 | Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort | NCF | The excavation area abbreviation NCF refers to the Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort excavated in seasons 10 and 11. This building was located at the west corner of the temenos where it meets the ziggurat terrace and turns to the south. Publication UE9 refers to this specific structure as the West Corner Fort, built by Nebuchadnezzar at the corner of his temenos wall. An earlier fortification had been uncovered in season 3, which Woolley called the Bastion of Warad Sin. This structure sits at the north corner of the ziggurat terrace, approximately mid-way along the northwest temenos wall and may have functioned as a kind of sally port gate. It was sometimes called the north corner fort in early seasons but artifacts were not catalogued with this abbreviation in those seasons. Any artifacts from the Warad Sin building were likely catalogued instead with the abbreviation PDW. Nebuchadnezzar's Corner Fort may also have been defensive, but it contained in its later phase a large mixing basin filled with bitumen. In the time of Nabonidus it may well have been in use in repairing the ziggurat.
Woolley dug beneath the Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort, still using the abbreviation NCF, and uncovered what he believed was a temple or shrine. | (none) |
| NNCF | This area lies beyond (north/northwest of) Nebuchadnezzar's corner fort (NCF) at the west corner of the temenos wall. In seasons 10 and 11 the area was somewhat systematically excavated, initially creating a shallow trench from the northwest terrace and temenos wall almost to the city wall some 100 meters away. According to the 1932 reports, it was "enlarged into a regular excavation covering the area of a number of houses," and this expansion was continued in season 11. Excavations were taken through Persian (mostly surface) level down only a small depth to relatively well preserved house remains of the late Kassite and Neo-Babylonian periods. Many of the houses had graves under their floors. Woolley did not map or record the houses or graves, saying in his Antiquaries Journal report for 1932 (p.390): "They produced no objects of importance, but the graves did yield a certain number of glazed vases, beads and seals."
Publication does not do justice to the extent of this excavation area. Only XNCF, a smaller excavation of domestic space along the NW temenos is published in UE8 and that in only a few paragraphs. | (none) |
 | Temenos Wall | TW | The excavation area abbreviation TW stands for Temenos Wall, a wall that surrounded the ziggurat terrace and its extended sacred space in the northern central portion of the city of Ur through much of its history. The wall may have begun in the Early Dynastic period, as Woolley found some indication of what he believed to be its earliest foundation. There was clearly an Ur III period version that ran south of the giparu and then further southeast to encompass the ehursag. This was the general line of the wall through the Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian and into the Kassite period, though the Kassites made some changes in the northern portion. Finally, the Neo-Babylonians changed the wall greatly, expanding the area encompassed to the north and south and adding several gateways. The foundations of this later, quite massive, wall often destroyed earlier remains.
Woolley explored parts of the temenos wall in many seasons and frequently used the TW abbreviation for the wall in any of its building periods. Other excavation area abbreviations include parts of the temenos, particularly NCF, PDW and BC. The temenos wall built by Urnamma was 6 meters thick and built of mud brick with a baked brick facing. Most of the baked brick had been removed, probably for later building. The Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus temenos wall had chambers within it and sported six gates into the temenos area. This area was known as e-gish-nu-gal (Woolley read this e-gish-shir-gal). At least one later interpretation conflates TW with the phrase Town Wall, but the wall surrounding Ur was always referred to as the city wall, (CLW). | (none) |