Part II of Deep Ancestry of Jewish Origins From Ur: Getting Deeper

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

We left off finding our Israelite ancestors coming from Mesopotamia during the height of Babylon in the large city of Ur near the mouth of the Euphrates River.  Where did they come from?  Abraham was the father of Judaism and he was born in about 1948 BCE or that he lived at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE.  That means about 4,000 years ago.   

His father, Terah, came from Haran.  Terah named another son, Haran.  Haran was a trading town and center of a moon cult.  The ruins of the city of Harran, called Haran (Hebrew: חָרָן, Ḥārān) in the Hebrew Bible, might lie within present-day Turkey. Haran first appears in the Book of Genesis as the home of Terah and his descendants, and as Abraham's temporary home. Later biblical passages list Haran among some cities and lands subjugated by Assyrian rulers and among Tyre's trading partners. Tyre is now in Lebanon.  

Mesopotamian civilizations formed on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is today Iraq and Kuwait. Early civilizations began to form around the time of the Neolithic Revolution—12,000 BCE. We have Abraham born in about 1,948 BCE,   That's a difference of 11,052 years. 

      Europe during Holocene Era

The Neolithic Revolution—also referred to as the Agricultural Revolution—is thought to have begun about 12,000 years ago. It coincided with the end of the last ice age and the beginning of the current geological epoch, the Holocene.  The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene together form the Quaternary period. 

One species, called woolly mammoths, roamed the cold tundra of Europe, Asia, and North America from about 300,000 years ago up until about 10,000 years ago. (But the last known group of woolly mammoths survived until about 1650 B.C.—that's over a thousand years after the Pyramids at Giza were built!)                             

     Holocene era, the age of Man

The Holocene Epoch is the current period of geologic time. Another term that is sometimes used is the Anthropocene Epoch, because its primary characteristic is the global changes caused by human activity. This term can be misleading, though; modern humans were already well established long before the epoch began. The Holocene Epoch began 12,000 to 11,500 years ago at the close of the Paleolithic Ice Age and continues through today.

In Holocene, however, the domestication of plants and animals allowed human civilization to develop villages and towns in centralized locations. Archaeological data shows that between 10,000 to 7,000 BP rapid domestication of plants and animals took place in tropical and subtropical parts of Asia, Africa, and Central America. The development of farming allowed human civilization to transition away from hunter-gatherer nomadic cultures, which did not establish permanent settlements, to a more sustainable sedentary lifestyle.

By roughly 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, agriculture was well under way in several regions including Ancient Egypt, around the Nile River; the Indus Valley civilization; Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; and Ancient China, along the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. This is because the regular river floods made for fertile soil around the banks and the rivers could also supply fresh water to irrigate crops. It’s no coincidence that as agriculture allowed for denser and denser populations along with more specialized societies, some of the world’s first civilizations developed in these areas as well.  So the Euphrates River attracted people.  Both the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers emptied into the Persian Gulf and that into the Arabian Sea.  The people attracted could have come from Arabia or any others living nearby. 

The Euphrates and Tigris are first mentioned in the Bible in the Book of Genesis: 'A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. ' After the Pishon and Gihon, 'the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. Histories of the world have traditionally seen Mesopotamia – from the Ancient Greek for ‘land between rivers’ and mostly contained in modern Iraq – as the area in which cities, law and agriculture first developed.

Children stand on a boat lying on the dried-up bed of southern Iraq's receding Chibayish Marshes.

To feed and cool his buffaloes, Hashem Gassed must cross 10 kilometers (six miles) of sunburnt land in southern Iraq, where drought is devastating swathes of the mythical Mesopotamian Marshes.

For millennia, the southern part of the Mesopotamia has been a wetland region generated by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers before flowing into the Gulf. This area has been occupied by human communities since ancient times and the present-day inhabitants, the Marsh Arabs, are considered the population with the strongest link to ancient Sumerians. Popular tradition, however, considers the Marsh Arabs as a foreign group, of unknown origin, which arrived in the marshlands when the rearing of water buffalo was introduced to the region.

