Life in the Cities of Ur and Mari

Ur was a southern city of kings, priests and royal tombs. Mari was a trade town on the Euphrates with a palace famous across the region. Two cities, two very different lives.

This lesson visits both. It also asks how a small cylinder of stone helped run daily life.

1What were cylinder seals?

A cylinder seal was a small stone cylinder. It was carved with writing, a scene, or both. A person rolled it over wet clay. The clay kept a picture.

Some sources say they were invented about 3500 BC. The place was Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. Susa in Iran used them a little later.

Seals were pressed onto many things. They marked jars, storage rooms, doors, bundles of goods and clay tablets. The picture showed whose goods they were.

The Indus Valley used a different kind. Harappan seals were stamp seals. They were small, usually 2 to 3 centimetres wide. Most were pressed, not rolled.

• Cylinder seal: rolled over wet clay.
• Invented about 3500 BC at Uruk.
• Harappan seals: stamped, small, mostly flat.

2What was Ur like?

Ur was a city-state from about the 26th century BC. Its first recorded king was Mesannepada. Its patron god was the moon god Nanna, called Sin by the Akkadians. The name Ur means “the abode of Nanna”.

Ur’s Great Ziggurat held Nanna’s shrine. It was built in the 21st century BC, in the reign of Ur-Nammu. Later, Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, rebuilt it in the 6th century BC.

Politics shaped the temple too. Sargon of Akkad conquered Ur. He made his daughter Enheduanna high priestess of Nanna. For five centuries, control of that office marked political power in the region.

• Patron god: Nanna (Sin).
• First recorded king: Mesannepada, 26th century BC.
• Ziggurat: Ur-Nammu, 21st century BC.
• Enheduanna: Sargon’s daughter, high priestess.

3What did the royal tombs reveal?

Leonard Woolley led the digs at Ur from 1922 to 1934. The British Museum and a Philadelphia museum backed him. He found a royal cemetery.

One grave belonged to Queen Puabi. Her jewellery was almost untouched. Another site, the Great Death Pit, held the bodies of many people. Scholars think attendants were sacrificed in honour of the dead.

The Standard of Ur came from a tomb linked to King Ur-Pabilsag, who died about 2550 BC. It is a mosaic of shell, red limestone and lapis lazuli. It once decorated the side of a wooden box. Woolley thought it was carried on a pole. That is why he called it a standard. Later study has questioned this.

• Woolley dug at Ur, 1922-34.
• Puabi: a queen buried with rich jewellery.
• Standard of Ur: about 2600-2500 BC, shell, limestone, lapis.

4Why was Mari a trade town?

Mari stood on the western bank of the Euphrates, in modern Syria. It flourished between about 2900 BC and 1759 BC. It sat in the middle of trade routes. Goods moved between Sumer in the south and Ebla and the Levant in the west.

Its people spoke a Semitic language. They honoured both Semitic and Sumerian gods. Its temples included those of Ishtar, Ishtarat and Shamash.

Later the Amorite Lim dynasty took the throne. The kings of Mari such as Zimri-Lim were Amorites. Babylonia destroyed this kingdom about 1761 BC.

• Mari: Euphrates trade centre, 2900-1759 BC.
• Kings: Amorites, the Lim dynasty.
• Fell to Babylonia about 1761 BC.

5What was Zimri-Lim’s palace?

Zimri-Lim had a hard start. His father was killed in a palace coup. Zimri-Lim fled to the court of Yamhad in Aleppo. Shamshi-Adad of Assyria then put his own son on Mari’s throne.

Zimri-Lim won back his kingdom. In exile he had married Shibtu, daughter of Yarim-Lim I of Yamhad. That marriage gave him an ally.

He then extended Mari’s royal palace. It covered about 2.5 hectares. It had over 260 rooms at ground level. It was possibly the largest palace of its time.

Zimri-Lim was known for lavish banquets. Menus included chickpea salad, fried locusts and desert truffle. Hammurabi of Babylon damaged the palace about 1760 BC.

• Exile at Yamhad, marriage to Shibtu.
• Palace: 2.5 hectares, over 260 rooms.
• Damaged by Hammurabi, about 1760 BC.

6What are the exam traps?

• Cylinder seals are Mesopotamian. Harappan seals are stamp seals.
• Mari’s kings were Amorites, not Sumerians.
• Do not mix the cities. Ur is on the south, Mari is far up the Euphrates.

Try the past paper question: NDA & NA II 2016, Q149 on cylindrical stone seals.