The Lost Months of Ur: New Early Dynastic and Sargonic Tablets from the British Museum

Abstract This article presents new tablets and fragments from the British Museum that belong to the collection of Early Dynastic and Sargonic tablets discovered at Ur. Having been overlooked for almost a century, the tablets offer new insights into Early Dynastic and Sargonic archives from Ur. Most significant among the contributions are the names of several months demonstrating that the Early Semitic calendar was in use in Ur during the Early Dynastic IIIa period. Second, the tablets contribute a new month name to the calendar of pre-Sargonic Ur and permit a possible reconstruction of the order of the months of the calendar.