Ur (Hastings' Dictionary)

Father of one of David's heroes, 1 Ch II" (B :^eOp, A Qpd, Luc. OCp). See AlIASIiAJ. UR OF THE CHALDEES (on^j tik ; i) xdpa. [tw.-] XaXSalun ; Ur Chaldmorum). — The name of this city or district occurs four times in the OT, namely, Gn ll»-«' 15', and Neh 9' ; and as there is no indi- cation as to its position, except that it was ' of the Chalda^ans,' much uncertainty exists a.s to it.

-' identilication, which is increased by the fact that the LXX do not transcribe the name Ur, but sub- stitute for it X'^P"-' ' country.' Apparently on account of its comparative nearness to Canaan, whither Terah and his family were bound (Gn II"), Tbg rcKdlng -i;^K Instead of I5<N In adopted liy Ewold. KlcMtermaiin, Prince, Driver, Uarti 1' probtbly '\,ttal. 836 UR OF THE CHALDEES UR OF THE CHALDEES and because of the passage in Ac V- , where the proto-martyr, St.

Stephen, places it m Mesopo- tamia, many have 8upi>osed it to be identical with Urfa or Orfa, which the Greeks named Odessa. The origin of tliis city is attributed by Isidore to Nembroth or Nimrod, which opinion is confarnied by Ephraem. who stales that Nimrod ruled at Arach and Edessa (Comm. in Genesim).

I'rom Isidore's reference to Moi-i-ou 'Oppa, which Vaux ex- plains as ' evidently the Orrlia of Mannus, wlio was one of the kings of Edessa,' the ancient name of the place has been described as Orrha, the like- ness of which to Ur is evident. As however, this name would seem not to be provab e before B.C. 150 it is doubtful whether it can be (juoted m support of the identification of Edessa with so old a site as Ur of the Chaldees.

Indeed, according to Appian, the town itself was comparatively modern, having been buUt by Seleucus. lesti- niony to the firm belief of the Mohammedans that Urfa is the ancient Ur of the Chaldees is to be found in the fact that the chief mosque there bears the name of the 'Mosque of Abraham, whilst the pond in which the sacred hsh are kept is called ' the lake of Abraham the Beloved.

Another tradition, which is at the same time also the received opinion of scholars at the present time, is that Ur of the Chaldees is the modern Mugheir, or, more correctly, Mukayyar, 'the pitchy, so called from the bitumen used in the construction of the principal building on the site The original name of this place was Uru, and as it lies in b. baby- lonia, anciently called (though not by the native inhabitants) Clialda-a, such an identihcation would leave but little to be desired.

It is contained in a tradition quoted by Eusebius from Eupolemus, who lived about B.C. 150, to the eilect that, tenth in generation and thirteenth in descent, there Uvea in the city of Babylonia called Camarine (Ko/ioplvT,), which is called by some the city Urie (Oi'.p'l). a man named Abraham, of noble race, and .superior to aU others in wisdom. As Eupolemus occupied himself esi.

ecially with Jewish history, there is hardly any doubt that what he says was the common opinion of the Jews at the time. That the place be refers to is that now represented by Mugheir is proved by the fact that its later name, Camanne (perhaps Aramaic), is evidently connected with the Arabic name for the moon, kamar, and that the city anciently occupying the site is now known to have been the great centre of Babylonian moon- worship.

The statement that it was in his time called by some Urie is signilicant, as it suggests that the ancient name was going out of use. The position of this city is close to the point where the Shatt al-Hai enters the Euphrates, about 125 miles N.W. of the Persian Gulf.

Babylonian lists of wooden objects refer to a class of ship called Urite, suggesting that it was anciently not bo far from the sea, its present inland position being to all appearance caused by the alluvial deposits at the head of the Gulf.

The ruins cover an oval space, 1000 yards long by 800 wide, and consist of a number of low mounds within an enclosure, i lie principal ruin is near the northern end, and is evidently the remains of a tower in stages, such as many of the cities of Babylonia and Assyria anciently possessed, and similar to the Birs-Nimroud (.reneraliy regarded as the tower of Babel) and the temple of Befus at Babylon (which Nebuchadnezzar calls ' the tower of Babylon ').

