Revisiting the Child Burials of Old Babylonian Ur: the Funerary Rite and its Spatial Aspects

Kamilla Kersánszki*

Cite as Kersánszki, K. 2024: Revisiting the Child Burials of Old Babylonian Ur: the Funerary Rite and its Spatial Aspects. Hungarian Assyriological Review 5: 91–124.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52093/hara-202402-00040-000

Abstract

The archaeology of children is a new perspective steadily gaining popularity in research and in recent years, it has begun to be implemented in Mesopotamian archaeology as well. The material evidence of children’s lives in ancient communities, such as Old Babylonian Ur, is the most tangible through their burials. The aim of this study is to compile data on child burials in the private houses of Ur’s Old Babylonian levels from multiple published and unpublished sources, to explore connections between different aspects of the funerary rite, such as spatiality, grave form and grave goods, illustrated through three short case studies. Though there are challenges faced in reconstructing the normative burial rite of children, due to the often lacking or imprecise recording and publication of information on the graves, general trends are apparent, such as the concentration of child burials in the inner parts of the houses, the preference for enclosed clay containers as burial vessels and a small number of grave goods. Individual burial rites displaying a difference from this pattern may be interpreted as markers of a different social age category and indicate that at a certain point in the life stage, elements of the adult mortuary rite started to be employed.

Keywords: burials, funerary rites, archaeology of childhood, Old Babylonian period, Ur

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