Bible Cities: Ur
Ancient Ur
Ur in Easton's Bible Dictionary
light, or the moon city, a city "of the Chaldees," the
birthplace of Haran (Gen. 11:28,31), the largest
city of Shinar
or northern Chaldea, and the principal commercial
centre of the
country as well as the centre of political power. It
stood near
the mouth of the Euphrates, on its western bank, and
is
represented by the mounds (of bricks cemented by
bitumen) of
el-Mugheir, i.e., "the bitumined," or "the town of
bitumen," now
150 miles from the sea and some 6 miles from the
Euphrates, a
little above the point where it receives the Shat
el-Hie, an
affluent from the Tigris. It was formerly a maritime
city, as
the waters of the Persian Gulf reached thus far
inland. Ur was
the port of Babylonia, whence trade was carried on
with the
dwellers on the gulf, and with the distant countries
of India,
Ethiopia, and Egypt. It was abandoned about B.C.
500, but long
continued, like Erech, to be a great sacred cemetery
city, as is
evident from the number of tombs found there. (See
ABRAHAM
The oldest king of Ur known to us is Ur-Ba'u
(servant of the
goddess Ba'u), as Hommel reads the name, or Ur-Gur,
as others
read it. He lived some twenty-eight hundred years
B.C., and took
part in building the famous temple of the moon-god
Sin in Ur
itself. The illustration here given represents his
cuneiform
inscription, written in the Sumerian language, and
stamped upon
every brick of the temple in Ur. It reads: "Ur-Ba'u,
king of Ur,
who built the temple of the moon-god."
"Ur was consecrated to the worship of Sin, the
Babylonian
moon-god. It shared this honour, however, with
another city, and
this city was Haran, or Harran. Harran was in
Mesopotamia, and
took its name from the highroad which led through it
from the
east to the west. The name is Babylonian, and bears
witness to
its having been founded by a Babylonian king. The
same witness
is still more decisively borne by the worship paid
in it to the
Babylonian moon-god and by its ancient temple of
Sin. Indeed,
the temple of the moon-god at Harran was perhaps
even more
famous in the Assyrian and Babylonian world than the
temple of
the moon-god at Ur.
"Between Ur and Harran there must, consequently,
have been a
close connection in early times, the record of which
has not yet
been recovered. It may be that Harran owed its
foundation to a
king of Ur; at any rate the two cities were bound
together by
the worship of the same deity, the closest and most
enduring
bond of union that existed in the ancient world.
That Terah
should have migrated from Ur to Harran, therefore,
ceases to be
extraordinary. If he left Ur at all, it was the most
natural
place to which to go. It was like passing from one
court of a
temple into another.
"Such a remarkable coincidence between the Biblical
narrative
and the evidence of archaeological research cannot
be the result
of chance. The narrative must be historical; no
writer of late
date, even if he were a Babylonian, could have
invented a story
so exactly in accordance with what we now know to
have been the
truth. For a story of the kind to have been the
invention of
Palestinian tradition is equally impossible. To the
unprejudiced
mind there is no escape from the conclusion that the
history of
the migration of Terah from Ur to Harran is founded
on fact"
(Sayce).
https://www.bible-history.com/eastons/U/Ur/
Ur in Fausset's Bible Dictionary
Of the Chaldees (Genesis 11:28; Genesis 11:31; Genesis 15:7;
Nehemiah 9:7), from which Terah, Abraham, and Lot were
called. In Mesopotamia (Acts 7:2). Now Mugheir (a ruined
temple of large bitumen bricks, which also "mugheir" means,
namely, Um Mugheir "mother of bitumen"), on the right bank
of the Euphrates, near its junction with the Shat el Hie
from the Tigris; in Chaldaea proper. Called Hur by the
natives, and on monuments Ur. The most ancient city of the
older Chaldaea. Its bricks bear the name of the earliest
monumental kings, "Urukh king of Ur"; his kingdom extended
as far N. as Niffer. The royal lists on the monuments
enumerate Babylonian kings from Urukh (2230 B.C., possibly
the Orchanus of Ovid, Met. 4:212) down to Nabonid (540 B.C.)
the last. The temple was sacred to 'Urki, the moon goddess;
Ilgi son of Urukh completed it.
