Excavated from the royal tombs of Ur by British archaeologist Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, the Standard of Ur is a box, decorated with images of how an ancient city state was organised. The scenes provide opportunities to explore different aspects of life in an ancient Mesopotamian city, such as banqueting, war, dress and social structure as well as the earliest known image of a wheel in human history.
Ur, southern Iraq
2600 – 2400 BC
wooden box inlaid with mosaic in shell, red limestone and lapis set in bitumen
height: 21.5 cm
length: 49.5 cm
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