THE ANCIENT CITY OF UR

Expository Text THE ANCIENT CITY OF UR BY MARIA GILL PAIRED READ The Game

STRATEGIES & SKILLS Comprehension Strategy: Summarize Skill: Sequence Vocabulary Strategy Greek Roots Vocabulary bedrock, embarked, excavations, exquisite, intriguing, intrinsic, methodical, meticulously Content Standards Social Studies Geography Word Count: 1,931** Photography Credit: DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini/Getty Images **The total word count is based on words in the running text and headings only. Numerals and words in captions, labels, diagrams, charts, and sidebars are not included. Copyright The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., including, but not limited to, network storage or transmission, or broadcast for distance learning. Send all inquiries to: McGraw-Hill Education Two Penn Plaza New York, New York 10121 ISBN: 978-0-02-119205-2 MHID: 0-02-119205-7 Printed in the United States. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 DOC 15 14 13 12 11 10 A

Essential Question What can scientists reveal about ancient civilizations? THE CIENT CITY OF UR BY MARIA GILL Introduction................................ 2 Chapter 1 Discovering a City............................ 4 Chapter 2 An Advanced Civilization..................... 8 Chapter 3 The Graves.................................. 12 Conclusion.................................. 16 Respond to Reading......................... 18 PAIRED READ The Game......................... 19 Glossary.................................... 22 Index....................................... 23 Focus on Social Studies......................24 001_009_CR14_LR_G6_U6W4L60_A_119205.indd 1 6/03/12 11:56 AM Program: CR 14 Component: LR Vendor: Learning Media Level: 60 G6 U6 W4 A PDF

INTRODUCTION In 1922, an archaeologist named Leonard Woolley embarked on a journey to southern Iraq. The British Museum sent him to study a large mound in the desert. It contained the ruins of a building called a ziggurat. The ziggurat had been built centuries before. At the time it was built, the area was called Sumer. The ziggurat was an important site in the city-state of Ur. It is known as the Great Ziggurat of Ur. During his excavations, Woolley discovered that Ur had been located beside the Euphrates River. When the ziggurat was discovered, the river was 10 miles (16 kilometers) away. Civilizations near rivers often flourish. This is because people can irrigate crops. People can also use the waterways for transportation, so they can trade goods in a wider area. TU RKEY SYRIA IRAQ Baghdad W Tigris River N S E MODERN-DAY IRAQ Ur was located near the mouth of the Euphrates River. Today the river is about 10 miles from Ur. IRAN Mountain High Maps/Digital Wisdom Euphrates River UR Basrah 2 SAUDI ARABIA KUWA IT PERSIAN GULF

(bkgd) Aaron Roeth Photography, (b) courtesy of The Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University, UK Woolley and his team dug two large trenches near the ziggurat. In the first trench, they discovered evidence of graves and gold. Woolley knew that he and his team of workers were too inexperienced to carry out a successful excavation at that time. They didn t touch the site again until 1927. By then, the team had learned the necessary skills from working on other sites. In the second trench, they found the ruins of a large wall and several buildings. It was one of the most exciting archaeological finds of the twentieth century. The Great Ziggurat of Ur is one of Iraq s most important heritage sites. 3

CHAPTER 1 DISCOVERING A CITY In 1923, Woolley and the workers had to meticulously clear away tons of rubble to uncover the ziggurat. The interior was constructed with sunbaked clay bricks. The ziggurat s outer layer of bricks had been baked by fire and sealed with a tar-like substance. This protected the building from floodwaters. THE GREAT ZIGGURAT OF UR The ziggurat consisted of a large platform with two smaller platforms on top. There were brick staircases between the levels. On the top level, there once would have been a temple. However, no ruins of the temple remained. Woolley discovered that none of the walls were straight. The walls sloped slightly inward. This made the structure look very strong. Woolley believed that the sophisticated design was evidence ZIGGURATS of a very advanced civilization. The Great Ziggurat of Ur is the best-preserved ziggurat in Iraq. Ziggurats were part of temple complexes, which were also the business centers of cities. No one knows the exact purpose of these buildings. The people who lived in the area believed that the gods came from the mountains. Maybe the ziggurats were built to look like mountains. Or maybe the temples were high so the gods could easily come to Earth. 4

(bkgd) Aaron Roeth Photography (b) Library of Congress/American Colony (Jerusalem), Photo Dept. THE FIRST TEMPLE A small building was uncovered near the ziggurat. Writing on the bricks showed that the building was a sacred temple called E-nun-mah. The temple honored Nannar, the moon god. The floors of the temple were rebuilt between 559 and 530 B.C.E. The walls were built long before that: between 2200 and 2100 B.C.E. This made Woolley think that there might be another level below the floor. His workers dug below the bricks. They found a treasure of gold beads, earrings, and pendants. King Ur-Nammu built the temple of E-nun-mah. 5

