When in 1923 the English archaeologist Sir Charles Leonard Woolley began the excavations at Tell el-Maqayyar in Southern Mesopotamia, he had no doubt that the city he was bringing to light was Ur of the Chaldeans where, according to Genesis, Abraham was born. It had been the capital of one of the earliest and most cultured civilisations on earth, that of the Sumerians. It faded away at the end of the third millennium B.C. and exhibited a level of civilisation and refinement of customs not discovered in any other Middle-Eastern excavation sites in the area.
Woolley, carried away by enthusiasm, had photographs and drawings of the dwellings at Ur published by numerous newspapers and magazines throughout the world. These photos appeared with the caption: "Houses at the time of Abraham," suggesting that the biblical Patriarch was born in one of those dwellings. His opinion, however, did not carry much weight; the notion of the shepherd wandering from pasture to pasture with his tents and herds was then, and still is now, too deeply rooted in people's minds to be displaced by the image of a refined citizen born and reared in the splendid city of Ur of the Sumerians.
To what locality does Genesis refers as Ur of the Chaldeans? The fact that the name is always accompanied by the modifier "of the Chaldeans" would seem to indicate that other "Urs" exist. However, since the only "Chaldeans" known to history are those of Babylon, it would seem that there can be no alternative but to conclude that Ur of the Chaldeans is in reality Ur of the Sumerians.
There are, however, various contrasting elements associated with this conclusion. One in particular which stands out is that of time. The name Chaldaean appeared on the Middle-Eastern scene for the first time in the eighth century B.C. when two kings of the Chaldaean dynasty sat on the Babylonian throne: Eribamarduk and his son Mardukappaliddim. It was only in the 7th Century B.C. however, that Babylon became associated, particularly through the Bible itself, with the name of Chaldaea and the Babylonians with the Chaldeans. In fact a Chaldaean dynasty was installed in 626, which lasted until 539 B.C. when the Persian Cyrus conquered Babylon. Ur of the Sumerians, on the other hand, was destroyed toward the end of the third millennium B.C. and its name was forgotten; it survives only in documents discovered and deciphered by modern-day archaeologists. It is incomprehensible, therefore, how someone in ancient times could have linked the Chaldeans with Ur of the Sumerians.
Secondly, the geographical indications given in the Bible regarding Abraham's birthplace seem to refer to a completely different locality. For example, Joshua states that it was situated "beyond the river" (Josh. 24.2), referring to the Euphrates, while Ur of the Sumerians is located, as it always was, "on this side" with respect to Palestine. It appears evident from the biblical text, moreover, that Ur of the Chaldeans was a region and not a city; in fact, Genesis 11,28 states that the "native soil" of Abraham and of his brothers was situated "in" Ur of the Chaldeans. Also, when Abraham sent his administrator to seek a wife for his heir Isaac, he told him: "Go to my city ... in the Aram Naharaym, to the city of Nahor, my native city" (Gen. 24,4-10). These indications, far from contradicting each other, match completely, making it possible to confirm the toponymy of the Patriarch’s place of origin. Thus, it seems evident that Ur of the Chaldeans was the region in which Abraham's "native soil," i.e. Aram Naharaym, was located. And, within Aram Naharaym was the city of Nahor, where Abraham and his brothers were born.
Nahor appears frequently in cuneiform documents of Mesopotamia, and, therefore, although it has not yet been located by archaeologists, its existence is confirmed. The name of the region, Aram Naharaym, gives a fairly reliable indication which enables us to pinpoint its position. Naharaym means "land of the rivers," indicating that it was a territory located between rivers. The name Aram indicates that geographically it was one together with the Paddam Aram, a name that with no possibility of error, Genesis applies to the region around Haran, a well known city of Northern Mesopotamia (Gen. 28,2). It, therefore, had a common border with this region, probably north-east of it. In Gen. 11,31 in fact, we find that Tareh and his son Abraham left Ur of the Chaldeans "to go to the land of Canaan, but when they reached Haran, they settled there". The archaeological evidence as well as the customs and laws of the Patriarchs all confirm that they came from Northern Mesopotamia.
These factors help us in establishing the location of Aram Naharaym in that territory bounded by the upper reaches of the Tigris, the lake of Van, and the tributary of the Euphrates, Murad-Su. This region has been known since ancient times as part of Urartu. Nahor was evidently its main center and its name means "city of the river." Therefore, we can presume that it arose by the banks of the principle river of the region, the Tigris. Thus, it would have been situated somewhere near the present-day Diyarbekir. Abraham's family moved from Nahor to Haran, in the region that Genesis refers to as "Paddam Aram", i.e. the plain of Aram (only from the time of Judges was the name Aram given to Syria, in particular to the area of Damascus).
Therefore, all seems to point to Urartu as Abraham's original home. All, that is, except one particular, the Chaldees, and we must now establish who they were. The Chaldees were not a population; the name referred to the ruling class, the aristocracy of the Aramaic population, which in the 12th century B.C. had invaded Southern Mesopotamia. They came from Northern Syria and settled, among other locations, in the area where in ancient times Ur of the Sumerians had arisen. (Therefore, the names Chaldean, Aramaic and Ur are found side by side, which probably accounts for the conviction that this was actually the city to which Genesis refers; nonetheless, at the time Genesis was written, no one in Palestine could have made a similar match). The Aramaic aristocracy finally seized power over the entire Babylonian region, which consequently took the name of Chaldaea. But, with the death of the last Babylonian sovereign, the Chaldeans disappeared from the Middle-Eastern scene, even though the Babylonian population had suffered neither extermination, nor enforced deportation at the hands of the victorious Persians.
Little more than a century later, in 400 B.C., Xenophon met the Chaldeans during the epic journey described in the ANABASIS; but this was a people that had nothing to do with Babylon. Xenophon speaks of them (Anabasis IV,3,4; V,5,11; VII,8,25) as a proud and belligerent tribe that actually lived, strangely enough, in the area bounded by the lake of Van, the Tigris, and its tributary the Centrites, in the Southern Urartu. The Chaldeans, in fact, strenuously opposed the Greeks at the Centrites ford and even attacked them later, giving them a run for their money.
What appears to be a reasonable and logical conclusion is that the Chaldeans of whom Xenophon speaks already existed in Abraham's time and ever since then occupied that region of Urartu where the Greeks met them centuries later. Therefore , when the Biblical compiler speaks of the Chaldeans of Ur, he is referring to exactly these people. Whoever these Armenian Chaldeans were and whatever their relationship with the Babylonian Chaldeans was, are problems to be reconciled later in this account. What is important now is to have established as fact that when Genesis speaks of Ur of the Chaldeans, it does not refer to the city of the same name on the Persian Gulf, but to a region of Southern Urartu. It was there that Abraham was born and from there that he departed to go to Haran.