The Standard of Ur

The story

A box found beside a skeleton

Between 1922 and 1934, in the south of Iraq, the English archaeologist Leonard Woolley dug the ruins of Ur, one of the oldest cities in the world, for twelve seasons. His work, funded jointly by the British Museum in London and the museum of the University of Pennsylvania, had an exceptional result: under the ground, in a cemetery a few steps from the ziggurat, he found more than 1,800 tombs, and sixteen of these were so rich that they were called “royal tombs”. They date from a period between about 2600 and 2400 BC.

In the tomb called PG 779, in the winter of 1927–1928, the diggers discovered a wooden box, almost completely rotted and crushed by the weight of the earth, near the shoulder of a buried man. The wood had vanished, but the decoration had survived, held together by bitumen, a kind of natural tar. With patience the restorers put the pieces back in place. The result is one of the most famous objects in all of Mesopotamia: the Standard of Ur, about 50 centimetres long and a little over 20 high.

A mosaic of stones and shells

The box has the shape of a trapezium, with two decorated long sides and two short triangular ends. The decoration is made with the technique of mosaic, or rather inlay: many small pieces of mother-of-pearl (shell), red stone and lapis lazuli are glued with bitumen to make up the figures. Lapis lazuli is a deep blue stone that was mined in only one place, in the mountains of Badakhshan, in Afghanistan, over two thousand kilometres from Ur. Already in the 3rd millennium BC, then, materials that had come from an immense distance ended up in a tomb in a Sumerian city.

The two long sides are divided into three bands, and are read from bottom to top, like the strips of a comic. Woolley called one side “war” and the other “peace”.

The war side

In the lowest band run four-wheeled chariots with solid wheels, pulled by four animals like donkeys (scholars think they were onagers, wild asses). They trample the fallen enemies. In the middle band, soldiers in long cloaks and helmets march and capture prisoners, who are brought before the king. In the top band, the naked, bound prisoners are led to the ruler, who can be recognised because he is taller than everyone and his head touches the edge of the decoration. The king has his chariot and his officers beside him. The message is simple and clear: the king and his army have won.

The peace side

On the other side we see a banquet. At the top, the king and people of rank sit on stools and drink; a musician plays the lyre and perhaps beside him there is a singer. In the two bands below, men in a line carry animals, fish, sacks and objects: goats, oxen, an onager. They look like gifts or tribute for the banquet, perhaps the produce of fields, flocks and distant lands. This scene shows a rich, orderly society, with a king who guarantees food and music.

What was it for?

Woolley thought it was a standard, that is, an emblem carried on top of a long pole during processions. That is why he named it so, but there is no proof. Other scholars have proposed that it was the sound box of a musical instrument, a little box for keeping something precious, or perhaps an object to put in the tomb for the dead person's banquet. None of these ideas is certain: the name “standard” has stuck out of habit. Nor do we know who the king shown was, or which battle is pictured. The box may not even tell of a specific event but of an ideal way of ruling.

What it teaches us

The Standard is one of the first images in the history of the Sumerians in which we can see how an army worked. There were foot soldiers and soldiers on heavy, slow chariots with solid wheels, pulled by donkeys or crosses between donkeys: horses came only much later. It shows how people dressed, how they celebrated a banquet, how kings showed their power. In a way it is a history book that needs no words.

Today the box is in the British Museum in London, and is one of the most celebrated pieces in the room dedicated to Mesopotamia.