Where Was Abraham’s Ur? The Case for the Babylonian City

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Hershel Shanks has reopened the debate raised long ago by Cyrus Gordon, about which Ur was Abraham’s.a Was the patriarch born in some northern Mesopotamian Ur rather than in Babylonia? I believe the case for identifying the Ur (of the Chaldees) in Genesis 11:28, 31 (compare with Nehemiah 9:7) with Ur, now Tell el-Muqayyar, in southern Babylonia, remains strong, although the available information precludes certainty. For our purposes, I assume that there was a man named Abraham and that the stories about him are very ancient. A number of cuneiform texts mention several places named Ur, or something very […]

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Footnotes

Hershel Shanks, “Abraham’s Ur: Is the Pope Going to the Wrong Place?” BAR 26:01.

Endnotes

Marco Bonechi, I nomi geografici dei testi di Ebla. Repertoire Géographique des Textes Cunéiformes 12.1 (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1993), pp. 310–312, Ura, Ura’u, Uram, Uri’um, Urru; A. Archi et al., I nomi di luogi di testi di Ebla (Rome: Missione Archeologica Italiana in Siria, 1993), pp. 44, 456–457, 463–465, Ura, Ura’u, Uri, Uru.

Donald J. Wiseman, The Alalakh Tablets (London: British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, 1953), 56.8.

Wiseman, The Alalakh Tablets, 105.1 (Urê); 162.4, 16 (Urri); 142.13 and 154.10 (Ura).

J. Fincke, Die Orts-und Gewässernamen der Nuzi-Texte. Repertoire Géographique des Textes Cunéiformes 10 (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1993), p. 332.

Cyrus H. Gordon, “Abraham and the Merchants of Ura,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 17 (1958), pp. 28–31. For a new translation of the text see Gary Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed. (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1999), p. 177.

Richard H. Beal, “The Location of Cilician Ura,” Anatolian Studies 42 (1995), pp. 65–73.

Beckman, Hittite, p. 175; M. Astour, “La Topographie du Royaume d’Ougarit” in M. Yon, M. Sznycer, P. Bordreuil, eds, Le Pays d’Ougarit autour de 1200 av. J.-C. (Paris: Editions recherche sur les Civilisations, 1995), pp. 55–69, esp. p. 68.

Giuseppe F. del Monte, J. Tischler, Die Orts- und Gewässernamen der hethitischen Texte. Repertoire Géographique des Textes Cunéiformes 6 (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1978), pp. 457–458.

K. Kessler, Untersuchungen zur historischen Topographie Nordmesopotamiens (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1980), p. 179; H. Tadmor, The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria (Jerusalem: Israel Academy, 1994), pp. 76, 126, 184.

10.

See Judith B. Segal, Edessa, ‘The Blessed City’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 3,255; A. Harrak, “The Ancient Name of Urfa,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 51 (1992), pp. 209–214, suggested that Urfa was the Admum or Adme of cuneiform sources.

11.

B. Groneberg, Die Orts- und Gewässernamen der altbabylonischen Zeit. Repertoire Géographique des Textes Cunéiformes 3 (Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1980), p. 247.

12.

Mogens T. Larsen, The Old Assyrian City-State and its Colonies (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1976); C.B.F. Walker, “Some Assyrians at Sippar in the Old Babylonian Period,” Anatolian Studies 30 (1980), pp. 15–22; W. F. Leemans, Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonian Period (Leiden: Brill, 1960).

13.

P. R. S. Moorey, Ur “of the Chaldees.” A Revised and Updated Edition of Sir Leonard Woolley’s Excavations at Ur (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 138, 263; see also H. W. F. Saggs, “Ur of the Chaldees,” Iraq 20 (1960), p. 202, n.12.