (the blue gemstone prized in Sumer), and a "bewildering variety" (to quote Woolley) of other metal artifacts made of electrum (a gold-silver alloy), copper, or copper alloys.

Figure 115

Figure 116

All that was entirely amazing for its time, when Man’s metallurgical acumen was just advancing from use of copper (that needed no smelting) to the copper-tin (or copper-arsenic) alloy we call Bronze.

Objects of such artistry and metalworking techniques as the dagger and the helmet were absolutely unknown anywhere else.

If these observations bring to mind the opulent golden death mask and magnificent artifacts and sculptures found in the tomb of Egypt’s Pharaoh Tut-Ankh-Amen (Fig. 117), let it be remembered that he reigned circa 1350 B.C. - some twelve centuries later.

Figure 117

Other tombs contained both similar and different objects made of gold or electrum, all of outstanding craftsmanship.

These included utensils of daily use, such as cups or tumblers - even a tube used for drinking beer - and all were made of pure gold; other cups, bowls, jugs, and libation vessels were made of pure silver; here and there, some vessels were made of the rare alabaster stone.

There were weapons -  spearheads, daggers - and tools, including hoes and chisels, also made of gold; since gold, being a soft metal, deprived these implements of any practical use, those implements (usually made of bronze or other copper alloys) must have served only a ceremonial purpose, or were a status symbol.

Figure 118

Figure 119                                                           Figure 120            

There was a variety of board games (Fig. 118), and numerous musical instruments made of rare woods and decorated with astounding artistry, lavishly using gold and lapis lazuli for the decorations (Fig. 119); among them was a unique lyre made entirely of pure silver (Fig. 120).

There were other finds, such as a complex sculpture (nicknamed ‘The Ram in the Thicket’, Fig. 121), that did not emulate any object or tool but were art for art’s sake.

For them, the artisans again lavishly used gold and combinations of gold with precious stones.

Figure 121

Similarly mind boggling was the array of jewelry, ranging from elaborate diadems and "headdresses" (a term employed by the archaeologists for lack of a better word) to chokers, bracelets, necklaces, rings, earrings, and other ornaments; they were all made of gold, semiprecious stones, or combinations thereof.

In all of these objects, as in the ones mentioned earlier, the artistry and the techniques used to make and shape them -  to create alloys, to combine materials, to weld them together - were unique, ingenious, and unmatched compared to any finds outside these tombs.

One must bear in mind that none of the materials used in all of those objects - gold, silver, lapis lazuli, carnelian, rare stones, rare woods -  were locally found in Sumer (or even in the whole of Mesopotamia). They were rare materials that had to be obtained and brought over from afar; yet they were used without any concern for rarity or scarcity.

Above all there was the obviously abundant use of gold, even for the making of common objects (cups, pins) or tools (hoes, axes).

Who had access to all those rare riches, who at a time when household utensils were made of clay or at best of stone, used uncommon metals for common goods? And who wanted everything possible to be made of gold, even if it rendered them impractical to use?

As one peruses records from those ‘Early Dynastic’ days, one finds that a king considered it a major achievement, by which that whole year was to be remembered, if he managed to have made and present to a deity a silver bowl - seeking in return prolonged life. Yet here, in selected tombs, myriad exquisitely crafted artifacts, utensils, and tools were made not just of silver but mostly of gold - an abundance and a use nowhere connected to royalty.

Gold, it will be recalled, was the purpose of the Anunnaki’s coming to Earth - to be sent back to Nibiru. In so far as an early and lavish use of gold here on Earth and for common vessels is concerned, we find gold mentioned only in inscriptions relating to Anu’s and Antu’s state visit to Earth circa 4000 B.C.

In those texts, which were identified by their scribes as copies of original ones from Uruk, detailed instructions specified that all the vessels used by Anu and Antu for eating, drinking, and washing "shall be made of gold"; even the trays on which food will be served had to be golden ones, as had to be the libation vessels and censers used in washing.