                    Marsh-Basra Arabs of Iraq

To shed some light on the paternal and maternal origin of this population, Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation was surveyed in 143 Marsh Arabs and in a large sample of Iraqi controls. 

Analyses of the haplogroups and sub-haplogroups observed in the Marsh Arabs revealed a prevalent autochthonous Middle Eastern component for both male and female gene pools, with weak South-West Asian and African contributions, more evident in mtDNA. A higher male than female homogeneity is characteristic of the Marsh Arab gene pool, likely due to a strong male genetic drift determined by socio-cultural factors (patrilocality, polygamy, unequal male and female migration rates).  

Y-haplogroups were inferred through using Whit Athey's Haplogroup Predictor; the results showed that the most common haplogroup (34.6%) in Iraqi Arabs was J1 as detected earlier.  The Cohen group in Judaism is also J1.  It's called the Cohen gene.  Arabs have a different ending showing they are Arabs, not Jews, usually.                                     

The last ice age been wiped out people in east Asia as well as Europe. The new study started with an ancient mystery. DNA from a male jawbone in Tianyuan Cave near Beijing proved that modern humans arrived in East Asia some 40,000 years ago.  They were still there 34,000 years ago, according to DNA from a female skullcap found in Mongolia's Salkhit Valley. But after that, their trail went cold: From 34,000 to 9000 years ago, the fossil record has a massive gap across the China Plateau, which extends from Mongolia to northern China and eastern Russia. By 12,000 years ago, newer styles of stone toolkits and pottery appeared in the region, but archaeologists debated who had made them—new migrants or the descendants of the earlier group. "There were definitely modern humans living in East Asia 40,000 years ago, but who knows what happened to them?" says paleogeneticist Qiaomei Fu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

 Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the 3 most important men in our history.  They are our Jewish patriarchs, both spiritual and physical.  

Our deep deep ancestors had been around for a long long time before Abraham came along with Sarah, his niece.  Yes, she was his wife as well.  Things weren't a modern as they are today.  Populations were a lot smaller, back then.  

Cities had their own kings.  The Battle of the Vale of Siddim, also often called the War of Nine Kings or the Slaughter of Chedorlaomer, is an event in the Hebrew Bible book of Genesis 14:1–17 that occurs in the days of Abram and Lot.  Amraphel was the king of Shinar a city later of Babel, then Babylonia.  Arioch was king of Eliasar.  Chedorlaomer was king of Elam. ( Elam was a region in the Near East corresponding to the modern-day provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan in southern Iran (though it also included part of modern-day southern Iraq) whose civilization spanned thousands of years from c. 3200 - c. 539 BCE.)  Tidal was king of Goiim.  They all made war on Bera the king of Sodom, Birsha the king of Gomorrah, Shinab the king of Admah, Shemeber the king of Zebolim.  Zoar was the king of Bela.  They had a war in the Valley of Siddim, now called the Salt Sea.  

So, only 12,000 years before Abraham was born we have Asians and Europeans looking for a new home.  They were homo Sapiens like us, like Abraham.  

Resource:

https://www.science.org/content/article/last-ice-age-wiped-out-people-east-asia-well-europe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene

https://www.livescience.com/28219-holocene-epoch.html

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01019

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/prehistoric/facts/woolly-mammoth#:~:text=One%20species%2C%20called%20woolly%20mammoths,at%20Giza%20were%20built!)

New Theory: Terah the Aramean: A Different Ur of Turkey Making Haran Accessible to Canaan' Part X

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                     

 

Terah, who died at age 205, was father of Abraham who was born in 1948 BCE,

They traveled from Ur of the Chaldees toward Canaan and on the way stopped at Haran where they settled down and Terah died there.  It was where Haran, Abraham's brother lived.  Terah made idols; was a devout idolator but son Abraham challenged his beliefs one day when an idol fell over and Abe said that another idol had pushed it over.  Abraham took Haran's son, Lot, and they continued the goal of going to Canaan.  

