patriarch Abraham. There the Bible says in the 31st verse that “Terah took Abram
his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his
son Abram’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go
into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there”. Followers
of Christ over the course of the last 2000 years have long been familiar with this
remarkable report of the pure faith of Abraham in his exodus from his homeland.
Up until a century ago, however, skeptics have failed to follow in the footsteps of
faithful Abraham, for the dwelling place from which Abraham was said to have
come was not yet "historically" and archaeologically verified to have been an actual
place. No one really knew where Ur of the Chaldees was specifically located. And
thus skeptics ridiculed and held in derision the accuracy of the Bible.
Yet, beginning in 1843, with the finding and the excavation of what is now
known as Khorsabad on the east bank of the Tigris River, and the site which
demonstrated the Bible’s accuracy concerning Sargon, the king of Assyria (Isa. 20:
1), a long series of archaeological excavations led to the finding of a number of
other cities, Kings, and civilizations with which the Bible regales us.
Our present study takes us a half a century later, during the time of the first
World War, at a site that is now called Tell Al-Muqayyar or “Mound of Pitch”. It
was then and there that an inscription was discovered, which stated that the
builder of the Ziggurat found at the site was none other than King Ur-Nammu. Of
course, intrigue had naturally arisen. Could Tell Al-Muqayyar really be the site of
the great Sumerian people and the Ur of the Chaldees to which the Bible refers?
Excavations began. Sir Charles Leonard Woolley headed the entire affair. After
years of hard labor and assiduousness under the heat of the Middle-Eastern sun,
the whole site was finally awakened from its years of slumber in 1929. Amid the
cloud of dust which loomed over Tell Al-Muqayyar, lay the remains of numerous
events and names which were accurately recorded in the Bible with reference to
this city in the long ago! Ur of the Chaldees had been found!
Today Ur is located about 140 miles south of Babylon, and lies between the
modern city of Baghdad, Iraq, and the head of the Persian Gulf. Ur was a powerful,
wealthy, lively city during the third millennium B.C. It was the capital of a small
empire. Most of the Ziggurat that was found there is still standing even today.
Archeologists were impelled by the Biblical accounts to investigate the antique
mounds in what is now present-day Iraq. Amidst those mounds, Assyria,
Babylonia, Sumeria, and Ur of the Chaldees, had been unequivocally discovered
and established as being historic places. This demonstrates once more, that true
science and unbiased investigation, will always buttress the Bible’s historical and
scientific integrity, rather than negate it. The Bible was correct. The skeptics who
doubted the authenticity of those names, events, and places were wrong. When
will we learn to let go of our prejudice and incredulity and trust in what God said?
For His Word has been proven to be accurate at every turn in which it was
questioned and then afterward objectively explored.
