The study of the natural environment of the city of Ur and its urban planning is necessarily multidisciplinary. We began by highlighting the considerable contribution of remote sensing, from the aerial views of the Royal Air Force in the 1920s to the images from the drone employed on the site by Emily Hammer in 2017, via old satellite photos (Gambit KH-7 from the US Air Force in 1966, Corona KH-4B from the CIA's parallel program 1968) or more recent ones (Quickbird [2002, 2004, 2007], Ikonos-2 [2008] and WorldView-1 [2008]) [1].
We began by describing the natural setting of the city of Ur. It was recalled that the course of the Euphrates had shifted: at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, it flowed close to the city, to the south, as shown by the traces of a paleo-Meander revealed by a 1966 photograph. Another crucial element is the coastline. This is a highly complex issue, involving multiple factors: subsidence of the plain (compaction of alluvial deposits, tectonic movements), but also, conversely, alluviation by rivers and, finally, variations in sea level. The point was made by Paul Sanlaville in 1989: there was a maximum of marine transgressions around 3500 BC. The coast would have passed not far from Ur, and through the modern cities of Nassiriya and Amara, i.e. 200 km north of today's coast. Subsequently, the rivers worked very efficiently and rapidly filled in the shallow depths of the gulf, probably in less than two millennia. Since around 2000 B.C., there have been alternating phases of shoreline retreat and advance, linked both to slight oscillations in sea level and to shifts in river mouths. A very important environmental feature in the region is the marshland area; this was quite densely populated, as many reed dwellings were set up on artificial islands. The area was voluntarily drained by Saddam Hussein, fighting the deserters who had taken refuge there; it has since fortunately been re-watered. During the reclamation period, Abdulamir Al-Hamdani was able to prospect the area, which he studied in his thesis [2].
