Ur was one of the great cities of ancient Sumer, situated on the banks of the Euphrates River in southern Mesopotamia. It was already a prosperous, centuries old urban center when Terah’s family lived there, long before Abraham was born.
Haran, Abraham’s brother, died there while their father Terah was still alive. Ur was also an important center of worship of the moon god, in a well established polytheistic, urban culture.
It was from Ur of the Chaldeans that God called Abraham to leave his homeland, his relatives, and his father’s house, toward a land that would still be shown to him. Terah took the family, including Abraham, Sarai, and grandson Lot, and they set out toward Canaan.
Leaving Ur meant giving up security, kinship, and familiar gods to trust only in the word of the Lord. That is why Ur marks the first visible step of the story of faith that runs through the whole Bible.
The traditional identification places Ur at the ruins of Tell el-Muqayyar, in southern present day Iraq, based on twentieth century archaeological excavations. Some scholars point to the possibility of a location further north in Mesopotamia, but the identification in the south is the most widely accepted.