From the bricks of this building we obtain indications of its history, among the kings who restored it being Ur-Engur, Dungi his son (about B.C. 2700), Kudur-mabug and his son Arad-Sin (or Eri-Aku = AllIOCH), and Nftr- Addi ; whilst other names found in connexion with tliis or other ruins on the site are, En-anna-duma, BOi-Sin, Ism6-Dagau and his son Gungunu, Kim- Sin (probably the same as Arad-Sin or En-Aku), Sin-idiimam of Larsa, and Kuri-galzu son of Bur- naburias.

The principal ruin, which was, as has been already said, the great temple-tower of the place, was apparently ' tlie supreme great temple (« qala maha), called, to all appearance, E-su-gana- dudu. Natonidus, in the inscription on the four beautiful cylinders found at the four corners of thisedihce, tells us that he restored it, and in doing so seemingly came across the records of Ur-Engur, and Dungi his son, whom he apparently regards as its founders.

From this inscription we gather that the tower bore also the names of fi-lugal-gaga- sisa and fi-gis-sir-gala. South of the teinple-tow;er of Nannara was Ihe^temple of the goddess Nm- gala, and south-east E-gipara, ' the temple of the fadyof the gods.' Like other renowned cities m Babylonia, it was one of the sacred places to whicli the dead were taken for burial, and is comidetely surrounded by graves.

In the time of Ur-Engur and his successors, it was the capital of the district, and an exceedingly important place, many of the smaller States around being subject to it. llie possession of important shrines naturally added to its influence, and Peters states that from the amount of slag found there it must have been also one of the principal manufacturing centres of the district in which it lies.

Many scholars are of opinion that proof of the identity of Ur of the Chaldees with tliis site lies in the fact that Haran, to which city Terah and his family nu- CTated, was also a centre of moon-god worship, whilst the sacred mountain of the Jews, Sinai, being so named after Sin, the moon-god, is a further conHrmation. This, however, is a pomt which may well be left undecided, as it is by no means certain that Terah and his family were means ceiuuiu "'t'^" i^-"-.

- ; —,, ■„„ ti,„f worshippers of the moon ; and, even supposmg that such was the case, Haran may have been selected for other reasons than that the moon-god was wor- shipped there, shrines to that deity being not uncommon in the ancient East. Notwithstanding the inherent probability of the identity of the ancient Babylonian Urn (Mugheir) with the biblical Ur of the Chaldees, the na.neu not so near as might be wished.

The Heb form has a long vowel, represented by ik, at the begin- nin" and no vowel at all after the consonant (i). In the'Tiab. Uru, however, though there is no indica- tion that the end. vowel was long, there is but lit le doubt that it was originally so, as the non-Semitic (Akkadian) form Urbiui, or, better Unu-a, shows Frd. Delitzscli {Pamdies, p.

226) expresses the opinion that the old form of the name m Akkadian was Urum (Uruma) ; but that tins is not ouiM correct, is proved by the 4 -column syllaWry 82-8-16 !,• where the non-Scmitic pronunciation is given as Uri, the terminal -ma or -wa found in the archaic brick-inscriptions from the site, being as is usual in the Assyr.-'Bab.

Byl abaries) omitted There would, then, seem to be but little doubt tha these last two syllables, -ima or -iioa are in p^t preserved in the form Urie [Oipljl, u«ed by E. o le- Lus as quoted by Kusebius It is true that it im- dies that the i of iwa only was heard, but the lleb form, which is undou-btedly older, does not '°Tto circumstance leads to the probability that the Ur-Kasdim of the OT may, ™ /«^'ty • .f ["^ for more than the name of a mere city -.

and if tins he the case, it is not impossible that by tlH^se««^^J the whole land of Akkad was intended-the Uri or Ura of the non-Semitic (Akkadian) inscriptions The patriarch and his fami y in ^^'^^.'^ '"'^f'^°rA haveLd the whole extent of the province of Akkad • Published by T. O. Pinche. n S. A. Smith'.

HUcdlaneou, Attyrian TexU, 1887 (pL 2aX [TR OF THE CHALDEES URIAH 837 (northern Babylonia) in which to roam and find pasturage for their flocks and herds, instead of being confined to the neighbourhood of the city of Uru(.Mugheir).

Ur-Kasdim, 'Urof theChalda'ans' (the ' land of the Chaldoeans' of the LXX), is prob- ably so called in order to distinguish it from some other Ur where the Chaldseans were not ; and, in this case, either the province of Ura (Akkad) or the city of Uriwa would suit best, to the exclusion of UrVa and the castle of Ur between Uatra and Nisibis. From exceedingly early times the kings of Baby- lonia called themselves kings of Kengi-Ura, i.e.

