Source: Azzaman.

Mesopotamia in the 3^rd millennium BC

Ur was an important city-state in ancient Sumer located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar in Iraq’s Dhi Qar Governorate. Once a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf, Ur is now well inland, south of the Euphrates on its right bank, 16 km from Nasiriyah.

Iraqi and foreign archaeologists have uncovered a temple at the Sumerian city of Ur, which dates back to about 2500 BC, the head of the Antiquities Department says. So far the scientists have uncovered one of the walls of the temple along with numerous graves from the same period, said Hussein Rashid.

Ur is one of ancient Mesopotamia’s most fascinating cities. It has given the world priceless treasures from the Sumerian civilization that flourished in southern modern Iraq. The Sumerians, whose ethnic and linguistic stock is still a mystery, invented writing and established a civil system of government more than 5000 years ago.

«An Italian excavation team in coordination with their Iraqi counterparts have uncovered the wall of a temple dating to 2500 BC at Tel Abu Tabeer in the ancient city of Ur», said Rashid. Rashid said there were three foreign excavation teams currently working in Iraq. It is the first team of foreign archaeologists to be working in the country for more than two decades.

An American team was to arrive in Iraq to excavate ancient mounds in the southern city of Nasiriya, the capital of Dhi Qar Province where the richest and most ancient Mesopotamian ruins are found. Another Italian group will be arriving in the country to excavate the ancient Assyrian military capital, Nimrud, in the northern Province of Nineveh.