To those of us obsessed with where Abraham's beginnings were, we thought we knew where Ur of the Chaldees/Kasdim was; nearby the Euphrates River.  We are relying on the tale Moses had written down as this information is found in Genesis 11. (Abraham was born in 1948 BCE; a man of the 2nd millennium BCE) Then Professor Gary Rendsburg reminds us that Joshua (Moses was born in 1391 BCE, so Joshua was born c1366 BCE; 582 years after Moses' rendition of the oral history which is nothing compared to the years our patriarchs had lived) tells a different rendition of Abraham's beginnings in that:  "Your forefathers---Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor---always dwelt beyond the (Euphrates) River and they served gods of others.  But I (G-d is speaking) took your forefather, Abraham, from beyond the River and led him throughout all the land of Canaan....

Assur could be another Ur;  It's on the Tigris River.  All discussion of Ur has been thought to be on Euphrates River but the name was never mentioned.  Aššur (/ˈæsʊər/; Sumerian: 𒀭𒊹𒆠 AN.ŠAR₂^KI, Assyrian cuneiform:  Aš-šur^KI, "City of God Aššur";^[1][2] Syriac: ܐܫܘܪ‎ Āšūr; Old Persian 𐎠𐎰𐎢𐎼 Aθur, Persian: آشور‎: Āšūr; Hebrew: אַשּׁוּר‎: Aššûr, Arabic: اشور‎), also known as Ashur and Qal'at Sherqat, was the capital of the Old Assyrian Empire (2025–1750 BCE-Abraham's period), the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1050 BC), and for a time, of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–608 BC).

Assur

 The remains of the city lie on the western bank of the Tigris River, north of the confluence with its tributary, the Little Zab, in what is now Iraq, more precisely in the al-Shirqat District of the Saladin Governorate.  U.S. Soldiers from Crazy Horse Troop, 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment provide security for the Provincial Reconstruction Team and representatives of United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization visiting the ancient city of Ashur, the site is now known as Qalat Shergat, Iraq, Nov. 21 2008. Ashur is one of three areas in Iraq that is a World Heritage site.

In the Bible, when the phrase ‘beyond the River’ appears without further designation, it refers to the Euphrates River (but does not name it).  But the Sumerian city of Ur is not “beyond the Euphrates,” but rather on the Euphrates, and on its western side, thus not “beyond” it from the perspective of Israel. In theory, Joshua 24 could be referring to Ḥarran, which is north of the Euphrates River, but recall that this city was simply a way-station, as it were, on the journey from Ur-Kasdim to Canaan.

Haran is usually identified with Harran, now a village of Şanlıurfa, Turkey. Since the 1950s, archeological excavations of Harran have been conducted, which have yielded insufficient discoveries about the site's pre-medieval history or of its supposed Patriarchal era. The earliest records of Harran come from the Ebla tablets, c. 2300 BC. Harran's name is said to be from Akkadian ḫarrānum (fem.), "road"; ḫarrānātum (pl.).  Could this be saying something like it's on the road from Ur to Canaan?  The Ebla tablets are a collection of as many as 1,800 complete clay tablets, 4,700 fragments, and many thousands of minor chips found in the palace archives of the ancient city of Ebla, Syria. 

Haran was where Abraham's brother, Haran lived and the spot was then named Haran which no doubt became a town. (Haran or Aran is a man in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. He died in Ur of Chaldees, was a son of Terah, and brother of Abraham. Through his son Lot, Haran was the ancestor of the Moabites and Ammonites, and through his daughter Milcah he was ancestral to the Aramaeans.) Haran died in Ur of the Chaldees,  was the father of Lot, Abraham's nephew who accompanied Abraham to Canaan since his father, Haran, had passed away.  Abraham had intended to just stop by, perhaps, and pick up Lot, but had stayed on for many years, leaving when he was already 75 years of age; young for those days, no doubt.

                                                 

   "In light of all this", writes Rendsburg, "Sumerian Ur cannot be the referent, as it is on the same side of the Euphrates as Canaan. A journey from Ur to Canaan would not pass through Ḥarran. We know the trade-routes. Anyone travelling from Ur of Sumer to Ḥarran would first have traveled upstream on the Euphrates, since no one would travel due west from Ur in southern Mesopotamia through the Arabian desert; even with camels the journey would be too arduous and too dangerous to allow such a crossing.                           

