TCD MS 10516 folio 90 recto
[12th October 1916] ant-lions dig their pits in the decaying sand, an occasional lizard haunts them or wandering wolves prowl about their ruins.
Ur of the Chaldees: –Â Thus lying on the ruin-dust is the geological evidence that Ur, in the days of its prosperity, was a seaport town, that marine shells lived and the ocean waves rolled their boulders on a site which is now stranded in the desert. No doubt Ur originally owed its greatness as a city and its authority as a capital to its maritime situation where the Euphrates then joined the sea. There the city would grow and prosper, nourished with the trade of other lands until at length it held the premier place amongst all the cities of Southern Chaldea.
(8) And it may not be unreasonable to speculate that, as the delta of the Eu-