THE HIGH PRIESTESS Two more buildings were uncovered near E-nun-mah. One was named E-dub-lal-mah. This building contained a shrine in which priestesses worshipped Nannar. The other building was called E-gi-par. It was the residence of the daughter of King Nabonidus. She was a high priestess. These buildings were built just before 2000 B.C.E. The archaeologists discovered some clay tablets. A teacher had written a sentence on one side. On the other side, a student had tried to copy the sentence. Another tablet looked like a spelling book. It contained words all beginning with the same syllable. It was labeled the property of the boys class. Woolley believed that the high priestess had taught lessons in those rooms. Benches, altars, and tables were found in the excavations. DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini/Getty Images 6

(bkgd) Aaron Roeth Photography, (b) Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA In the shrine in E-dub-lal-mah, the archaeologists found a statue inscribed with the name of King Dungi. He was the son of Ur-Nammu, who reigned from 2094 to 2047 B.C.E. The team also found a stone weapon that was older than the statue of King Dungi, and clay tablets from 2000 B.C.E. Woolley wondered why objects from different time periods were together in one place. Some clay cylinders that were etched with script gave the answer to this intriguing puzzle. They were labels that described the objects in the room. Woolley realized that the room was a museum. The objects in it were collected and exhibited by the high priestess. STOP AND CHECK Who did the inhabitants of Ur worship? The clay cylinders were labels from the world s oldest known museum. 7

CHAPTER 2 AN ADVANCED CIVILIZATION Woolley s excavations revealed many interesting features of Sumerian civilization. CITY OF TREES Woolley found tall, narrow slits in the walls of the first level of the ziggurat. Near the ziggurat was a building that had been damaged by tree branches. Trees couldn t have grown in the building because it had a roof. Woolley realized that the only place trees could have grown was on the ziggurat s platforms. The slits had probably been part of an irrigation system to water the trees. Woolley also found signs that the people of Ur had irrigated crops using canals and dams. The water came from the Euphrates River. The canals also helped protect the land from flood damage. DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini/Getty Images Woolley guided each excavation carefully. 8

TRADING ALONG THE RIVER Woolley discovered that the people of Ur manufactured goods and transported them along the river. Trade transactions and sales and leases of land and property were recorded on clay tablets. Woolley found exquisite headdresses and jewelry made from gold and semiprecious stones such as lapis lazuli. Some of these gemstones were not available in Ur. The people of Ur must have traded for them. These discoveries again suggested that Ur was an advanced civilization. (bkgd) Aaron Roeth Photography, (b) World History Archive/Alamy This piece of the Stele of Ur-Nammu shows the god Nannar seated on a throne. 9

Inscribed bricks can give archaeologists useful information. CLUES IN CLAY King Ur-Nammu began building the ziggurat during the Third Dynasty (about 2112 to 2004 B.C.E.). His son, King Dungi, and other kings built onto it and remodeled the ruins. In about 600 B.C.E., a 6-foot-high mud brick wall was built. It was called the Temenos Wall, and it circled the sacred buildings. This information was inscribed on cylinders of baked clay. The names of the royal family members and the purpose of the rooms were also inscribed in clay. Inscribed tablets were made by scratching wet clay with a blunt reed. The tablets were then baked in the sun. Charles & Josette Lenars/CORBIS 10

The people of Ur wrote in an ancient script called cuneiform. The word cuneiform comes from the Latin word cuneus, meaning wedge. The blunt reeds made a wedge shape on the clay tablets. A language expert deciphered the writing. Cuneiform had first been translated in 1857, but even in the 1920s, few people could read it. STOP AND CHECK For what was water from the Euphrates River used? HOW CUNEIFORM DEVELOPED Cuneiform is probably one of the oldest written languages. It first appeared in Sumer more than 5,000 years ago. Cuneiform used pictographs, or pictures, that each represent an object or idea. Name Earliest Outline Characters Archaic Cuneiform Late Babylonian Pictograph 4500 B.C.E. 2500 B.C.E. 500 B.C.E. Day Hand Bird (bkgd) Aaron Roeth Photography Fish 11

CHAPTER 3 THE GRAVES By 1927, Woolley s team had improved their excavation skills. They knew how to uncover archaeological remains without changing the position of the remains in the ground. This meant that they were ready to excavate the graves they had found in 1922. COMMONERS GRAVES The workers first found hundreds of commoners graves. The commoners were the local village people. A thin line of white powder marked each grave. The powder was the remains of a reed mat that had lined the grave. Graves often contained jewelry, tools, or inscribed cylinder seals. Sometimes the graves also contained offerings to the dead. These offerings included food, drink, weapons, or tools. 12

