One of the chief treasures unearthed from the Ur royal
tombs by Leonard Wooley in the 1920s was the Royal
Standard. It is a hollow wooden box measuring 8.5 inches
wide by 19.5 inches long inlaid with a mosaic made of
shell, red limestone, and lapis lazuli.
It is dated to about 2400 BC, which is the time of the
flood according to biblical reckoning. Since every
elements of human civilization was destroyed by the
flood (2 Peter 3:6), the Ur royal tombs date to sometime
after the flood and the Babel incident.
One side depicts scenes of war and the other, a victory
feast. It is located in Room 56 of the British Museum.
One of the most amazing objects unearthed from ancient
civilizations, it is a detailed pictorial view of life in
ancient Ur, depicting kings, nobility, servants, dwarfs,
prisoners, robes, cloaks, furniture, meals, harpists,
singers, drinking, firewood, fish, bulls, sheep, goats,
horses, warfare, soldiers, helmets, chariots, asses, spears,
javelins, battle axes, and death.
The war scene’s three rows are described as follows by
the object’s discoverer, Leonard Woolley:
“In the top row the king stands in the center, distin-
guished by his greater height, with behind him three
attendants or members of his house, and a dwarf-
like groom who holds the heads of the two asses
which draw the monarch’s empty chariot while the
driver of it walks behind holding the reins; in front
of the king soldiers are bringing up prisoners, naked
and with their arms bound behind their backs, to
him to decide their fate. In the second row, come the
phalanx of the royal army, heavily-armed infantry
in close order with copper helmets exactly like
those found by us in the king’s grave, and long
cloaks of some stiff material which I take to be felt,
just such cloaks as are worn by the shepherds of
Turkey today, holding axes in their hands; in front
of them are the light-armed infantry without cloaks,
wielding axes or short spears, already engaged with
an enemy whose naked warriors are either fleeing or
being struck down. In the lowest row we have the
chariotry of Sumer, each car drawn by two asses
and carrying two men, of whom one is the driver
and the other a warrior who flings light javelins, of
which four are kept in a quiver tied in the front of the
car” (Woolley, Ur of the Chaldees, pp. 101, 102).
The latest research has found that the asses of the Ur
Standard were probably kungas, a hybrid of a female
donkey and a wild Syrian ass. The identification was made
by an analysis of the DNA from ancient animal bones
(dated to 2000 BC or older) unearthed in northern Syria.
The kungas were strong and faster than a donkey, but
since they were sterile and wild asses were difficult to
capture and impossible to tame, the kungas were also very
expensive.
We don’t know exactly how large Ur’s military was, but
we know that Sargon of Babylon, who lived in about the
same time period, had a standing army of 5,400
men (Foster and Foster, Civilizations of Ancient
Iraq, p. 52).
The feast scene on the other side of the Royal Standard
of Ur depicts the king and his courtiers banqueting. In
the top row, the banqueters are seated on chairs while
servants attend them and a male harpist and female
singer provide musical entertainment.
In the two lower rows “attendants are shown bringing
in spoils captured from the enemy and food supplies for
the banquet–one is driving a goat, another carries two
fish, another is bent under the weight of a corded bale
of wood, and so on, several of the figures being
repeated” (Ur of the Chaldees, p. 101).
