Mesopotamia, located in the fertile valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, was one of the cradles of civilization around 6000 years ago and the birthplace of the first writing system. Each ...

the capital of this empire, the now ancient city of Ur was still important both for its strategic location near the Persian Gulf and for its legacy as a once great power. As Woolley explains in ...

That process, in which ambitious people at the margins of an established society became its masters, would be repeated throughout history by great empire builders ... states of Ur and Uruk ...