In March 1927, the workers found a large pit under many graves. The bottom of the pit was lined with limestone. Woolley was surprised because the builders would have had to travel more than 30 miles (50 kilometers) to get the limestone. Why would they go to so much trouble? The team saw the answer in a two-room stone structure attached to the pit. A ramp cut into the bedrock led from the structure to a tomb, which had been built for royalty. PRINCE MES-KALAM-DUG S TREASURES Prince Mes-kalam-dug s grave contained tools, bowls, and weapons made from copper and gold. Inside the coffin was a silver belt with a gold dagger, along with hundreds of lapis lazuli and gold beads. There was also a gold headdress, a gold helmet, and lots of jewelry. In the prince s hands was a heavy gold bowl. (bkgd) Aaron Roeth Photography, (b) The Granger Collection, NYC This helmet in Prince Mes-kalam-dug s grave was made from beaten gold. 13

A SURPRISING DISCOVERY By early 1928, the workers had dug 26 feet below the surface of the ground. Here they found a shaft formed by mud bricks. Below the shaft was a pit, with another pit below it. The lowest pit measured 27 feet by 24 feet across. This pit contained the bodies of 6 men and 68 women. The bodies were laid out in rows across the floor. Woolley called this the Great Death Pit. The Trustees of the British Museum This reconstruction shows people and animals walking into the burial shaft. 14

Woolley believed the bodies were attendants to royalty. The attendants may have considered it a privilege to die with their rulers. However, Woolley did not find a royal tomb chamber connected to the Great Death Pit. Maybe grave robbers had taken the royal bodies and treasure. Because limestone was scarce, the robbers probably also took the tomb itself. STOP AND CHECK What offerings to the dead were found in the commoners graves? TREASURES FROM THE ROYAL TOMBS OF UR (bkgd) Aaron Roeth Photography, (bl) The Granger Collection, NYC, (c) www.biblelandpictures.com/alamy, (br) Werner Forman/CORBIS This statue of a ram was found in the Great Death Pit. Queen Puabi wore this headdress. It is made of gold and strands of semiprecious stone beads. This gold wreath contains semiprecious stones. 15

CONCLUSION The ruins of Ur are far from modern-day villages. This distance and the hot desert climate may have helped protect the ruins. Woolley s camp contained a large house. Electricity came from a generator. The workers lived in a village 4 miles (6.5 kilometers) away. Their children brought the workers lunch and then hunted for treasures. Woolley paid the children for any discoveries they made. Woolley s wife Katharine also worked at Ur. Courtesy of the Penn Museum 16

(bkgd) Aaron Roeth Photography, (b) Julie Dermansky/Flickr/Getty Images Woolley s methodical exploration revealed objects that equaled the beauty and wealth of the treasures found in Egypt. The discoveries provided information about the people who lived in Ur. Evidence of their writing, commerce, daily lives, and their treatment of the dead were all uncovered. Woolley s excavations also help us understand Ur s demise. While the Euphrates River had flowed beside the walls of the city, the city had prospered. When the river changed course around 530 B.C.E., the city s crops could not be irrigated. Ur lost its river trade. People moved away, and the great city was eventually covered by sand. The world is a richer place for Woolley s meticulous excavation of this ancient city and its treasures. The Great Ziggurat of Ur was reconstructed in the 1960s and 1970s. 17

Summarize Use the important events from The Ancient City of Ur to summarize what you learned about this ancient civilization. Information from your graphic organizer may help you. Event Text Evidence 1. Identify some of the features that tell you that The Ancient City of Ur is an expository text. GENRE 2. How does the author help you understand the order of the events in the excavation of Ur? SEQUENCE 3. In the word cylinders, the root cylind means roll. How does this help you understand the shape of the artifacts mentioned on page 10? GREEK ROOTS 4. Write about the sequence of events in Chapter 1 that led Woolley and his team to think the culture at Ur was highly civilized. WRITE ABOUT READING 18

Compare Texts Read about a girl who helps solve an archaeological mystery. Illustration: Eric Reese Sarah sighed when she saw her parents studying their latest find. She knew they wouldn t be leaving early. Sarah wasn t having much fun in the ancient city of atalhöyük in Turkey. The only fun she d had was the weekends with her parents in Istanbul. Their hotel had a huge swimming pool. For the past sweltering week, the pool was all she had wanted. She hurried away before her parents looked up from the small clay balls they had found. They had said that the clay balls had intrinsic value. Sarah knew they wouldn t leave the archaeological dig until they d figured out what the balls had been used for. Sarah wondered if she could solve the mystery of the balls herself. Then they could go back to Istanbul and swim in the pool. Sarah went into the antiquity room to make a plan. 19 019_024_CR14_LR_G6_U6W4L60_A_119205.indd 19 6/03/12 11:51 AM Program: CR 14 Component: LR Vendor: Learning Media Level: 60 G6 U6 W4 A PDF

