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Friday, 23rd October 2009 (3266 views)

A collection of ancient gold artefacts excavated from a royal cemetery in Iraq is to go on display at a museum in the US this weekend.

Entitled Iraq's Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur's Royal Cemetery, the exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia opens on October 25th.

Among the items found at the Ur cemetery are a gold and lapis lazuli bull-headed lyre, a headdress decorated with gold leaves and ribbons and other jewellery belonging to a royal woman called Pu-abi.

The artefacts date back to between 2600 and 2500 BC. About 1,800 burials were discovered at the site, including 16 royal graves. They were found by experts from the university and the British Museum in 1922.

Speaking to KYW Newsradio, exhibition co-curator Richard Zettler said: "This was one of the big digs of all time - and one of the most spectacular archaeological projects ever organised in that part of the world, with some amazing finds."

 

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