If Teraḥ and family left Ur-Kasdim to travel to Canaan, but stopped en route in Ḥarran, then the location of Ur-Kasdim should be to the north of Ḥarran.  Considering these data points, a more attractive suggestion is that Abraham’s hometown is the city of Ur in northern Mesopotamia = modern-day Urfa in southeastern Turkey, 44 km north of Ḥarran. "About 12 km (7 mi) northeast of the city is the famous Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe, the world's oldest-known temple, which was founded in the 10th millennium BCE. The area was part of a network of the first human settlements where the agricultural revolution took place. Because of its association with Jewish, Christian, and Islamic history, and a legend according to which it was the hometown of Abraham, Urfa is nicknamed as the "City of Prophets."

Urfa, officially known as Şanlıurfa (pronounced [ʃanˈɫɯuɾfa]; Arabic: الرها‎, romanized: alruha; Kurdish: Riha; Armenian: Ուռհա, romanized: Uṙha; Syriac: ܐܘܪܗܝ‎, romanized: Ūrhāi and known in ancient times as Edessa), is a city with a population of over 2 million residents in southeastern Turkey, and the capital of Şanlıurfa Province.

Most likely, this city is the one mentioned as Ura in cuneiform tablets from Ugarit (14th–13th centuries B.C.E.), where it is associated with the Hittite realm. A journey from Urfa to Canaan would indeed pass directly through Ḥarran.  I have been finding names repeated with people; why not with places?  Yet the bible so clearly defines Ur as Ur of the Chaldees(Kasdim).  

                                                     

 For example, George Bush (1796‒1859 in Norwich, Vermont died September 19, 1859), a leading biblical scholar of the day, pastor, abolitionist, academic and advocate for the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land. A member of the Bush family, he is a distant relative of both President George H. W. Bush and President George W. Bush.noted regarding biblical Ur-Kasdim:

As to the city here mentioned, some difficulty has been experienced by commentators in fixing its site, but in the East it is generally identified with the present town of Orfah in Upper Mesopotamia Two days’ journey east of the Euphrates, sixty-seven miles north-east of Beer. The Jews, according to Mr. Wolff, still call the place by the name in the text, אור כשדים Oor Kasdim, or Ur of the Chaldees, and it is a place of pilgrimage as the birth-place of Abraham, in whose honour the Moslems have a fine mosque in the court of which is a lake teeming with fish which are held sacred to the patriarch’ and not permitted to be caught.

Notably, the names of Teraḥ’s father, Naḥor, and his grandfather Serug are actually the names of cities in the general region of Urfa: a) Naḫur, known from Akkadian sources (even if its precise location in upper Mesopotamia is unknown), and b) Serug, well known from later Syriac sources, whose name persists in modern Turkish Suruç, 46 km southwest of Urfa. 

  Urfa lies below Gaziantep, and is not near the Euphrates. Perhaps originally, the Arameans settled in the Turkish spot but had followed the Euphrates down to Ur Kasdim and established that place.    

Now we have discovered a northern Ur in Turkey and a southern Ur in Iraq.  Rendsburg reminds us again, "Further support for the claim that Abraham’s hometown of Ur should be located in northern Mesopotamia comes from the Aramean connection. Deuteronomy 26:5 describes Israel’s ancestors as wandering Arameans: אֲרַמִּי אֹבֵד אָבִי “A wandering Aramean was my father”. The Aramean heartland is located in northern Mesopotamia. In fact, the Bible refers to the region in which Urfa is found as Aram Naharaim, lit. ‘Aram of the Two Rivers’ (Gen 24:10, etc.), namely the Tigris and the Euphrates. (It was the servant of Abraham of his old age who made his way to Aram Naharaim to the city of Nahor (named for grandfather of Abraham).)  Genesis 22:21‒22 juxtaposes Aram and Chesed (~ Chaldea) as scions of the family of Naḥor, suggesting their location in northern Mesopotamia in close proximity to one another.  This NE area of Mesopotamia is the land of origin of Abraham and nearly all the names of his ancestors, like Serug, Nahor and Terah, correspond to place-names in this region.  