For two centuries it was the capital, and always was
held sacred. One district was "Ibra," perhaps related to
"Hebrew," Abraham's designation. Ur was also a cemetery and
city of tombs, doubtless because of its sacred character,
from whence the dead were brought to it from vast distances
for 1,800 years. Eupolemos (in Eusebius, Praep. Ev. 9:17)
refers to Ur as "the moon worshipping (kamarine; kamar being
Arabic for moon) city." The derivation from Ur, "fire," led
to the Koran and Talmud legends that Abraham miraculously
escaped out of the flames into which Nimrod or other
idolatrous persecutors threw him.
Ur lies six miles distant from the present coarse of
the Euphrates, and 125 from the sea; though it is thought it
was anciently a maritime town, and that its present inland
site is due to the accumulation of alluvium (?). The
buildings are of the most archaic kind, consisting of low
mounds enclosed within an enceinte, on most sides perfect,
an oval space 1,000 yards long by 800 broad. The temple is
thoroughly Chaldaean in type, in stages of which two remain,
of brick partly sunburnt, partly baked, cemented with
bitumen.
https://www.bible-history.com/faussets/U/Ur/
Ur in Hitchcock's Bible Names
fire
https://www.bible-history.com/hitchcock/U/Ur/
Ur in Naves Topical Bible
1. Abraham's native place
Ge 11:27,28
Abraham leaves
Ge 11:31; 15:7; Ne 9:7
-2. Father of one of David's mighty men
1Ch 11:35
https://www.bible-history.com/naves/U/UR/
Ur in Smiths Bible Dictionary
was the land of Haran's nativity, Ge 11:28 the place from
which Terah and Abraham started "to go into the land of
Canaan." Ge 11:31 It is called in Genesis "Ur of the
Chaldaeans," while in the Acts St. Stephen places it, by
implication, in Mesopotamia. Ac 7:2,4 These are all the
indications which Scripture furnishes as to its locality. It
has been identified by the most ancient traditions with the
city of Orfah in the highlands of Mesopotamia, which unite
the table-land of Armenia to the valley of the Euphrates. In
later ages it was called Edessa, and was celebrated as the
capital of Abgarus or Acbarus who was said to have received
the letter and portrait of our Saviour. "Two, physical
features must have secured Orfah, from the earliest times,
as a nucleus for the civilization of those regions. One is a
high-crested crag, the natural fortifications of the crested
citadel....The other is an abundant spring, issuing in a
pool of transparent clearness, and embosomed in a mass of
luxuriant verdure, which, amidst the dull brown desert all
around, makes and must always have made, this spot an oasis,
a paradise, in the Chaldaean wilderness. Round this sacred
pool,'the beautiful spring Callirrhoe,' as it was called by
the Greek writers, gather the modern traditions of the
patriarch." --Stanley, Jewish Church, part i.p.7. A second
tradition, which appears in the Talmud, finds Ur in Warka,
120 miles southeast from Babylon and four east of the
Euphrates. It was the Orchoe of the Greeks, and probably the
Ereck of Holy Scripture. This place bears the name of Huruk
in the native inscriptions, and was in the countries known
to the Jews as the land of the Chaldaeans. But in opposition
to the most ancient traditions, many modern writers have
fixed the site of Ur at a very different position, viz. in
the extreme south of Chaldaea, at Mugheir, not very far
above-- and probably in the time of Abraham actually upon--
the head of the Persian Gulf. Among the ruins which are now
seen at the spot are the remains of one of the great
temples, of a model similar to that of Babel, dedicated to
the moon, to whom the city was sacred. (Porter and Rawlinson
favor this last place.)
https://www.bible-history.com/smiths/U/Ur/
Ur in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE
ur ('ur, "flame"; Codex Vaticanus Sthur; Codex Sinaiticus
Ora): Father of Eliphal, one of David's "mighty men," in 1 Ch
11:35; in the parallel 2 Sam 23:34 called "Ahasbai."
https://www.bible-history.com/isbe/U/UR/
Ur Scripture - Genesis 11:28
And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his
nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.
https://www.bible-history.com/kjv/Genesis/11/
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