Abram's birthplace (11:28,31) — the great Sumerian city of southern Iraq, sacred to the moon god Nanna (Akkadian Sin), whose ziggurat — his temple — still stands; John Taylor's 1850s dig first fixed the identification from inscribed cylinders found in the ziggurat, and Leonard Woolley's 1920s-30s excavations (royal tombs, gold lyres) made it world-famous. 'Of the Chaldeans' is a later-era label, identifying the city for the text's own readers. Ur's moon-cult, shared with Haran, is the usual thread offered for why Terah's family migrated between the two (see Haran).