Abraham Sees Sodom in Flames, by James Jacques Joseph Tissot.

British archeologists announced Thursday the discovery of a complex in the vicinity of the ancient city of Ur in southern Iraq from the period in history when the patriarch Abraham would have lived in the area, as described in the Bible.

The 4,000-year-old structure “is some sort of public building. It might be an administrative building, it might have religious connections or controlling goods to the city of Ur,” said Stuart Campbell of Manchester University’s Archaeology Department, the leader of the dig, according to The Associated Press.

Abraham is described in the Bible to have lived near a place called Ur. Therefore, many biblical scholars consider the ancient city his home. According to National Geographic, Ur most likely originated in the 5th millennium B.C. It was rediscovered in the 1920s and 1930s during an expedition. The new complex was discovered 12 miles from Ur.

“Because of the gap in archaeological work in this region, any new knowledge is important to archaeologists in this area – and this find has the potential to really move forward our understanding of the first city-states,” Campbell wrote in an email to the Huffington Post.