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Rh certainly not in religious importance, to the cities of Nippur, Eridu and Erech, Ur, from a very early period, played a most important part politically and commercially. Lying at the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris, at the head of the Persian Gulf, it enjoyed very extensive water-communications with rich and important regions. Lying close to the Syrian desert, at a natural point of communication with Arabia, it was the centre of caravan communication with interior, southern and western Arabia. In the Sumerian period, antedating the time of Sargon, about or before 3000, we find Ur exercising hegemony in Babylonia under a king whose name is read Lugal-Kigub-Nidudu. Comparatively early, however, it became a centre of Semitic influence and power, and immediately after the time of the Sargonids it comes to thefront, under King Ur-Gur, or Ur-Engur, the great builder of ziggurats (stage-towers) in the ancient Babylonian cities, as mistress of both northern and southern Babylonia, and even seems to have exacted tribute from countries as far remote as southern Syria. With relatively brief intervals, during which Erech and Isin come to the fore, Ur held the hegemony in Babylonia until or shortly before the Elamite invasion, when Larsa became the seat of authority. After the period of the Elamite dominion and the establishment of the empire of Babylon, under Khammurabi, about or shortly after 2000, Ur lost its political independence and, to a considerable extent, its political importance. The gradual filling up of the Persian Gulf had probably also begun to interfere with its trade supremacy. It continued, however, to be a place of religious and literary importance until the close of the Babylonian period. The ruins of the ancient site were partly excavated by Loftus and Taylor in 1854. They are egg-shaped, with the sharper end towards the north-west, somewhat elevated above the surrounding country, which is liable to be inundated by the Euphrates, and encircled by a wall 2946 yards in circumference, with a length of 1056 and a greatest breadth of 825 yds. The principal ruin is the temple of E—Nannar, in the north-western part of the mounds. This was surrounded by a low outer wall, within which rose a platform, about 20 ft. in height, on which stood a two-storeyed ziggurat, or stage-tower, a right-angled parallelogram in shape, the long sides towards the north-east and south-west. The lower stage measured 198 ft. in length by 133 ft. in breadth, and is still standing to the height of 27 ft. The second storey was 14 ft. in height and measured 119 by 75 ft. The ascent to the first storey was by a stairway 8 ft. broad, on the north-east side. Access to the summit of the second storey was had on the same side, either by an inclined plane or a broad stairway—it is not clear which—extending, apparently, the whole length of that stage. Ruins on the summit show that there was a chamber on top, apparently of a very ornamental character, like that at Eridu. The bricks of the lower stage are laid in bitumen, and bear the inscription of Ur-Gur. The bricks of the upper stage are laid in mortar, and clay cylinders found in the four corners of this stage bore an inscription of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon (639 ), closing with a prayer for his son Belshar-uzur (Bel-sarra-Uzur), the Belshazzar of the book of Daniel. Between these two extremes were found evidences of restoration by Ishme-Dagan of Isin and Girnil-Sin of Ur, somewhere towards the middle of the 3rd millennium, and of Kuri-galzu, a Cossaean (Kassite) king of Babylon, of the 14th century Nebuchadrezzar also claims to have rebuilt this temple. Taylor further excavated an interesting Babylonian building, not far from the temple, and part of an ancient Babylonian necropolis. All about the city he found abundant remains of burials of later periods. Apparently, in the later times, owing to its sanctity, Ur became a favourite place of sepulture, so that after it had ceased to be inhabited it still continued to be used as a necropolis. The great quantity of pitch used in the construction of these ruins, which has given them the name by which they are to-day known among the Arabs, is evidence of a peculiarly close relation with some pitch-producing neighbourhood, presumably Hit, which lay at the head of the Sa’ade canal on which Ur was located. Large piles of slab and scoria, in the neighbourhood of Ur, show, apparently, that the pitch was also used for manufacturing purposes, and that Ur was a manufacturing as well as a commercial city. Since Taylor's time Mughair has been visited by numerous travellers, almost all of whom have found ancient Babylonian remains, inscribed stones and the like, lying upon the surface. The site is rich in remains, and is relatively easy to explore.

See J. E. Taylor, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1855), vol. xv.; W. K. Loftus, Chaldaea and Susiana (1857); John P. Peters, Nippur (1897); H. V. Hilprecht, Excavations in Assyria and Babylonia (1904).

URAL-ALTAIC, the general term for a group of languages (also called Turanian, Finno-Tatar, &c.) constituting a primary linguistic family of the eastern hemisphere. Its subgroups are Turkish, Finno-Ugrian, Mongol and Manchu. Philologists have differentiated various forms of the languages into numerous subdivisions; and considerable obscurity rests on the relationship which such languages as Japanese or ancient Accadian and Etruscan bear to the subgroups already named, which are dealt with in other articles.

In its morphology Ural-Altaic belongs to the agglutinating order of speech, differing from other languages of this order chiefly in the exclusive use of suffixes attached to the unmodified root, and partly blended with it by the principle of progressive vowel harmony, in virtue of which the vowels of all the suffixes are assimilated to that of the root. Thus the typical formula is R+++, &c., where R is the root, always placed first, and ,, . . . the successive post fixed relational elements, whose vowels conform by certain subtle laws of euphony to that of the root, which never changes. These suffixes differ also from the case and verbal endings of true inflecting languages (Aryan, Semitic) in their slighter fusion with the root, with which they are rather mechanically united (agglutinated) than chemically fused into a term in which root and relational element are no longer separable. Hence it is that the roots, which in Aryan are generally obscured, blurred, often even changed past the possibility of identification, in Ural-Altaic are always in evidence, unaffected by the addition of any number of formative particles, and controlling the whole formation of the word. For instance, the infinitive element mak of the Osmanli yaz-mak=to write becomes mek in sev-mek=to love (vowel harmony), and shifts its place in sev-il-mek=to be loved (imperfect fusion with the root), while the root itself remains unchanged as to form and position in sev-ish-il-mek=to be impelled to love, or in any other possible combination with suffixed elements. The facility with which particles are in this way tacked on produces an exuberance, especially of verbal forms, which in Osmanli, Finnish, Magyar, Tungus and Mordvinian may be said to run riot. This is particularly the case when the numerous modal forms become further complicated by incorporating the direct pronominal object, as in the Magyar varjak=they await him, and the Mordvinian palasa=I embrace him. Thus arise endless verbal combinations, reckoned in Turki at nearly 30,000, and past counting in the Ugrian group.

Another marked peculiarity of the Ural-Altaic, at least as compared with the inflecting orders of speech, is weak subjectivity, the subject or agent being slightly, the object of the action strongly accentuated, so that “it was done by him” becomes “it was done with him, through him, or in his place” (apud eum). From this feature, which seems to be characteristic of all the branches, there follow some important consequences, such as a great preponderance of locative forms in the declension,—the nominative, and often even the possessive, being expressed by no special suffix. Hence also the object normally precedes the subject, while the idea of possession (to have) is almost everywhere replaced by that of being (to be), so that, even in the highly developed Osmanli, “I have no money” becomes “money-to-me not-is” (Akchehim yokdür). In fact the verb is not clearly differentiated from the noun, so that the conjugation is mainly participial, being effected by agglutinating pronominal, modal, temporal, negative, passive, causative, reciprocal, 