Burial Mounds

   During the 1920s the English archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley excavated the ground in front of the ziggurat of Ur, and there discovered what are now known as the Royal Tombs of Ur.  Woolley found not only the king and the queen buried in these tombs, but their entire courts, the oxcarts, the drivers of the oxcarts, the nobility of the court, the dancing girls, and the musicians.  Based on the conditions of the skeletons, it has been surmised that the court had gone into the tombs alive; it is unknown if the king had been ritually slain or if he died naturally.  The king was buried with his court and then the grave was filled in, and on top of that the queen (whose name, Puabi, is given on a lapis lazuli seal) was buried with her court.  The woman was the cosmic order and also the awakener to future life, and when the man died the woman went down into the underworld to bring him to life.  This is the motif of sati.   G82