A list of the variety of beers and wines that were to be served to Anu specified that the beverages had to be served in special Suppu (‘Liquid holding’) vessels made of gold; even the Tig.idu ('Mixing vessels’) in which food was prepared had to be of gold.

The vessels, according to those instructions, were to be decorated with a ‘rosette’ design to mark them as 'Belonging to Anu. Milk, however, was to be served in special alabaster stone vessels, not in metal ones.

When it came to Antu, golden vessels were listed for her banqueting, mentioning the deities Inanna and Nannar (in that order) as her special guests; the Suppu vessels for them, as well as the trays on which they were served, also had to be of gold. All that, one ought remember, at a time before Mankind was granted civilization; so the only ones able to make all those objects had to be craftsmen of the gods themselves.

Remarkably, the Anu and Antu list of eating and drinking vessels that had to be made of gold, and in one specific case (for milk) of alabaster stone, reads almost as an inventory of objects discovered in the ‘royal’ tombs of Ur; so the questions ‘Who had to have common utensils made of uncommon metals, who wanted everything possible to be made of gold?’ led to "The gods" as an answer.

A conclusion that all those objects were for the use of gods, not mortal royalty, becomes more probable as we reread some of the Sumerian hymns to their gods - such as this one, inscribed on a clay tablet from Nippur (now languishing in the basement of the University Museum in Philadelphia).

A hymn to Enlil, it extols his golden hoe with which he broke ground for the Dur.an.ki, the Mission Control Center in Nippur:

Enlil raised his hoe,
the hoe of gold with lapis lazuli tip -
his hoe whose tied-on blade
of silver-gold was made.

Similarly, according to the text known as Enki and the World Order, his sister Ninharsag "has taken for herself the gold chisel and the silver hammer" - again utensils that, made of these soft metals, were only symbols of authority and status.

When it comes to the harp made of silver, we find that a rare musical instrument called Algar is specifically listed as one of Inanna’s possessions in a ‘Sacred Marriage’ hymn to her by the king Iddi- Dagan: The musicians, it says,

"play before thee the Algar instrument, of pure silver made."

Though the precise nature of the instrument, which gave out "sweet music," is not certain, the Algar is mentioned in Sumerian texts as a musical instrument played exclusively for the gods; except that Inanna’s was made of pure silver.

Such mentions of objects similar to those found in Ur’s special tombs are found in other hymns; they become virtually countless when it comes to jewelry and such; and they are especially overwhelming when it comes to Inanna/Ishtar’s jewelry and attire.

Yet as portentous as all that is, what was encountered in several of the ‘Royal Tombs’ was even more mind boggling; for even more unusual than the objects and opulence that accompanied some of the deceased was their accompaniment by scores of other human bodies buried along with them.

* * *

Burials with others buried alongside the deceased were an unheard-of phenomenon anywhere in the ancient Near East; so the discovery of two ‘companions’ buried with the deceased in a tomb (designated PG-1648) was already unusual.

But what was found in some of the other tombs surpassed anything ever found before or thereafter.

Tomb PG-789, named by Woolley the ‘King's Tomb’ (Fig. 122), began with a sloping ramp that led to what Woolley designated ‘the Burial Pit’ and to an adjoining burial chamber.

Presumably, the tomb was entered and looted by grave robbers in antiquity, which may account for the absence of the main body and precious objects.

Figure 122

But there were other bodies all over: Six companion’ bodies were lying in the access ramp; they wore copper helmets and carried spears, as soldiers or bodyguards would.

Down in the pit were remains of two wagons, each one drawn by three oxen whose skeletal remains were found in situ together with the bodies of one oxen-handler and two drivers per wagon.

All that was just a glimpse of what Woolley called "the king’s retainersfifty-four of them, found in the ‘Death Pit’ (their precise locations marked by a skull sign in Fig. 122) - who, judging by the objects found near the bodies, were mostly males who held decorated spears with electrum spearheads; near them lay loose silver spearheads, reign rings made of silver, shields, and weapons; bulls and lions were a prominent feature of sculptures and decorations.

