Below, an aerial via of Ur of the Chaldees (Arabic Tell al Muqayyar, in southern Iraq, according to some scholars). Note how barren and arid the landscape is without the life-giving waters of the Euphrates which has moved away over the centuires denying its waters to the once irrigated fields about the city. (for the photo cf. p. 59. Barthel Hrouda. Editor. Der Alte Orient, Geschichte und Kultur des alten Vorderasien. C. Bertelsmann. Verlag GmbH/54321. Munchen. 1991. ISBN 3572=00867-0)

Below, another view of Ur of the Chaldees, showing the great plain (called edin in Sumerian) in the distance (for photo, cf. p. 62.

Barthel Hrouda. Editor. Der Alte Orient, Geschichte und Kultur des alten Vorderasien. C. Bertelsmann. Verlag GmbH/54321. Munchen. 1991. ISBN 3572=00867-0)

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Ur of the Chaldees (Map and Aerial Views of Archaeological Excavations)

Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld y de la Torre, M.A. Ed.

04 April 2005

              

Below, a map of Ur of the Chaldees, modern Tell al-Muqayyar, understood by some scholars to have been the home of Terah and his son Abraham (Ge 11:31). Note the "temple of the god Enki" at number 10 on the below drawing. I understand that several motifs found in Genesis, the creation of a naked man to tend a god's garden, and the confusion of one language into a babel of many languages, as well as the sending of  Flood, are all Hebrew transformations of feats attributed in large part by the Mesopotamians to their god Enki who's main shrine or temple  was at nearby Eridu. For the Hebrews the world began at Eden in a garden of a God; for the Sumerians, the world began at the city of Eridu, created by Enki, who, in conflicting myths, later made a naked man to roam edin (Sumerian: plain or steppe) with wild animals for companions and who later had him tend and till his fruit tree garden which Enki had planted next to his Eridu shrine. Please click here for my article identifying eden with Eridu in edin the floodplain of Sumer (For the below map cf. p. 16. "Plan of the city of Ur." Werner Keller. The Bible As History, Archaeologists Show the Truth of the Old Testament. Oxford, England. A Lion Book. Lion Publishing House. 1991. ISBN 073240562)