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Leonard Woolley at the Royal Cemetery of Ur

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Excavating the Royal Cemetery at Ur
Excavating Ur

This photograph and the previous one show the progress of the excavations in the deep hole, Pit X, undertaken from 1933-1934. The large-scale excavation removed 13,000 cubic meters of soil and involved over 150 workers.

C. Leonard Woolley, 1934, and Iraq's Ancient Past, Penn Museum

Woolley conducted excavations at Ur for 12 seasons, excavations paid for by the British Museum and the University of Pennsyvlania; five of those seasons (1926-1932) were concentrated on the Royal Cemetery. Woolley excavated some 1850 burials, including 16 royal graves in the earliest part of the cemetery. Fourteen of them had been plundered in antiquity; one of those was Queen Puabi's tomb, which was largely intact. Ten of the sixteen royal tombs had large substantially-built stone and/or mud brick tombs with one or more chambers. The other six are royal Death Pits, which had no structures but lots of bodies.

Queen Puabi's tomb, recorded as RT/800, was discovered some 7 meters below the top of the tell.

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