The picture is of the burial scene where the VIOLS of the King went
with him into Sheol. These were living victims of the death of the king. They
stood where they were and were burried alive to give the king comfort including
instrumental music in sheol. Notice the bull image harp in the middle.
The Royal Cemetery at
Ur
When Leonard Woolley uncovered sixteen ED tombs at Ur full
of rich grave goods and bodies, he was in no doubt that he was seeing the
remains of royal burials accompanied by sacrificed retainers. The orderly
arrangement of the bodies and the presence beside each one of a goblet from
which, he surmised, they had drunk poison, led him to believe that these were
voluntary sacrifices, lovingly accompanying their master or mistress to the
netherworld. The persuasive and eloquent language in which all Woolley's
reports are written has entranced generations of readers, archaeologists and
non-archaeologists alike, and for a long time his interpretation remained the
accepted view. There was even textual evidence to support it. In the
fragmentary Sumerian poem "The Death of Gilgamesh," a large number of
servants and family, including not only his wives but also his children, seem
to have been laid in the grave along with the dead man. But the text is
incomplete, and the meaning is not entirely clear. In the years since Woolley
uncovered this cemetery, only one further instance of apparent human sacrifices
has come to light in Mesopotamia, an ED cemetery at Kish (Cemetery Y), where
several graves furnished with a cart and draught oxen contained a number of
individuals: In this case, however, it is possible that these were family
graves in which the bodies of family members were successively interred, a
common practice. Human sacrifice, therefore, was not a general Sumerian custom,
although on occasion a slave (seen as a chattel rather than a person) was
included among the grave goods.
In more recent years, doubts have been cast both on the
royal identity of the sixteen principal burials within the Ur tombs and on the
sacrificial nature of the other burials. Inscribed seals have been found in some
of the graves, but their position in the grave makes it possible that they were
gifts from the living rather than certainly possessions of the deceased. Of the
named individuals, only two, Akalamdug and Meskalamdug, are known from other
sources to have been rulers of Ur. Meskalamdug's burial differs from the
sixteen "royal" interments: He was placed in an ordinary grave,
distinguished only by the richness of its grave goods and its association with
the name of a known king. Among the several thousand ordinary graves in the
cemetery there were a number that were richly furnished. What distinguish the
"royal" graves from these are the stone or brick-built vaulted tomb
chambers in which the principal burial was laid and the associated "sacrifices."
Clearly these individuals were special in some way, but they
need not have been royalty. Another plausible theory is that they were priests
and priestesses of Nanna, the tutelary deity of Ur; in later times the temple
precinct at Ur included a crypt in which Nanna's priestesses were buried. A
further suggestion is that they were individuals who had acted as substitute
king when omens predicted the monarch's death. To avert this disaster the
chosen individual would assume the role and duties of the king during the crisis
period and would thereafter be killed along with his queen and his retainers.
Although in principle this seems to match the burials at Ur, the practice was
rare, and it seems unlikely that as many as sixteen such episodes should have
occurred at Ur in as little as a century.
Archaeologists are divided in their opinions on the supposed
sacrifices. Some suggest that these graves were the mausolea of important
people, kings, queens, priests, or priestesses, beside whose revered corpses
were laid the bodies of those who wished or were entitled to be buried with
them, including their relatives and servants. In this scenario the bodies of
those who predeceased their lord or lady would have been stored up in a
mortuary place, awaiting the latter's burial. Woolley's "poisoned
chalices" can easily be explained, for burials of the period are often
furnished with a cup. Other archaeologists are still convinced by Woolley's
theory of voluntary suicide or at least accept that these people were sacrificed.
Either way, the cemetery remains unique in Mesopotamian history, an enduring
mystery.
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