Aram refers to the Arameans who were a group of Semitic tribes that had  invaded the Fertile Crescent in the 2nd half of  the 2nd millennium BCE (Abraham's birth period) and roamed between the Persian Gulf and the Amanus Mountains.  Gen:22 says that Aram and Israel had a common ancestry and  our patriarchs were of Aramaic origin and maintained ties of marriage with the tribes of Aram.  Akkadian sources of the 12th cent. BCE had political importance and had independent Aramean states and princedoms like Aram-Damascus; Aram Naharaim, Aram-Zobah in Syria and Mesopotamia.  

From the time the tale was first told about the Arameans and where they came from to Joshua was hundreds of years, and Ur's locale was worded slightly differently.  The thing to do now is check bones found in both areas to see who has the most J1 (Y haplotypes-DNA).  Archaologist Woolsey may have led us down the wrong path in his discovery of the southern Ur so near the Euphrates, or maybe not.  

Resource:

                         Professor Gary Rendsburg

Gary A. Rendsburg (born 1954) is a professor of biblical studies, Hebrew language, and ancient Judaism at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.^[1] He holds the rank of Distinguished Professor and serves as the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair of Jewish History at Rutgers University (2004–present), with positions in the Department of Jewish Studies ^[2] and the Department of History.^[3]

Prior to teaching at Rutgers, Rendsburg taught for 18 years at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. (1986-2004) and for six years at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y. (1980-1986).  Rendsburg received his B.A. degree in English and Journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1975), and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Hebrew Studies from New York University (1977, 1980).  

I had moved to Israel in 1980 to teach English.  This is a man I would love to meet as we have much in common-the interest in where Abraham was born and all his ancestors and more; how the Torah was written, the myriads of questions I've tried to find answers. 

With my theory of using base 12 and ot base 10, Terah, said to have died at age 205,  would have only been 17 and 1 month old when he died.  Abraham died at 950 years which turned out to be 79 years and 2 months at death.  There's a big difference in death age here.  

https://www.thetorah.com/article/ur-kasdim-where-is-abrahams-birthplace

Prof. Gary Rendsburg serves as the Blanche and Irving Laurie Professor of Jewish History in the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. His Ph.D. and M.A. are from N.Y.U. Rendsburg is the author of seven books and about 190 articles; his most recent book is How the Bible Is Written.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_A._Rendsburg

COMING FROM THE EAST IN UR OF THE CHALDEES, HOME OF ABRAHAM AND HIS FAMILY

Nadene Goldfoot           
                                                                     

The yellow area shows the neo-Babylonian (Chaldean) empire
that continued till 600 BCE.  The brown area shows how large
the Babylonian Empire that existed since 1750 BCE was.  The
Babylonians had taken over the Assyrian Empire, and it was the
Assyrians who had attacked Israel and had taken away the best
of their people in 722-721 BCE.

Ur was an ancient town in the East, now in today's Iraq, found in the Chaldees of Babylonia but also known as Ur of  the Sumerians.   It may even have been of the Cassites/Kassites. 
                                                

 This was the home of Abraham ( b: 1948 BCE) and his father, Terah  and Terah's father, Nahor and family. Terah was also father to Nahor II and Haran. Haran died in Ur "Kasdim."  Abraham was called Abram in those days, and Sarah was Sarai.    He married Sarai and Nahor married Milcah, daughter of Haran.  Sarai remained barren.   
                                               

Terah, father of Abram

Abraham and Terah, along with Lot, Terah's grandson and Sarai and  left Ur and traveled with the goal of arrival in Canaan, but came first to the town of Haran.  Haran was Abraham's brother and the father of Lot.  He also lived in Ur with the family, but it was he who established this  trading town of NW Mesopotamia, which was the center of a moon cult.  Terah died in Haran in the year of 2083 BCE.  Isaac had been already born to Abram and was then 35.  Assyrian inscriptions from this time mention a Habiru(Hebrew) settlement in the vicinity which some scholars link with Abraham's father, Terah's residence there.  A small Jewish community was found living there in the 12th century still, by Benjamin of Tudela, scholar.  
                                                 