While all that bespoke a military leader, the objects found near a smaller number of bodies identified as females bespoke appreciation of art and music:

a sculpted bull’s head made of gold with a lapis lazuli beard, wooden lyres exquisitely decorated, and a musical ‘sound box’ with panels whose inlaid decorations depicted scenes from the tales of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.

An artist’s 1928 rendition of what the assemblage in the death pit might have looked like, before everyone there was drugged or killed to be buried in situ (Fig. 123), gives a chilling reality to the scene.

Figure 123

Adjoining PG-789 was a similarly planned tomb, PG-800, that Woolley named "the Queen's Tomb."

Here too he found accompanying bodies both in the ramp and in the pit (Fig. 124) - five bodies of guards, an oxcart with its grooms, and ten bodies presumably of female attendants who carried musical instruments.

But here there was a body lying on a bier, placed in a specially constructed burial chamber, where it was accompanied by three attendants. This chamber was not robbed in antiquity, probably because it was a secret sunken chamber: Its roof, rather than its floor, was on the same level as the floor of the pit.

Judging by the skeletal remains as well as by the profusion of jewelry, ornaments, and even a large wooden chest for clothing, it was the body of a female - the ‘Queen’, as Woolley called her.
 

Figure 124
 

The female’s body was adorned - virtually from head to toe - with jewelry and accessories made of gold, gold-silver alloy (electrum), lapis lazuli, carnelian, and agate.

Gold, and gold in combination with lapis lazuli and other precious stones, dominated these finds; gold and silver were the metals of which objects in daily use were made (with rare alabaster stone sometimes used for bowls); so were various artfully sculpted objects, such as the heads of a bull and of a lion.

With a somewhat lesser opulence but similarly adorned were the female attendants who were buried with her: in addition to an elaborate golden headdress, each one was wearing golden earrings, chokers, necklaces, armbands, belts, finger rings, cuffs, bracelets, hair ornaments, wreaths, frontlets, and a variety of other adornments.

Near those two tombs Woolley found the forepart of another large tomb, PG-1237 (see site map, Fig. 113).

He unearthed the ramp and the pit, but did not find the burial chamber to which they must have belonged. He named the find "the Great Death Pit" because it contained seventy-three bodies of attendants (Fig. 125).

Figure 125

Based on the skeletal remains and the objects found on or near the bodies, only five of them were males, lying alongside a wagon.

Spread in the pit were sixty- eight female bodies; the objects found near them included an outstanding lyre (since known as the ‘Lyre of Ur’), the ‘Ram in the Thicket’ sculpture, and a bewildering variety of jewelry.

As in the other tombs, gold was the dominant material. (It was ascertained later that Woolley did find a burial chamber abutting PG-1237, but because the body in it was wrapped in reed matting, he considered it an intrusion from a later time and not the original burial.)

Woolley unearthed a few other ‘death pits’ without finding the burials with which they had been associated.

Some, as PG-1618 and PG-1648, held just a few bodies of what Woolley termed ‘retainers’; others held many more: PG-1050, for example, held forty bodies. One must assume that they were all entombments essentially similar to PG-789, PG-800 (and probably also PG-755); and that intrigued scholars and researchers from Woolley on, for these entombments had no parallel anywhere, nor were they mentioned in the vast literary trove of Mesopotamia - with one exception.

A text dubbed The Death of Gilgamesh by its first renderer in English, Samuel N. Kramer, describes Gilgamesh on his deathbed. Informed by the god Utu that Enlil will not grant him eternal life, he is consoled by promises of "seeing the light" even in the Nether World where the dead go.

Missing lines deprive us of the link to the final 42 lines, from which it could be surmised that Gilgamesh was going to retain in Nether World the company of,

"his beloved wife, his beloved son... his beloved concubine, his musicians, his entertainers, his beloved cupbearer," the chief valet, his caretakers, and the palace attendants who had served him.

