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