Excavations at Ur - Part 2_ The Ram in a Thicket

Plus, of course, there is this wonderful thing in the cabinet here that you must have missed. It's an absolutely stunning piece. I can't remember what it's called. Do you know what it's called? Is this the ram in the thicket? I thought you were just going to read the label but you are very impressed. It's called the ram thicket. Why is it called that? Because Leonard Wood, excavator from New Zealand, is a Bible man. He knows this is the hometown of Abraham. And here we have a ram. This is an incredible thing. This is about 500 years older than stonehenge. No stonehenge. Some of it is. No? OK. Forget that then. Stonehenge. Just a pile of stones in the middle of a salty plain. This is older than that. It is gold. It is lapis lazuli. It's wonderful. Wonderful things. And Wooley finds this in the death pit. It's been reconstructed. And he says, well, we're in the hometown of Abraham. But in fact, there's nothing to do with this. It's too old for a start. And it's just one of those what's called a pastoral scene. If you're living in the desert region, where do the animals wandering around get their food from? They hook themselves up into the low shrubs and they nibble off all the green bits and so on. That's what you'd see. And there is another one of those. If you go to the University Museum in Philadelphia, they've got the other one. So there would have been a shelf across the top. I mean, that is four and a half thousand years old. He found it in pieces. Yeah, he would have found it quite compressed. And so that has been put back together. You can't do that with everything. So you see the crown in the cabinet opposite there. You've got the crown there. So that's a replica because the original is down to the left. If you try and restore that original, you will destroy it. Same way those hearts there. I mean, over 4,000 years, those musical instruments. So again, they've been reconstructed, often from hollows left in the sort of mud and stuff. But again, over 4,000 years old, those musical instruments. And Abraham came from here. This is stuff he's familiar with. I mean, presumably he didn't own any of it. That would be amazing. And God made him rich on the journey. But this is where he left. And this culture was so advanced. And we'll just have a look at the other bits and pieces. This is where Babylon is coming from. This is where Babylon with all its science, its stargazing, its understanding of things. It's probably the building on the left.