From Wikipedia

Ancient Inventions - City Life

Uru was the Sumerian term for a city or city state, written with the cuneiform ideogram  . According to some recent Sumerological studies, the actual pronunciation of this word in Sumerian may originally have been "Iri."

The largest cities in the Bronze Age Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands. Memphis in the Early Bronze Age with some 30,000 inhabitants was the largest city of the time by far. Ur in the Middle Bronze Age is estimated to have had some 65,000 inhabitants; Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had a population of some 50–60,000, while Niniveh had some 20–30,000, reaching 100,000 only in the Iron Age (ca. 700 BC).