ur

4 definitions found

ur - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  Ur \Ur\, Ure \Ure\, n. (Zool.)
     The urus.
     [1913 Webster]

  Urus \U"rus\, n. [L.; of Teutonic origin. See Aurochs.]
     (Zool.)
     A very large, powerful, and savage extinct bovine animal
     (Bos urus or Bos primigenius) anciently abundant in
     Europe. It appears to have still existed in the time of
     Julius Caesar. It had very large horns, and was hardly
     capable of domestication. Called also, ur, ure, and
     tur.
     [1913 Webster]

ur - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

  Ur
      n 1: an ancient city of Sumer located on a former channel of the
           Euphrates River

ur - Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary :

  Ur
  light, or the moon city, a city "of the Chaldees," the
  birthplace of Haran (Gen. 11:28,31), the largest city of Shinar
  or northern Chaldea, and the principal commercial centre of the
  country as well as the centre of political power. It stood near
  the mouth of the Euphrates, on its western bank, and is
  represented by the mounds (of bricks cemented by bitumen) of
  el-Mugheir, i.e., "the bitumined," or "the town of bitumen," now
  150 miles from the sea and some 6 miles from the Euphrates, a
  little above the point where it receives the Shat el-Hie, an
  affluent from the Tigris. It was formerly a maritime city, as
  the waters of the Persian Gulf reached thus far inland. Ur was
  the port of Babylonia, whence trade was carried on with the
  dwellers on the gulf, and with the distant countries of India,
  Ethiopia, and Egypt. It was abandoned about B.C. 500, but long
  continued, like Erech, to be a great sacred cemetery city, as is
  evident from the number of tombs found there. (See ABRAHAM.)
  
    The oldest king of Ur known to us is Ur-Ba'u (servant of the
  goddess Ba'u), as Hommel reads the name, or Ur-Gur, as others
  read it. He lived some twenty-eight hundred years B.C., and took
  part in building the famous temple of the moon-god Sin in Ur
  itself. The illustration here given represents his cuneiform
  inscription, written in the Sumerian language, and stamped upon
  every brick of the temple in Ur. It reads: "Ur-Ba'u, king of Ur,
  who built the temple of the moon-god."
  
    "Ur was consecrated to the worship of Sin, the Babylonian
  moon-god. It shared this honour, however, with another city, and
  this city was Haran, or Harran. Harran was in Mesopotamia, and
  took its name from the highroad which led through it from the
  east to the west. The name is Babylonian, and bears witness to
  its having been founded by a Babylonian king. The same witness
  is still more decisively borne by the worship paid in it to the
  Babylonian moon-god and by its ancient temple of Sin. Indeed,
  the temple of the moon-god at Harran was perhaps even more
  famous in the Assyrian and Babylonian world than the temple of
  the moon-god at Ur.
  
    "Between Ur and Harran there must, consequently, have been a
  close connection in early times, the record of which has not yet
  been recovered. It may be that Harran owed its foundation to a
  king of Ur; at any rate the two cities were bound together by
  the worship of the same deity, the closest and most enduring
  bond of union that existed in the ancient world. That Terah
  should have migrated from Ur to Harran, therefore, ceases to be
  extraordinary. If he left Ur at all, it was the most natural
  place to which to go. It was like passing from one court of a
  temple into another.
  
    "Such a remarkable coincidence between the Biblical narrative
  and the evidence of archaeological research cannot be the result
  of chance. The narrative must be historical; no writer of late
  date, even if he were a Babylonian, could have invented a story
  so exactly in accordance with what we now know to have been the
  truth. For a story of the kind to have been the invention of
  Palestinian tradition is equally impossible. To the unprejudiced
  mind there is no escape from the conclusion that the history of
  the migration of Terah from Ur to Harran is founded on fact"
  (Sayce).