Sunier and Akkad, and from this equivalence it is clear that Uri or Ura is the same as the district (not the city) called Akkad, and so named appar- ently from one of the chief cities, known as Agad6, Semiticized into Akad or Akkad. On this account the Semitic population called the whole tract Akkadu, ' the Akkadian (land),' to the exclusion of Uru, which name was already used, to all appearance, as the Semitic form of Uriwa.

That they did not call this Akkadian district Uru may be regarded as an argument against its possible identilication with Ur of the Chaldees, though it would seem, on the other hand, to be to a certain extent justified by the translation of the LXX, whose rendering, ' country of the Chaldaeans,' not- withstanding that it does not seem to represent any Semitic or non, Semitic Babylonian expres- sion,* may nevertheless be due to some tradition which they possessed.

In connexion with this it is worthy of note that Ur, In the Heb. text, is not called the ' city,' but the ' land ' of the nativity of IJaran, who died there ' in the presence of his father Terah.' The tradition that Urof the Chaldees is repre- sented by the ruins known as Warka mav be dis- mis.sed, as this is now known to be the ferech of Gn 10'", called by the Babylonians Untk.i Its identification with the castle of Ur (Ammianus Marcellinus, XXV. viii.

7) in the Mesopotamian desert between Hatra and Nisibis, is also worth- less, this place having been founded by the Persians. Concerning the name itself, it is needful to state that Knldu is to all appearance a late word, not provable in the cuneiform inscriptions before the 9th cent. B.C., when Adad-nirari III. uses it, and seems to mean, by the expression mAt Knldi, the whole of Babylonia. The Heb. Kasdim preserves the original s', changed, in the native form, into I before the dental.

; LiTERATOM.— liOttua, Trajxlt, 1857 ; Dclitzsch, Paradie; p. 22«; Dillmann, (irrutu, 109 ft. ; O. Rawlinson, Monarchies, vol. I. ; Schnuler, CUT i. p. 114 ef. ; Petere, A'ippur, vol. ii. ; Vaux In Smith's Diet, of Gr. and Ram, Geofjrap/iif ; also the articles AcCAD, Babki., Cualdju, and Sui.mar, in this Dictionary. T. G. Pinches.

• Uru, the non-Semltlo (dialectic) word tor ' city,' the original form ot which was ffuru, also kur, 'country,* and fjur, 'moun- tain,' furnish tnntenol tor comparison, hut the combination ot thcAe with KuMliin, 'Chalda-'OiiB,' a Semilio word, is in the hi;,'hest dt'urt-e imlilvcly. t Sir Ilcnry KnwIinHon {JRAS xii. 141, note) refers to a tradi- tion that Aijraham was bom not at l^r, but at Ercch.

This would \mnK the <liatrict of Ur somewhat far south, but Erech may have been included within its boundaries. The statement prolKibly has, however, little or no \ulue. ; According to I'rot. Sayce, the Kasdim and the Chaldasi each ha*l a different oriLnn, tite former being those West Semitic trib4;s who invaded Babylonia towards the end ot the Srd millennium D.c, and esUiiilished there that dynoaty ot kings of wbii'h llanunurubi (Amraphel) is the most renowned. It was at this iime that Kn.

sdiin and ilabylonian became synonymous, like ChaldiDan and Babylonian in later days. Ur (.Multayyar), being situated on the western hank of the Euphrates, would naturally Imj in the district which, as j)ointed out by Uommel, was outside the limits ot Babylonia proper, and therefore within the d^'nain of those early conqueron. (On these matters, and the question of An'haxad, see Sayce, Expot. 7't>n<«, Not. 1901, pp. e4-e«, and Hommel, ib., March 1902, p. S8S). URBANDS {Ovp^avdi. AV Urbane).

— The name (nuisiuline) of a Christian greeted by St. Paul in Jlo IG''', described as ' our helper in Christ.' The name is common among slaves, and is found in inscriptions of the Imperial household (CJL vi. 4i;37). He is commemorated Oct. 31 with Stachys and Araplias (which see). For later legends see Acta Sanctorum, Oct., vol. xiii. p. G87. A. C. Headlam.