   

Chaldea with the Chaldeans were a Semitic tribe which migrated to Southern Babylonia and adopted the ancient Babylonian culture.  They were even further eastward.  Notice the empire stays along the Euphrates River. 
                                                 

When Abram was 75 years old, he left Haran with Sarai and Lot, all their wealth and people and traveled to the land of Canaan and went past Shechem until they came to the Plain of Moreh where they met up with Canaanites. There he was called "the Ivrim/ Hebrew." (Gen.14:13).  A Hebrew meant one who was a descendant of Eber, grandson of Shem, or one who comes from the other side of the Euphrates River.   He went on to the mountain east of Beth-el and pitched their tent situated with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and built an altar to G-d.  They then journeyed on, going toward the south.  
                                                    

Finally they entered Egypt due to a famine in Canaan. Abraham had an encounter there due to the beauty of Sarai, but overcame it and saw that this was not to be his future, so returned to Canaan, of which the land was higher up, no doubt a little cooler.  He was now traveling with his livestock, silver and gold.  Lot also had his flocks, cattle and tents, and so since they were both men and headstrong, Lot and Abram parted as their herdsmen kept fighting each other.  They were not alone here, for there were other people living here, the Canaanites and the Perizzites.  
                                                      

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in route

Lot went to the right to the plain of the Jordan River.  Abram lived in Canaan and Lot lived in the cities of the plain and pitched tents as far as Sodom.  

 The Babylonian Empire takes in the land to become Israel later.  They slowly gain power over the native inhabitants and gave their name to the entire area.  They made attempts, led by Merodach-Baladan, to overthrow Assyria, and finally did so in the 7th century BCE under their leader, Nabopolassar and his son, Nebuchadnezzar who established an empire extending from Assyria to the Egyptian border.  
                                                  

Nebuchadnezzar was King of Babylon from 605-562 BCE.  He won the battle over the Assyrian-Egyptian alliance at Carchemish in 605 BCE and then conquered all the lands from the Euphrates River to the Egyptian frontier which included Judah.  In 597, after Judah revolted, her sent contingents which captured Jerusalem and replaced the young king Jehoiachin with his own choice of Zedekiah, and exiled 8,000 of the local aristocracy to Babylon.  Thus our trip there.  

Eight years later, Zedekiah rebelled.  Nebuchadnezzar and his forces again invaded Judah, captured Jerusalem again in 586 BCE and destroyed the Temple, laying waste the cities and exiling masses of the population again.  The king was taken to Riblah where he was killed.  

This empire was conquered by the Persians in 539 BCE.  The fame of the Chaldeans as astrologers made the terms synonymous long after their empire had vanished.  The Aramaic language has been called Chaldaic or Chaldee, but this is a misnomer.  
                                               

Sumeria was a region of southern Babylonia named after a non-Semite people which migrated there in prehistoric times and founded a series of city-states.  The culture was the basis for the Babylonian civilization and influenced the Semitic people of Accad to their north.  Some early names of Sumerian cities are in the Bible, such as Nimrod and Cush which are connected with Sumerian tradition.  

Excavations in the ruins led by Sir Leonard Woodley in the 1920s and 30s revealed the highly civilized nature of the city in Abraham's time as well as showing evidence of an extensive flood at an earlier date.  He saw the Ziggurat of Ur in Iraq that was built over 4,000 years ago.  It is a huge huge huge edifice with steps going up and up the sides.  He dug up 35,000 artifacts.  

Now Iraq and American Archaeologist have been digging at Ur for 10 weeks supported by National Geographic,  and have found  a cuneiform tablet, one of many that have been found there.   
                                                    

"Ur emerged as a settlement more than 6,000 years ago and grew to prominence in the Early Bronze Age that began about a thousand years later. Some of the earliest known writing—called cuneiform—has been uncovered at Ur, including seals that mention the city. "   

Abraham and Terah lived there during the 2nd millennium BCE, at Ur's height in "2000 B.C., when Ur dominated southern Mesopotamia after the fall of the Akkadian Empire. "Akkad existed during the Babylonian period in the northern region of the valley between the Euphrates and the Tigris Rivers, which contained Babylon, Sippar and other important cities. 
                                

