Reconstruction of Ur, or Urim, as the Sumerian city-state may have looked during the age of the Neo-Sumerian Empire (or Third Dynasty of Ur) in the late third millenium BC.
Category: Mesopotamia
The Lyres, or Harps, of Ur are a set of four stringed instruments dug up at the Royal Cemetery of the very ancient Sumerian city-state of Ur, nowadays Iraq, in a joint expedition of the British Museum and the Penn Museum in 1929.
More precisely three lyres and a harp, they date as far back as the Early Dynastic III Period of Mesopotamia, roughly between 2550 and 2450 BC, which renders them about 4500 years and hence the oldest surviving stringed instruments worldwide.
The ‘Golden Lyre of Ur’ or ‘Bull’s Lyre,’ pictured above, is the finest of them all, housed in the Iraq Museum in Bahdad, while the other three are the ‘Queen’s Lyre,’ the ‘Bull-headed Lyre’ and the ‘Silver Lyre.’
This is the beautiful reconstructed smaller frontal of the double Ishtar Gate, the eighth to the inner city of Babylon, in the Pergamon Museum of Berlin, Germany.
It was fashioned some time around 575 BC during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire on the north side of the city, dedicated as the name reflects to goddess Ishtar.
Once every year, the Ishtar Gate and linking Processional Way were employed in the New Year’s procession to Akitu Temple, located outside the city, which was part of the annual Akitu Festival that marked the beginning of the new year.
The rituals and ceremonies concerned lasted for twelve days and the festival commenced on the first day of the shifting month Nisannu, associated with the barley harvest at the time of the vernal equinox.
Breaking through History 