Ur

Ur was a Sumerian city-state in southern Mesopotamia, its remains preserved at the mound of Tell el-Muqayyar in Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate, about 16 kilometers southwest of the city of Nasiriyah on the south bank of the Euphrates. Occupation at the site dates back to the Ubaid period, around 3800 BC, and Ur is attested as a walled city-state from the twenty-sixth century BC. The city originally stood on the coast near the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf, but millennia of silt deposition and river-course shifts have pushed the shoreline far to the southeast, leaving the ruins well inland today. The central tell rises about 20 meters above the surrounding plain and measures roughly 1,200 by 800 meters, split into northern and southern sections by the channel of an ancient canal that once carried river water through the city.