Shuruppak edit
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Coordinates: 31°46′38.51″N 45°30′35.14″E / 31.7773639, 45.5097611 Shuruppak (also Shuruppag "the healing place", modern Tell Fara, Iraq) was an ancient Sumerian city situated south of Nippur on the banks of the Euphrates in what is now Al-Qādisiyyah, in south-central Iraq[1].

Shuruppak was dedicated to Ninlil, also called Sud, the goddess of grain and the air.

Contents

History

Shuruppak became a grain storage and distribution city and had more silos than any other Sumerian city. The earliest excavated levels at Shuruppak date to the Jemdet Nasr period about 3,000 BC; it was abandoned shortly after 2,000 BC. Schmidt found one Isin-Larsa cylinder seal and several pottery plaques which may date to early in the second millennium BC. 1 Surface finds are predominantly Early Dynastic. 2

At the end of the Uruk period there was an archaeologically attested river flood in Shuruppak. Polychrome pottery from a destruction level below the flood deposit has been dated to the Jemdet Nasr period that immediately preceded the Early Dynastic I period.3 4

Two possible kings of Shuruppak are mentioned in epigraphic data. In the Sumerian King List a king Ubara-Tutu is listed as the ruler of Shuruppak and the last king "before the flood". In the Epic of Gilgamesh a Utanapishtim (also Uta-na'ishtim), son of Ubara-Tutu, is noted to be king of Shuruppak. The name of Ziusudra is also associated with him. These figures may well be mythical and have not been supported by archaeological finds.

Archaeology

The site of Shuruppak extends about a kilometer from north to south. The total area is about 120 hectares, with about 35 hectares of the mound being above the 3 meter contour.

After a brief survey by Hermann Volrath Hilprecht in 1900, it was first excavated in 1902 by Robert Koldewey and Friedrich Delitzsch of the German Oriental Society. 5 In March and April of 1931 a joint team of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the University of Pennsylvania excavated Shuruppak for a further six week season with Erich Schmidt as director and with epigraphist Samuel Noah Kramer.6 7 In 1973, a three day surface survey of the site was conducted by Harriet P. Martin. Consisting mainly of pottery shard collection, the survey confirmed that Shuruppak dates at least as early as the Jemdat Nasr period, expanded greatly in the Early Dynastic period and was also an element of the Akkadian Empire and the Third Dynasty of Ur. 8

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Harriet P. Martin, FARA: A reconstruction of the Ancient Mesopotamian City of Shuruppak, Birmingham, UK: Chris Martin & Assoc., (1988)p. 44, p. 117 and seal no. 579.
  2. ^ Robert McC. Adams, Heartland of Cities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), Fig. 33 compared with Fig. 21.
  3. ^ Schmidt (1931)
  4. ^ Martin (1988)pp. 20-23
  5. ^ Ernst Heinrich and Walter Andrae, ed. "Fara, Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft in Fara und Abu Hatab" (Berlin:Staatlich Museen zu Berlin, 1931),
  6. ^ Erich Schmidt, Excavations at Fara, 1931, University of Pennsylvania's Museum Journal, 2, pp 193-217, 1931
  7. ^ Samuel N. Kramer, New Tablets from Fara , Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 110-132, Jun., 1932
  8. ^ Harriet P. Martin, Settlement Patterns at Shuruppak, Iraq, vol. 45, no. 1, 1983

References

External links

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