25 JANUARY 1930, Page 29

Mr. Leonard Woolley, who is again excavating at Ur, has

written an uncommonly attractive and informing account of his epoch-making discoveries during the last seven years

in (Jr of the Chaldees (Benn, 7s. 6d.). He describes in detail the finding of the grave of an early monarch with his courtiers immolated round him, and gives some admirable photographs. He devotes a careful chapter to the mound four miles away at Al Ubaid, which yielded up a tablet with the name of a King of Ur who lived about 8100 B.C. and thus confirmed the accuracy of later Sumerian King-lists. Mr. Woolley has the rare gift of making field archaeology as exciting as a

detective story, and his book will stimulate interest in the remarkable work that is being done in Mesopotamia for the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania.