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Ur of the Chaldeans
City · Ur → Tell el-Muqayyar, Iraq
Abraham’s first home. From here he was called to go to a land he did not yet know.
People
- Terah
- Abraham
- Sarah
- Nahor
- Lot
At a glance
- Realm
- Sumer / Chaldea (southern Mesopotamia)
- Role
- Great Sumerian city, Abraham’s first home
- Peoples
- Sumerians, later Chaldeans
- First mention
- Genesis 11 (Ur of the Chaldeans)
The story
Ur of the Chaldeans was one of the oldest and greatest cities of Sumer, on the lower Euphrates, rich with temples to the moon. The old site of Tell el-Muqayyar in southern Iraq is the usual identification, though a few would place Abraham’s Ur in the north near Haran.
Here Terah’s family lived, and here his son Haran died before his father. From Ur the LORD called Abram to leave his country and his kindred for a land he had never seen, and long after, Nehemiah remembered it as the beginning of everything, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans.
Through the eras
- The Patriarchs · standing. The city Abraham was called out of. Its empire had just fallen, and the great ziggurat stood over a fading city.
- Conquest & Judges · standing. An old city already past its greatness.