A line (line 7 in the fragment’s reverse side) that can be read to include the words "whoever lay with him in the Pure Place" or "When they had lain down with him in the Pure Place" is taken as an indication that The Death of Gilgamesh in fact describes an ‘accompanied burial’ - presumably an extraordinary privilege granted to Gilgamesh, who was "two-thirds of him divine," as compensation for not gaining the immortality of the gods.

While this explanation of the legible lines remains debatable, there is no escaping the uncanny similarity between the Death of Gilgamesh text and the stunning reality uncovered at Ur.

Another recent debate whether the attendants, who were certainly part of the funeral procession, stayed to be buried voluntarily, were drugged, or perhaps killed as soon as they reached the pit, does not change the basic fact: There they were, demonstrating a most unusual practice, unemulated and not practiced anywhere else where kings and queens galore were buried over thousands of years.

In Egypt, the Afterlife’ notion included objects but not a host of co-buried attendants; the great Pharaohs were buried (amid an opulence of accompanying objects) in tombs hidden deep underground - lying by themselves in complete isolation.

In the Far East, the buried Chinese emperor Qin Shihuang (circa 200 B.C.) was accompanied by an army of his subjects -  but they were all made of clay. And though from A.D. times and on the other side of the world, we might as well mention a recent find in Sipan, Peru, of a royal tomb in which four bodies accompanied the deceased.

The Ur tombs with the death pits were, and remain, unique. So who was so special to be buried in such horrific grandeur?

Woolley’s conclusion that the sixteen extraordinary tombs were of mortal kings and queens stemmed from the accepted notion that gods and goddesses were just a myth and did not physically exist.

But the abundant use of gold, the extraordinary artistic and technologically advanced aspects of the objects, and other features that we have pointed out, lead us to conclude that demigods, and even gods, were buried there; and this finding is boosted by the discovery of inscribed cylinder seals.

* * *

Woolley’s excavators found cylinder seals both inside tombs and away from them; several seals and seal impressions were found in a pile of discarded stuff that Woolley called the Seal Impression Strata, or SIS for short.

All depicted some scene; some were inscribed with names or titles, identifying them as personal seals. If a name-bearing seal was found on or beside a body, it was logical to assume that it belonged to that person; and that could tell us a lot.

The assumption has also been that the loose ‘SIS’ seals came from tombs that had been entered and looted in antiquity, the looters keeping valued objects and discarding ‘valueless’ pieces of stone; to modern researchers, even the SIS seals are invaluable; and we will use them as clues to be followed in unraveling the biggest mystery of the Royal Tombs: Who was buried in PG-800.

On six of those seals the central depicted scene was of lions preying on other animals in the wild. One such seal was found in PG-1382 (a one-person grave), another by the side of a sole skeleton in PG-1054.

Though these seals left their owner’s identities unknown, they did suggest that the owners were males with heroic attributes - an aspect that becomes evident from the third such seal, in which a wild man - or a man in the wilderness - was added to the depicted scene. It was found in PG-261, which Woolley described as a "simple inhumation that had been plundered."

And this seal had its owners name inscribed on it in clearly legible script (Fig. 126): LugalAn.zu Mushen.

Figure 126

In his report Woolley did not dwell on this cylinder seal, though it plainly identified it as the tomb of a king.

Subsequent scholars have also ignored it because since Lugal meant ‘king’ and Mushen meant ‘bird’, the inscription makes little sense when read "King Anzu, Bird."

The inscription, however, becomes highly significant if it is read -  as I suggest - "King/Anzu Bird," for it will then suggest that the seal belonged to the King of ‘Anzu bird’fame - it would identify the owner as Lugalbanda, whose way to Aratta, the reader will recall, was blocked at a vital mountain pass by the monster Anzu mushen (‘Anzu the Bird’).

Challenged to identify himself, that is what Lugalbanda answered:

Mushen, in the Lalu I was born;
Anzu, in the ‘Great Precinct’ I was born.
Like divine Shara am I, the beloved son of Inanna.

Could the demigod Lugalbanda - a son of Inanna, spouse of the goddess Ninsun, and the father of Gilgamesh - be the VIP who was buried in the violated and plundered tomb PG-261?

