UPSAL
669
UR
on account of their size and coolness as places for as- sembly (Acts i, I'S; XX, 8), anil for similar reasons the (lead were laid out in them (ix, 39). There ap- pears to have been an upper room over the gateways of towns (2 Sam. xviii,3o), and on their roofs, as being the highest part of the house, idolatrous worship was paid to Baal ("2 Kings xxiii, 12). In allusion to the loftiness of the upper room, the psalmist beautifully de- scribes God as laying the beams of his vpper chambers in the waters, and from thence watering the hills (I'sa. civ, 3, 13).- See Chamber ; House.
Upsal, a town of Sweden, forty-five miles north- west of Stockholm, was, during the Middle Ages, tlve stronghold of paganism. It has a beautiful Gothic ca- tiiedral, built from 1258 to 1435. Its interior is magnifi- cent and richly decorated, but its exterior has sutfered mucii from fire, notably in the conflagration of 1702. It is the finest cathedral in that region. See Neander, Hist, of the Church, iii, 292 sq.
Upton, James, a learned schoolmaster and divine of the Church of England, and editor of classical works, was born in 1G70, and died in 1749.
Ur, the name of a place and of a man. (In the dis- cussion of the former, we chiefly adopt the art. from Smith's Diet, of the Bible, witli additions from other sources.)
1. The original seat of Abraham's family, whence he set out for Canaan (tien. xi, 28, 31 : xv, 7 ; Neh. ix, 7). See Abuaham.
1. The Xamr^— Tliis is invariably " Ur of [the] Chal- dees" (D^'1-33 "IIX, Ur Kasdim; Sept. i) X'''P^ ''''^'' XaXSaioji'-, Vulg. Ur Chaldceorum [but in Neh. ir/nis Chaldmontni]). The oldest derivation of the word "II X is from the Heb. "'IX, or mx, liyht, in the sense ofjire (so the Targum and Jerome). This derivation is no doubt connected with the legends in the Koran and Talmud, which represent Abraham as escaping by mir- acle from the flames into which Nimrod or other idol- atrous persecutors had thrown him (see Wagner, in the Thesaur. TheoL-philol. i, 173). Various other ety- mologies have been proposed : some taking the word as "in, a mountain; some as denoting the east, or the H/jht- gioing region; while Ewald, from the Arabic, makes it "place of sojourn," and others look to the Zendic vara, a. fort (Gesen.), or the Sanscrit ur, a town, or even the Heb. "1^", a city (Bonomi, Nineveh, p. 41). The name, however, was probably indigenous, and belongs to the old Chaldee of the first empire, the Assyrian Uru, and the cuneiform Hur.
II. Sites Proposed. — 1. One tradition identifies Ur with the modern Orfah, in the nortii-west part of Meso- potamia. There is some ground for believing that this city, called liy the (ireeks Edessa, had also the name of Orrha as early as the time of Isidore (B.C. cir. 150) ; and , the tradition connecting it with Abraham is perhaps not later than Ephraem (A.D. 330-370), who makes Nimrod king of Edessa, among other places {Comment, in Gen., in 0pp. i; 58, B.). According to Bococke {Description of the East, i, 159), that Ur is Edessa or Orfah, is "the unicersal opinion of the Jews ;" and it is also the local belief, as is indicated by the title '• Jlosque of Abraham," borne by the chief religious edifice of the place, and the designation " Lake of Abraham the Beloved," attached to the pond in which are kept the sacred fish (Ains- worth. Travels in the Track; etc., p. G4; comp. Niebuhr, Vogage en A rabie, p. 330).
2. A second tradition, which appears in the Talmud and in some of tlie early Arabian writers, finds Ur in Warka, the '0|Lf^<)»/ of the (ireeks, and probably the Erech of Holy Scripture (called 'Op^x by the Sept.). This place bears the name of Huruk in the native in- scriptions, and was in the coimtry known to the Jews as " the land of the Chaldaeans."
3. A third tradition, less distinct than either of these,
but entitled to at least equal attention, distinguishes Ur from Warka, wliile still placing it in the same region (see Journal (f Asiatic Sorietg, xii, 481, note 2). There can be little doubt that the city to whicli this tradition points is that which appears by its bricks to have been called //ur by tiie natives, and which is now represented by the ruins at ^/ughe^r, or Umgheir, (m the right bank of the Euphrates, nearly opposite to its junction witli the Shat el- Hie. The oldest Jewish tradition which we possess, tliat quoted l)y Eusebius from Eupolemus (Prcep. Er. ix, 17), who lived about B.C. 150, may be fairly said to intend this place; for by identifying Ur (Uria) with the Babylonian city, known also as Ca- marina and Cliald.eopolis, it points to a city of the Moon, which //ur was — Kumar being "the moon" in Arabic, and Khaldi the satne luminary in the Old Ar- menian.
4. An opinion unsupported by any tradition remains to be noticed. Bocliart, Calmet, Bunsen, and others identify " Ur of the Chaldees" with a place of the name mentioned by a single late writer (Ammianus Marcelli- nus) as "a castle" existing in his day in Eastern Meso- potamia, between Hatra (El-lladhr) and Nisibis (Amm. Marc. XXV, 8). The chief arguments in favor of tins site seem to be the identity of name and the position of the place between Arraiiachitis, which is thought to have been the dwelling-place of Abraham's ancestors in the time of Arphaxad, and Haran (Harran), whither he went from Ur.