Sarah looked at the items that had been found. She noticed some bone rings from a burial site. Imagine wearing rings made of bone! she thought. Sarah examined a mural that showed figures crouched in the sand. She wondered what the figures were doing. Some Turkish workers brought artifacts into the room. Sarah asked them a few questions in basic Turkish, but they did not reply. Sarah sighed and went outside for some fresh air. She saw a young girl walking toward the edge of the digs. Sarah followed her and introduced herself. The girl smiled and pointed at herself, saying, Se-na. The girls sat on the ground, and Sena taught Sarah to play gülle. It was a Turkish game of marbles. Something about the game seemed familiar to Sarah. Illustration: Eric Reese 20

Sarah heard the lunch gong. She said good-bye to Sena and went back to the dig. On the way, something clicked into place in her mind. I know what the people in the mural are doing, she said to her mother in the antiquity room. They are playing a game. Sarah described the game that Sena had taught her. She noticed her mother s ring. It reminded Sarah of the bone rings. Then it hit her. The clay balls! Sarah cried. They didn t have marbles then. They would have used balls made from clay to play the game, just like we wear metal rings now instead of ones made from bone. Her mother nodded thoughtfully. It s a good theory. Let s talk about it with your father in the car. Sarah skipped out of the room. Yahoo! Swimming pool, here I come! Make Connections In The Game, what steps does Sarah take to help reveal information about the clay balls? ESSENTIAL QUESTION How do both The Ancient City of Ur and The Game show you how scientists find out information about ancient civilizations? TEXT TO TEXT 21

Glossary archaeologist (ahr-kee-ah-luh-jist) a person who studies ancient civilizations by looking at the things left behind (page 2) commerce (KAH-muhrs) buying and selling of goods, especially between different places and on a large scale (page 17) demise (di-mighz) ending or failure (page 17) leases (LEES-iz) agreements to rent property (page 9) privilege (PRIV-lij) a favor that is granted to some but not others (page 15) reed (reed) a stiff grass (page 10) reigned (raynd) ruled over an area, usually by a pharoah, emperor, king, or queen (page 7) shaft (shaft) an opening or passage straight down through the floors of a building (page 14) shrine (shrighn) a place that is considered sacred; where people go to pay respects to a god (page 6) tablets (TA-bluhts) small slabs for writing on (page 6) transactions (tran-zak-shuhnz) business deals (page 9) trenches (TRENCH-iz) long, narrow ditches (page 3) 22

Index cuneiform script, 11 Euphrates River, 2, 8, 17 graves commoners, 12 Great Death Pit, 14, 15 royal, 13, 15 treasures found in, 13, 15 Great Ziggurat of Ur, 2 5, 8, 10, 17 irrigation systems, 8, 17 jewelry, 5, 9, 12, 13 Stele of Ur-Nammu, 9 temples E-dub-lal-mah, 6, 7 E-gi-par, 6 E-nun-mah, 5, 6 Ur location of, 2 reason for its demise, 17 why the ruins survived, 16 Woolley, Katharine, 16 Woolley, Leonard, 2 9, 12 17 23

Purpose To research how ancient cultures used the resources in their areas What to Do Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 With a partner, use educational Web sites to search for an ancient site that is being excavated currently. Take notes about the climate and landscape of the area. What natural resources were available? Look for descriptions of objects that have been uncovered. Record what materials were used to make the artifacts. Did ancient people find the materials in their area, or did they bring the materials from somewhere else? For example, a desert community may have needed to bring timber from a wooded area. Create a poster with the information from your research. Include photographs or sketches of the artifacts you have researched. Write a caption for each artifact, explaining how it was used. Present your research poster to the class, explaining why the artifacts were important in that ancient culture s daily life. 24

Literature Circles Nonfiction The Topic What is The Ancient City of Ur mostly about? Text Structure How does the author order this text to tell the story of Woolley s finds? Vocabulary What new words did you learn in the text? How did they help you to understand archaeology and ancient civilizations? Author s Purpose Why do you think the author wrote The Ancient City of Ur? What did she want you to understand? Make Connections What else have you read or heard about ancient civilizations? How were those civilizations like the one at Ur?

Extraordinary Finds Social Studies GR V Benchmark 60 Lexile [t/k] Grade 6 Unit 6 Week 4 www.mheonline.com ISBN-13 978-0-02-119205-2 MHID 0-02-119205-7 99701 EAN 9 780021 192052 6