If we are right in suggesting so, other pieces of the jigsaw puzzle will begin to form a plausible picture never before contemplated.

Though no telltale golden objects were found in it, strewn about in PG-261 were (per Woolley) "remnants of an assemblage associated with military men" - copper weapons, a bronze ax, etc. - objects befitting Lugalbanda who came to fame as a military commander for Enmerkar. Since the tomb had been entered and plundered by ancient grave rob- "bers, it could well be that there had been in it varied precious artifacts that were carried off.

To envision how PG-261 might have been originally, we can take a closer look at the very similar tomb PG-755, where the golden helmet and golden dagger were found (see Figs. 115, 116).

We do know who owned them, because among the artifacts inside the coffin two gold bowls, one actually held by the hands of the buried occupant, were inscribed with the name Mes.kalam.dug - the name, no doubt, of the buried person. His name, with the prefix Mes (= ‘Hero’), as explained by us earlier, meant ‘Demigod’.

Not ‘deified’ as Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh were, his name does not appear in the God Lists (in fact, the only instance throughout the God Lists of a name that begins with Mes - a partly legible name that reads Mes.gar.?.ra - is found among the sons of Lugalbanda and Ninsun).

But Mes.kalam.dug (= ‘Hero who the Land held’) is not a complete unknown: We know that he was a king from a cylinder seal bearing the inscription Mes.kalam.dugLugal (‘Meskalamdug, king’) that was found in the SIS soil.

We know something about his family: Metal vessels, lying near his coffin in PG-755, bore the names Mes.Anne.Pada and Nin.Banda Nin, suggesting that they were related to the deceased; and we know who Mes.anne.pada was: He is listed in the Sumerian King List as the all-important founder of the First Dynasty of Ur\ And he did not earn this honor without the highest qualifications.

As stated in a British Museum text that we have quoted earlier, his "divine seed giver" was Nannar/Sin himself. Being only a demigod meant that his mother was not Nannar’s official spouse, the goddess Ningal; but his genealogy still made him a half-brother of Utu and Inanna.

We also know who, in this context, the female Nin.Banda.Nin was: A two-tiered cylinder seal (belonging to the ‘man and animals in the wilderness’ series) found in the SIS pile (Fig. 127) was inscribed Nin.banda Nin/Dam Mes.anne.pada - Ninbanda, goddess, spouse [of] Mesannepada’ - identifying her as the spouse of the founder of the ‘Ur I’ dynasty.

Figure 127

How was Mes.kalam.dug related to this couple? While some researchers hold that he was their father (!), to us it is obvious that a demigod could not have been the father of a Nin - a goddess.

Our guess is that Nin.banda-Nin, was the mother of Meskalamdug, and Mes.anne.pada was his father; and we further suggest that the discovery of their seals in the SIS soil undoubtedly means that they too were buried in the ‘Royal Tombs’ group, in tombs that had been entered and robbed in antiquity.

It is at this point that one must clearly and emphatically put an end to the continued scholarly reference to Ninbanda as ‘queen’. Nin, as in Ninharsag, Ninmah, Ninti, Ninki. Ninlil, Ningal, Ninsun, and so on, was always a divine prefix; the Great God List includes 288 names or epithets whose prefix was Nin (sometimes also for male gods, as in Ninurta or Ningishzidda, where it indicated ‘Lordly/divine Son’).

Nin.banda was not a ‘queen, even if her spouse was a king; she was a NIN, a goddess; as the inscription doubly stated, she was "Nin.banda, Nin" - confirming that Mes.anne.pada was her husband, and leading to the conclusion that the VIP entombed in PG-755 -  Mes.kalam.dug - was the son of that goddess + demigod couple who started the First Dynasty of Ur.

The relevant section in the Sumerian King List states that Mesannepada, the founder of ‘Ur-I’ dynasty, was succeeded on the throne in Ur by his sons A.anne.pada and Mes.kiag.nunna. They both bore the Mes prefix, thereby confirming that they too were demigods -  as of course they were if their mother was the goddess Nin.banda.

