“Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan; and they went as far as Haran, and settled there.” (Genesis 11:31)
Before the discovery of the city of Ur, the biblical account of Abraham was in question due to the lack of evidence for its existence.
The discovery of archaeological remains of Ur in 1854 by John George Taylor proved that Ur was not a fabrication.
Sir Leonard Woolley recovered hundreds of artefacts from the city and its Royal Tombs, including many seals mentioning the name of Ur. From this evidence we can pull together a picture of Abraham’s Ur:
The city was prosperous with a sophisticated civilisation
The residents enjoyed two-storey houses with mains drainage
Use of a successful commercial system based on contracts, money and receipts
Record of advanced mathematics and science, implying widespread literacy
Development and use of sexagesimal (base 60) system still used today in our hours minutes and seconds
God spoke to Abraham, telling him to leave this comfortable, advanced civilisation (including his family) and go!
