ABSTRACT
Ur continued to be an important city during the Akkadian empire, but it achieved its greatest prominence as the capital of the Ur III dynasty and kingdom, which rose aer the fall of this empire and lasted just over one hundred years, from c. 2112 to 2004. e dynasty began with a man called Ur-Namma, who founded a new empire which at its peak held sway over southern Mesopotamia and the territories lying to the east of the Tigris, and had extensive diplomatic links with the regions beyond. Vast numbers of bureaucratic documents inscribed on clay tablets provide us with detailed knowledge of the administration of the empire. Written in Sumerian, the empire’s ocial language, the Ur III tablets also provide information about Ur-Namma’s ambitious building programme in Ur, particularly in the city’s sacred precinct where a great ziggurat was constructed. Following Ur-Namma’s death, a major expansion and reorganization of the empire was undertaken by the king’s son and successor Shulgi, who greatly extended the empire’s peripheral tax-paying subject territories, and established tighter centralized control over its core territory within the regions of Sumer and Akkad.