The firstborn son, Mes.kalam.dug, is not included in the ‘Ur I’ list; his title Lugal suggests that he reigned elsewhere - in the family’s ancestral city Kish.

Could it be that the only one of this group of ‘Ur-I’ kings who was ‘royally’ buried in Ur was Meskalamdug, the one who did not reign in Ur?

Not only the discarded cylinder seals listed above, but also a damaged seal imprint (with the familiar heroic scene, Fig. 128) found in the SIS soil bearing the name Mes.anne.pada, founder of the dynasty, suggest that ancient robbers found his grave, robbed it, and threw away (or dropped) the seal that was with the body. Which grave?

There are enough unidentified tombs to choose from.

Figure 128
 

As the jigsaw puzzle of the first ‘Ur-T family and its burials emerges, it behooves us to wonder who the mother - Nin.banda-Nin -  was.

Was there a connection between Lugal.banda (‘Banda the king’) and Nin.banda (‘The Goddess Banda’)? If Lugal.banda, as we have suggested, was buried in Ur, as were Nin.banda’s spouse, Mes.anne.pada, and three sons - what happened to her? Did she, with her Anunnaki longevity, need no burial - or did she herself, at some point, die and was also buried in this cemetery.

This is a questions to be kept in mind as we unfold, step by step, the amazing secret lurking in the Royal Tombs of Ur.

* * *

The sixth ‘wilderness scene’ cylinder seal that depicts a crown-wearing naked male bears a clear inscription of its owner: Lugal Shu.pa.da (Fig. 129), ‘King Shupada’.

We know nothing of him except that he was a king; but that fact alone is significant, because the seal was found next to his body in the pit of PG-800, where he was one of the male attendants.

Depicting him naked would be in line with earlier instances in which a naked Lu.Gal served a female deity (see, for example, Fig. 77).

Figure 129

That a king served as a funeral retainer makes one wonder whether the other grooms and attendants and musicians, etc., who accompanied the deceased VIP were mere servants, or rather high officeholders and dignitaries in their own right.

That the latter is the case is additionally suggested by another find, near the wardrobe chest in PG-800, of a seal bearing the identification A.bara.ge, which can be translated ‘The Water Purifier of the Sanctuary’ - the personal seal of an officeholder who, as the deity’s cupbearer, was the deceased’s most trusted personal aide.

That the attendants of entombed VIPs were high-ranking persons in their own right is further attested by a cylinder seal found in the Great Death Pit of PG-1237.

Depicting females banqueting and having beer with drinking straws while musicians are playing (Fig. 130), it belonged to a female courtier and was inscribed Dumu Kisal - ‘Daughter of the Sacred Forecourt’.

Figure 130

This too was a title of no small import, for it linked the title of its holder to a subsequent king named Lugal.kisal.si (= ‘The Righteous King of the Sacred Forecourt’), indicating her royal-priestly genealogy.

While PG-755 yielded an entombed body without its death pit, PG-1237 a death pit without a grave and a body, and PG-789 (the ‘King’s Tomb’) a grave and its pit but no body, PG-800 emerged as the ideal discovery, providing the archaeologists with a body, a grave, and a death pit. Understandably, in Woolley’s and all other researchers’ opinions, PG-800 was "the richest of all the burials" in the Royal Cemetery of Ur.

He also viewed the ‘King’s’ PG-789 and the ‘Queen’s’ PG-800 -  which sat right against each other - as a special unit, similar in their having the sloping ramp, the bier or coffin carrying wagon, the death pit filled with attendants who themselves were high ranking, and the special separate Tomb Chamber constructed as an underground stone building.

Whoever was buried in such a ‘with pit’ tomb with attendants who were themselves VIP’s - even a king - had therefore to be more important than a mere royal princess or a king; it had to be at least a demigod - or even a fully qualified god or goddess.

And that leads us to the greatest enigma of the Royal Tombs of Ur - the identity of the female who was laid to rest in PG-800.

* * *

We can start unraveling the mystery by taking a closer look at the objects and adornments found with her.

