The search for the home of all the Hebrew patriarchs, Abraham, is said to start in a city mentioned in the Bible as Ur and moved northward towards the city of Haran.

    "And 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..... [towards the city of Haran]"
                    Genesis 11:31

    For the past 4000 years, the site of this city was unknown to anyone. That is until early this century when the first glimpses of this ancient city were discovered in 1854 by the British consul in Basra, Mr. J.E. Taylor. He was directed by the British Foreign Office to search the Middle East for ancient artifacts. He heard of the stories of a large mound of mud-brick called Tell al Muqayyar, that the nomads of the area called the "Mound of Pitch"  for as long as they could remember. They called it the Mound of Pitch since they would commonly come and pitch their tents around the base of the mound to help give shelter from sandstorms.  The hoot of countless owls could also be heard coming from the crevices around the mound's crown.
    He approached the mound and noticed right away that it was not simply a natural effect, rather it had been made with a purpose....manmade.  He quickly rode around the base, searching for a door or hollow wall to start his digging but it seemed to be solid stone. He then turned his eyes up to the top and decided to start from there, down. He then did a most unfortunate thing. He began tearing down the uppper levels of this mound, tossing walls and bricks down into masses of rubble.....thoroughly destroying many of the walls which  had withstood the test of 4000 years.
    He did find, however, several clay cylinders with ancient writing covering the outsides. He packaged these up carefully and sent them to the British Museum in London. He ended his expedition and the cylinders sat untouched for around 60 years.
    Then in 1923, another party went to the ruins thanks to the prompting of a archaeologist that was travelling with a British Military unit as it passed through the area to Bagdad. He saw the mounds and requested a scientific team be sent. The British Museum  remembered the clay cylinders and took a closer look at them. In them, they found that an archaeologist of the past had also rummaged the area....2500 years ago. He was Nabonidus, King of Babylon in the 6th Century BC. On the cylinders, he wrote that, "the Ziggurat was now old.". The Ziggurat was what they called this mound which the British had found. Nabonidus then tried to restore it with mortar and brick to its former glory. In his rebuilding, he discovered the name of the original builder, one "King Ur-Nammu". Combined with other recently discovered records in the Middle East which mention a city of "Ur", it was determined that this mound, Tell al Muqayyar, was part of that city.
    What they found in the mound and in the surrounding area was nothing that was traditionally held as being availabile at the time of the Patriarch Abraham. Five great temples, with walls thick enough to be fortresses, formed a semi-circle around the Ziggurat. The largest of these was that to the Moon-god, Nannar, which measured 100 yards X 60 yards.  In these temples, altars and kiitchen ovens were found in almost perfect shape. Countless tablets recorded tax and tithe payments made to the State by the citizens detailing a mix of oils, wool, cattle, fruits, and grains.
    The team also found textile mill factories which mass produced spinned goods of all kinds. Clay records from those factories were so detailed as to name the names of the girls who worked there, as well as the amount of wool they were given and the amount of goods produced. They also discovered their court buildings and with them, records of sentences passed on criminals and the crimes they commited.
    However, what they found sprawling around the large buildings was perhaps most surprising of all. They found spacious tree-lined avenues with large fountains. Large two storied villas were common with up to fourteen rooms in each. The walls were of sturdy baked brick and whitewashed to a gleamming shine. Tablets were also found containing mathmatics tables from simple addition to formulae for figuring square and cube roots. No other city of this time could compare with the glory and sophistication of Ur. 
    Was this apparant busseling metropolis  the home of a simple shepard? A Nomad? The Bible mentions in the book of Genesis, when Abraham sends a servant to find a wife for his son Isaac, that the city of Nahor was called, "his country", "his father's House", and "the land of my kindred".  Nahor lay in the Northern Mesopotamia plain at the crest of the Fertile Crescent...conspiculously close to Haran ......not the land of Ur in the Southeastern arm of the Fertile Crescent. So it would seem that either Abraham was not from Ur or perhaps he simply disowned city-life altogether. Perhaps he was raised in the metropolis and learned to detest the city sprawl like people of today do and so decided to move out and live on the land. I think perhaps that he was not from Ur but from Nahor. Being a nomad, he may have simply been moving from the eastern arm of the crescent to the western arm when the Bible takes up his story.....hence,  he moved out of Ur of the Chadees towards Haran....towards "home".
    It is also intresting to note on a sidebar that the people named in the story of Abraham have been identified by contemporary independant sources, such as Assyrian clay tablets,  as place names of cities.
Haran .....Peleg ....Serug .... Nahor.....Terah....
    "These are the generations of Shem [the son of Noah].....Peleg lived 30 years and begat Reu: And Reu lived 32 years and begat Serug: And Serug lived 30 years and begat Nahor: And Nahor lived 29 years and begat Terah: And Terah lived 70 years and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran."     (Genesis 11)
    Are these the people who founded these early cities? Did they choose the city life while Abram (Abraham) chose the life of the Nomad? Only more evidence will give testimony to the fact.

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