Leonard Woolley: The Legend Of The Great Flood

1615 Words7 Pages
The Great Flood A story of some type of worldly flood is present in many cultures, and although each story consists of the same event, they differ in other aspects due to cultural beliefs. Even though most people around the world have heard about this documented event, there is still much controversy about the actual occurrence of it. With much research and evidence, however, the controversy is starting to turn into a fact: a great flood of some sort did indeed happen. It is proven that a worldly deluge actually occurred due to multiple myths that feature the same event, geological evidence, and archaeological evidence. Because there are many myths that all feature the same event of a worldly deluge, it is proven that the flood did indeed…show more content…
Archaeologist Leonard Woolley has Explored Ur, which, according to Genesis, is once the home of Abram. Here, Woolley has found extraordinary evidence. Woolley worked for about twelve years, exposing expansive pieces of the city’s past metropolis and uncovering a lucid picture of the Old Babylonian life that transpired late in the third millennium B.C. This was about the time that the legend of the flood was written into script. In this city that Woolley had found, he sorted through the remnants of the residential areas, finding buildings and courtyards and even a street plan with street names. Woolley decided that he could not trust the chronological order of dynasties, so he must find factual evidence for himself. He also suggested that if he dug deep enough underneath Ur, he would find flood deposits, such as silt that would be scattered across the land when the inhabitants were drowned. With that, he hypothesized that there would be a horizon separating the civilizations that came before the flood and the civilizations that had come after it. After working on his project for five years, Woolley found royal cemeteries which held a king, queen, a human sacrifice, and the revenue of the entire ancient court. Each individual found here had been positioned guide the royalty into the afterlife. By looking at the grave objects and architecture, Woolley knew that it was revolutionary (Ryan and Pitman 53-54). Woolley concluded that this first civilization that he had discovered was the Third Dynasty of Ur and had ruled between 2409 and 2301 B.C. (Peake 83). With this conclusion, Woolley kept digging until he eventually reached the very first settlers of Mesopotamia, at the time of which Ur was only a small marsh village. Here, he encountered silt covered houses and temples. Woolley used this evidence of massive deposit of a wide area of submergence. Because of this,

    More about Leonard Woolley: The Legend Of The Great Flood

      Open Document