We have already described some of the golden abundance in PG-800 (which was not robbed in antiquity), extending to the fashioning out of gold even of utensils in daily use - a bowl, a cup, a tumbler - and we noted the similarity of such use to the specifications for Anu and Antu’s stay in Uruk some two thousand years earlier.

The similarity additionally embraces Anu’s emblem, the ‘rosette’ of flower leaves; so it is not without great significance that the same symbol has been found embossed into the bottom of the golden utensils in PG-800 (Fig. 131).

Figure 131

This could be possible if the utensils found in Ur were the very same ones from Anu’s visit at Uruk, somehow preserved for two millennia as a family heirloom - in this case a feat linked to Inanna, to whom Anu bequeathed the E.Anna temple in Uruk with all in it.

If the utensils were made afresh in Ur, then the VIP for whom they were made had to be entitled to display Anu’s symbol. Who could that be, other than someone directly belonging to Anu’s dynastic family?

Another clue, in our opinion, is an inconspicuous object found in PG-800 - a pair of golden ‘tweezers’. The archaeologists assumed that it was made for cosmetic use. Maybe.

But we find an identical object depicted on a cylinder seal that (according to its inscription) belonged to a Sumerian A.zu, a physician. We show the ‘tweezers’ from PG-800 superimposed on the cylinder seal (Fig. 132) to support the conclusion that it was a medical instrument.

Figure 132

We don’t know whether this symbolic emulation in soft gold indicated the profession of the deceased or was also an inherited family heirloom; in either case, it suggests that the goddess in PG-800 had links to a medical tradition.

We now come to the jewelry and adornments of the buried "Queen" (as Woolley called her). Every detail about them justifies the adjectives ‘unusual’, ‘remarkable’, ‘extraordinary’; they definitely deserve extra attention.

She was laid to rest wearing on her torso not a dress, but a cape made entirely of beads (Fig. 133).

Figure 133

As already mentioned, there was a large ‘wardrobe chest’ outside the tomb chamber, indicating that the ‘queen’ had ample clothing.

Yet from the neck down the naked body was bedecked not with a garment but with long strings of beads - sixty of them - made of gold combined in artistic designs with lapis lazuli and carnelian beads. The strings of beads formed a ‘cape’ that was held in place at the waist by a belt made of golden strings decorated with the same gemstones.

There were gold rings on each of her ten fingers, and a golden garter that matched the belt was worn on her right leg. Nearby, on a collapsed shelf, lay a diadem of gold and lapis lazuli adorned with rows of miniaturized animals, flowers, and fruits, all made of gold. Even the pins were artfully made of gold.

Undoubtedly, the most glittering and eye-catching of her accoutrements was the large and elaborate headdress the ‘queen’ wore.

It was found crushed by fallen soil and was restored and placed by experts on a model’s head (Fig. 134); it has since been among the best known and most exhibited objects from the Royal Tombs of Ur.
 

Figure 134
 

Facing the entrance to the Sumerian Hall in the University Museum in Philadelphia, it usually evokes a ‘Wow!’ reaction on first sight.

That too was my reaction the first time I saw it; but having become familiar with it and where it was found, it seemed odd that the only way to fit it on the head of a mannequin (made to resemble female heads found at Sumerian sites) was by artificially giving the mannequin an immense coif of stiff hair.

The weighty headdress was held in place with golden pins and golden ribbons; matching its design and size were huge golden earrings adorned with precious stones.

The disproportion of the headdress is obvious when one looks at the golden headdresses worn by the female attendants who were buried with the ‘queen’ (Fig. 135). Similar to hers but less elaborate, they fitted perfectly on the heads without resort to a mass of artificial hair.

So either the 'queen' wore a headdress that was not hers - or she had an unusually large head.
 

Figure 135
 

The ‘queen’ wore around her neck a choker, a collar, and a necklace, all made of gold combined with gemstones.

