The death pit of Mesanepada

Mesanepada was the king of Ur in about 2675 BCE who founded the 1st Dynasty of Ur and made Ur the capital of Sumer. His grave site was the famous death pit PG1237 where over 73 bodies are buried along with their king.

4 guards and the rest ladies of the court, plus the cart and oxen that probably took him too his resting place


Interactive diagram of the death pit

Some of the art retrieved from this unlooted tomb

Wow I dont know who that is but it is damn cool... whats with the cloven-hoof creature with feather wings hiding behind the tree...? pretty demonic to me

Also if you upload the picture to your media page then you can copy the link under it and it will embed on your post!

Hi Ridya

Well lets test that, unfortunately I haven't been able to figure out how to do that yet.

Nope I'm getting the external image image







[edit on 9/10/09 by Hanslune]

Well I had to do it for my thread and it worked!

At very top of any page here it will say New! Video & Media
Go there, log in, i think on right it says my account and it drop down to my pictures, or something like this. There you can upload from your saved and when you click to view underneath is 3 lines. Copy the one that says 'embed'

maybe it just wont work for you but it works for me!
Cheers

Thanks for the eye candy.
It is amazing that 5,000 years a go lions and big cats roamed free over most of the planet.
I have always been fascinated by these type burials.
They seem to be a part of every line of human development.
The Natchez Indians that occupied the area up the Mississippi River from new Orleans USA
had a similar system around 1,200 AD. It was a cast system where the chief married one of the population.
His wife and entourage that was responsible for the chiefs well being in life also accompanied him in death.

What's interesting is that there's not much information floating on the Internet about this burial or this king (not on a quick check). The really good stuff appears to be in German.

I would guess that he was not known as a man of peace and would further suppose that he probably had quite the ego. Seventy four attendants... wow! That's quite a slaughterhouse!

Increasingly I find I must brush up my German and dive into information that is not being made available in English. There was a time when teams would work with at least one German, one French, one Spaniard, one Italian, and one English speaker ... you get the idea ... to produce papers and get the information out as quickly as possible and establish one's territory, so to speak, on the international stage.

I do find it refreshing to read in the German press, but the press in English have reduced the language to lies and propaganda at every level. And at each level there is a different lie being spun.

As to this site and the artistry of the discoveries, I stand amazed and deeply impressed by the great skill of these human beings of such earlier ages. There is an authenticity to this 'burial work' that one does not find in the normal burial customs of the English-speaking countries today. Far from a slaughterhouse, this dying with the King and travelling into the beyond with him was considered a great wonder and a great honour.

Lets try embeding those pictures again. Thanks for the tip Ridhya.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/e52ff214894e.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/e626ae890670.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/bf5807d66499.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/ba601298272a.jpg[/atsimg]

Howdy Pellevoison

At the time these sites were uncovered the teams were usually nationally based. With very little 'international' team membership. Today teams still tend to come from one language group but with specialists from all over the world using English as the language of science.

Not quite sure about your other comments and how they relate to Archaeology but articles in German and other languages are translated very faithfully into English and back again. Although certain words and concepts loose a bit of their precise when transferred between languages.

German term like opferstatten or reimchengebaude are sometimes difficult to translate in one word.







[edit on 10/10/09 by Hanslune]