RuinscapeLost places of Earth All 216 entries

No. 22

Uruk

On land Near East & Persia
Warka vase (background retouched). The votive Vase of Warka, from Warka (ancient Uruk), Iraq. Jemdet Nasr period, 3000-2900 BCE. The Iraq Museum, Baghdad. IM19606.
Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Where
Iraq
Built by
Sumerians
Era
4000-3100 BCE peak
Known for
The earliest writing, and the city of Gilgamesh.
How it ended
Faded as the Euphrates moved away; empty by about 600 CE.
Modern clay impression of a cylinder seal with monstrous lions and lion-headed eagles, Mesopotamia, Uruk Period (4100 BC–3000 BC).
Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0
Limestone foundation peg of Lugal-kisal-si, the King of Uruk and Ur. From the temple of goddess Nammu (also Namma) at Uruk, Iraq. Early Dynastic period, c. 2380 BCE. Pergamon Museum, Berlin, Germany.
Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0
Tablet of Sin-Gashid of Uruk
King, L. W. (Leonard William), 1869-1919, Public domain
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Background

Uruk, the archeological site known today as Warka, was an ancient city in the Near East or West Asia, located east of the current bed of the Euphrates River, on an ancient, now-dried channel of the river in Muthanna Governorate, Iraq. The site lies 93 kilometers (58 miles) northwest of ancient Ur, 108 kilometers (67 miles) southeast of ancient Nippur, and 24 kilometers (15 miles) northwest of ancient Larsa.

Uruk is the type site for the Uruk period and played a leading role in the early urbanization of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC. At its peak around 3100 BC, the city may have had up to 50,000 residents, with 80,000–90,000 people living in its environs, making it the largest urban area in the world at the time. Gilgamesh, according to the chronology presented in the Sumerian King List (SKL), ruled Uruk in the 27th century BC. After the end of the Early Dynastic period, with the rise of the Akkadian Empire, the city lost its prime importance. It had periods of flourishing during the Isin-Larsa period, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods and throughout the Achaemenid (550–330 BC), Seleucid (312–63 BC) and Parthian (227 BC to AD 224) periods, until it was finally abandoned shortly before or after the Islamic conquest of 633–638. William Kennett Loftus visited the site of Uruk in 1849, identifying it as "Erech", known as "the second city of Nimrod", and led the first excavations from 1850 to 1854.

Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

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