The choker had at its center a golden rosette (the emblem of Anu); the collar bore a design that consisted of a series of alternating triangles, one of gold, the other of lapis lazuli (Fig. 136, top row); chokers or collars with the same design were also found worn by some of the female attendants in PG-1237 (bottom rows).

Figure 136

This is highly significant, for in some of her depictions the goddess Inanna/Ishtar (superimposed image) was shown wearing the exact same collar!

The exact same design was also deployed at the entranceway and on ceremonial columns (Fig. 137) in the earliest Ninmah/Ninharsag temples. Apparently reserved for female deities, this ‘cult design’ (as scholars call it) suggests some kind of affiliation between the several goddesses involved.

These and previous link-points to Inanna call for a closer look at both the unique bead cape and the exceptional headdress worn by the ‘queen’ in PG-800.

Figure 137

The profuse use of lapis lazuli and carnelian requires reminding that the nearest source for lapis lazuli was Elam (nowadays Iran), and carnelian was found farther east, in the Indus valley.

As told in the Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta text, it was to adorn Inanna’s abode in Uruk that the Sumerian king demanded from Aratta tribute of carnelian and lapis lazuli.

So it is not without significance that one of the few art objects found in the ruins of the Indus Valley centers, a statuette of Aratta’s goddess - Inanna - depicts her naked and bedecked only with strands and necklaces of beads and golden pendants, held in place by a belt with a disc-emblem (Fig. 138).

Figure 138

The striking similarities to the ‘queen’ in PG-800 with her beaded cape and belt do not end there: the statue’s towering headdress with its large earrings looks as though an artist tried to emulate in clay the headdress in PG-800.

Does it all mean that the ‘queen’ entombed in PG-800 was the goddess Inanna?

It could have, were it not for the fact that Inanna/Ishtar was alive centuries later, when the Evil Wind overwhelmed Sumer; we know that because she and her hurried escape are clearly described in the Lamentation Texts. And she was also active many centuries later -  into Babylonian and Assyrian times, in the 1^st millennium B.C.

But if not Inanna - who?


 

WHEN ‘IMMORTALS’ DIED

The ‘Immortality’ of the Anunnaki gods, we have already observed, was in reality a great longevity that can be attributed to their Nibiruan life cycle.

The notion of gods (or even demigods) as immortals has come to us from Greece; the discovery of Canaanite ‘myths’ at their capital Ugarit (on Syria’s Mediterranean coast) showed where the Greeks got the idea.

By listing the ancestor couples on Nibiru, the Anunnaki acknowledged that they were long dead. In the very first ‘Paradise’ tale of Enki and Ninmah, she afflicts him with maladies (to stop his sexual shenanigans) that bring him to the brink of death - allowing that gods can get sick and die.

Indeed, the very arrival of Ninmah the doctor and her group of nurses admits illness among the Anunnaki. The deposed Alalu, swallowing Anu’s ‘Manhood’, died of poisoning. The evil Zu was captured and executed.

Sumerian texts described the death of the god Dumuzi, who drowned when escaping from Marduk’s ‘sheriffs’. His bride, Inanna, retrieved his body, but all she could do was mummify it for a hoped- for future resurrection; various later texts refer to Dumuzi as a resident of a ‘Netherworld’.

Inanna herself, going uninvited to her sister’s Lower World domain, was put there to death - "a corpse, hung from a stake." Two android rescuers retrieved her body and with a ‘Pulser’ and an ‘Emitter’ brought her back to life.

When the nuclear Evil Wind began blowing toward Sumer, the gods and goddesses - neither immune nor immortal - hurriedly escaped in panic. The god Nannar/Sin tarried, and was afflicted with a limp.

The great goddess Bau of Lagash refused to leave her people, and the Day of the Calamity was her last day:

"On that day, as if she were a mortal, the Storm by its hand seized her," a lamentation text states.

In the Babylonian version of Enuma elish - that was read publicly during the New Year festival - a god named Kingu (namesake of the leader of Tiamat’s host) is killed to obtain blood for Man’s creation.

In Sumer, the death of gods was as accepted as tales of their being born.

The question is,

Where were they buried?

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