Discovery of written tablets and clay jar stoppers which bear the impression of archaic seals and are the oldest written documents ever found at Ur of the Chaldees was revealed here today following receipt of a report from the joint archaeological field expedition of the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the British Museum.
According to C. Leonard Wooley, director of the expedition, the objects are of the utmost importance in that they belong to a period in Ur’s history illustrated heretofore only by crude clay figurines of animals and men from which it would have been impossible to deduce the level of culture attained in the city at that time.
The fact that the objects were found on the very top of a vast stratum of rubbish which lies under and is very much older than the 5400-year-old royal graves at Ur has led the archaeologists to expect that eventually they will find at Ur pictograph tablets rivaling in age those excavated at Jemdet-Nasr in 1925-26.
The tablets discovered at Jemdet-Nast are the oldest known pictographic tablets the ancient soil of Mesopotamia has yet yielded and were found by the joint expedition of the Field Museum and Oxford University which was engaged in excavations in Kish, Iraq.
In addition to revealing the discovery of the written documents at Ur, the report from Mr. Woolley also records the excavation of a number of additional graves in the cemetery, and the further clearing of the great Temple of the moon god Nannar, work on which has been in progress for a number of years.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