               Akkad was the residence of Sargon the Great."  

The sprawling city of Ur was home to more than 60,000 people, and included quarters for foreigners as well as large factories producing wool clothes and carpets exported abroad. Traders from India and the Persian Gulf crowded the busy wharves, and caravans arrived regularly from what is now northern Iraq and Turkey."

Did they leave because Abraham wanted to leave such a culture of polytheism and start fresh with his wife and have room to allow his own thought on a G-d grow?  Quite possibly.  He would know his ideas couldn't thrive in Ur.  Besides that, he had the presence of
 G-d directing him into his travels.  
                                          

Abraham's faith was being tested when he was
asked by G-d to sacrifice his son, Isaac, but was
stopped in time, enough to see he was following
G-ds directions.

                     Human sacrifices surrounded an ancient Mesopotamian Tomb.  Eight human sacrifices were found at the entrance to this tomb, which held the remains of two 12-year-olds from ancient Mesopotamia. ... The team determined the age of six of the human sacrifices and found that the victims ranged in age from 11 to 20 years old.Jun 29, 2018.  About 5,000 years ago, the Mesopotamians buried two 12-year-olds — a boy and a girl — and surrounded their slender bodies with hundreds of bronze spearheads and what appears to be eight human sacrifices, a new study finds.  Abraham did live in the same area where human sacrifice was an every-day occurrence.   

A small clay mask unearthed represented Humbaba, a scary deity believed to protect the cedar forests of Lebanon.  It figures in the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh that was popular during Ur's height of culture around 2000 BCE.  

                

Below is the queen's Lyre found in the tomb at Ur.  The craftsmanship is remarkable.  A lyre is  musical instrument belonging to the family of harps, usually played in Greece.  Does this show trading going on?  Ur was a great town of trading.  

The Sumerians originally practiced a polytheistic religion, with anthropomorphic deities representing cosmic and terrestrial forces in their world. The earliest Sumerian literature of the third millennium BCE identifies four primary deities: An, Enlil, Ninhursag, and Enki.

Another dig was done by a 6 member British team who worked with 4 Iraqi archaeologists to dig in the Tell Khaiber in the southern province of Thi Qar some 200 miles south of Baghdad.  War has kept international archaeologists away from Iraq. 

 The last stages of Mesopotamian polytheism, which developed in the 2nd and 1st millenniums, introduced greater emphasis on personal religion and structured the gods into a monarchical hierarchy with the national god being the head of the pantheon.  Abraham was a real break-away from this concept to adhere to a single G-d force, unseen at that.  
                                             

In helping out Lot, his nephew, he had to fight against Chedorlaomer king of Elam, Amraphel, king of Shinar, and their allies.  When Sarah, his wife and niece died, he bought the cave of Machpelah for a family burial place.

Abraham was called a prophet, the founder of monotheism, the repository of all wisdom and science, the prototype of humility and kindness, famed for his hospitality.  He introduced circumcision as the covenant of Abraham our Father.  According to hellenistic legends much later on, he was even the king of Damascus.    
                                               

Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Enyclopedia
Tanach, the Stone Edition (Bible)
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/08/land-of-abrahams-father-aram-naharaim.html
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/03/160311-ur-iraq-trade-royal-cemetery-woolley-archaeology/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Cemetery_at_Ur
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0404/Home-of-Abraham-Ur-unearthed-by-archaeologists-in-Iraq
https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1787272385367494897#editor/target=post;postID=1027589388625377276;onPublishedMenu=posts;onClosedMenu=posts;postNum=0;src=link
https://www.livescience.com/62954-human-sacrifices-mesopotamia.html#:~:text=Eight%20human%20sacrifices%20were%20found,year%2Dolds%20from%20ancient%20Mesopotamia.&text=The%20team%20determined%20the%20age,11%20to%2020%20years%20old.