Standard of Ur Monument

Address: The British Museum, Great Russell St, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3DG, United Kingdom

Website: https://www.britishmuseum.org/

Hours: British Museum: Daily 10:00am-5:00pm; Fridays 10:00am-8:30pm

Admission: Displayed in the British Museum; museum admission free

Standard of Ur is an Early Dynastic Sumerian inlaid wooden box from the ancient city of Ur, dating to about 2600-2400 BCE. It is one of the best-known artifacts from the Royal Cemetery at Ur and is now in the British Museum in London.

The object is composed of two large inlaid panels that present narrative scenes in horizontal registers. One panel is conventionally interpreted as a procession or banquet scene and the other as a battle or victory scene; each panel is arranged in three stacked registers with multiple figures shown inlaid in bright materials.

Excavated in the 1920s during Leonard Woolley’s work at the Royal Cemetery at Ur, the object was recovered from a burial context among other high-status grave goods. Scholars consider it a ceremonial or prestige object dating to the Early Dynastic period of Sumerian Mesopotamia.

Originally from the site of Tell el-Muqayyar in southern Iraq, the artifact is housed and exhibited by the British Museum in London, where it is accessible to the public and to specialists for study.

• Materials: Inlaid mosaic of shell, lapis lazuli, red limestone and bitumen set into a wooden frame, assembled in panels that form two main scenes commonly called the ‘War’ and ‘Peace’ panels.
• Where to see: On display in the British Museum in London within the Mesopotamian antiquities collection.

The British Museum is in Bloomsbury, central London, a 5-10 minute walk from Tottenham Court Road or Holborn stations (Central, Piccadilly lines). Numerous buses serve Great Russell Street.

• View the Standard of Ur in the British Museum's Mesopotamia galleries (check the gallery number on arrival) and study it closely with a magnifying app - the mosaics are astonishingly fine.
• Don't rush past: the two-panel scenes ('War' and 'Peace') reward slow looking; note the hierarchy signified by scale (king larger than soldiers).
• Photography inside the British Museum is usually permitted without flash but confirm gallery rules that day.