Shuruppak

Shuruppak (Sumerian: 𒋱𒆳𒊒𒆠 Ć uruppagKI, "the healing place"), modern Tell Fara, was an ancient Sumerian city situated about 55 kilometres (35 mi) south of Nippur and 30 kilometers north of ancient Uruk on the banks of the Euphrates in Iraq's Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate. Shuruppak was dedicated to Ninlil, also called Sud, the goddess of grain and the air.[1]

For the archaic piece of wisdom literature, see Instructions of Shuruppak.
Shuruppak
Shuruppak is located in Iraq
Shuruppak
Shown within Iraq
Shuruppak is located in Near East
Shuruppak
Shuruppak (Near East)
Alternative nameTell Fara
LocationAl-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Iraq
RegionSumer
Coordinates31°46â€Č39″N 45°30â€Č35″E
Typearchaeological site, human settlement
Area120 hectare
Height9 metre
History
PeriodsJemdet Nasr period, Early Dynastic period, Akkad period, Ur III period
Site notes
Excavation dates1902; 1931
ArchaeologistsRobert Koldewey, Friedrich Delitzsch, Erich Schmidt, Harriet P. Martin

The city expanded to its greatest extent at the end of the Early Dynastic III period (2600 BC to 2350 BC) when it covered about 100 hectares.[2]

"Shuruppak" is sometimes also the name of a king of the city, legendary survivor of the Flood, and supposed author of the Instructions of Shuruppak".

Archaeology
List of titles of different occupations, clay tablet from Shuruppak, Iraq. 2nd half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin

Tell Fara extends about a kilometer from north to south. The total area is about 120 hectares, with about 35 hectares of the mound being more than 3 meters above the surrounding plain, with a maximum of 9 meters. The site consists of two mounds, one larger than the other, separated by an old canal bed as well as a lower town. It was visited by William Loftus in 1850. Hermann Volrath Hilprecht conducted a brief survey in 1900. He found "copper goatheads; a copper, pre-Sargonid sword; a lamp in the shape of a bird; a very archaic seal cylinder; a number of pre-Sargonid tablets, and 60 incised plates of mother of pearl".[3] It was first excavated between 1902 and 1903 by Walter Andrae, Robert Koldewey and Friedrich Delitzsch of the German Oriental Society for eight months. They used a new "modern" system which involved excavating trenches 8 feet wide and 5 feet deep every few yards running across the entire width of the larger mound. If a building wall was found in a trench it was further explored. Preliminary identification of the site as Suruppak came from a Ur III period clay nail which mentioned "Haladda, son of Dada, the patesi of Shuruppak (written SU.KUR.RUki) repaired the ADUS of the Great Gate of the god Shuruppak (written dSU.KUR.RU-da)". Among other finds, roughly 1000 cuneiform tablets of Early Dynastic III period were collected, which ended up in the Berlin Museum and the Istanbul Museum. [4] About a thousand Early Dynastic clay sealings and fragments (used to secure doors and containers) were also found. Most from cylinder seals but 19 were from stamp seals.[5] In 1903 the site was visited by Edgar James Banks who was excavating at the site of Adab, a four hour walk to the north. Banks took photographs of the German trenches and noted a 20 foot in diameter well, constructed with plano-convex bricks, in the center of the larger mound as well as an arched sewer, similarly constructed. The latter was where tablets were found. Banks also noted that the smaller mound held a cemetery.[6]

Bill of sale Louvre AO3765

In 1926 it was visited by Raymond P, Dougherty during his archaeological survey of the region.[7] In March and April 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 being prompted by reports of illicit excavations in the area. They were able to stratify the major occupation levels as Jemdat Nasr (Fara I), Early Dynastic (Fara II), and Ur III empire (Fara III). There was an "innundation event" between Fara I and Fara II.[3][8] The excavation recovered 87 tablets and fragments—mostly from pre-Sargonic times—biconvex, and unbaked. The tablets included reference to Shuruppak enabling confirmation of the sites original name.[9]

Pig-shaped rattle from Shuruppak, Iraq. Baked clay. Early Dynastic period, 2500-2350 BCE. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin

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 Jemdet Nasr period, expanded greatly in the Early Dynastic period, and was also an element of the Akkadian Empire and the Third Dynasty of Ur.[10]

A surface survey and a full magnetometer survey of the site was completed was conducted between 2016 and 2018 by a team from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich led by Adelheid Otto and Berthold Einwag. The initial work was under the regional QADIS survey.[11] A drone was used to create a digital elevation model of the site.[12] The researchers found thousands of robber holes left by looters which had disturbed surface in many places, with the top several meters of the main mound destroyed.[13] They were able to use remains of the 900 meter long trench left by excavators in 1902 and 1903 to orient old excavation documents and aerial mapping with their geomagnetic results. Part of the site was inaccessible because of the spoil heaps from the excavations. A city wall was found (in Area A), which had been missed in the past.[14][15] A harbor and quay were also found.[16]

Several objects made of arsenical copper were found in Shuruppak/Fara dating to the Jemdet Nasr period (c. 2900 BC). Similar objects were also found at Tepe Gawra (levels XII-VIII).[17]

History
Summary account of silver for the governor written in Sumerian Cuneiform on a clay tablet. From Shuruppak, Iraq, circa 2500 BC. British Museum, London.

The earliest excavated levels at Shuruppak date to the Jemdet Nasr period about 3000 BC. The city rose in importance and size, exceeding 40 hectares, during the Early Dynastic period. Cuneiform tablets from the Early Dynastic III period show a thriving, military oriented economy with links to cities throughout the region.[18] Like most cities on the Euphrates, it declined during the Akkadian Empire.[19] During Ur III period the city was ruled by a governors (ensi2) appointed by Ur. One is known to be Ur-nigar, son of Shulgi, first rulers of Ur III. One of the tablets found at the site is dated by a year name to the beginning of the reign of Shu-Sin, next to last ruler of Ur III.[20] It is thought to have been abandoned shortly after 2000 BC though one Isin-Larsa cylinder seal and several pottery plaques which may date to early in the second millennium BC were found at the site.[21] Surface finds are predominantly Early Dynastic.[22] In the 2nd year of Enlil-bani (c. 1860 – 1837 BC), ruler of Isin, a sage of Nippur is recorded as leaving an herbal medicine at Shurappak.[23]

Aside from a few governors under the Ur III Empire no rulers of Shuruppak are known from contemporary epigraphic remains. In much later literary compositions several purported rulers are mentioned. In the Sumerian King List is a ruler, Ubara-Tutu, the last ruler "before the flood". In some versions he is followed by a son, Ziusudra.[24] In later versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh, a man named Utanapishtim, son of Ubara-Tutu, is noted to be king of Shuruppak. This portion of Gilgamesh is thought to have been taken from another literary composition, the Myth of Atrahasis.[25]

Flood

The report of the 1930s excavation mentions a layer of flood deposits at the end of the Jemdet Nasr period at Shuruppak. Shuruppak in Mesopotamian legend is one of the "antediluvian" cities and the home of King Uta-napishtim, who survives the flood by making a boat beforehand. The flood story of the Bible, Schmidt wrote,[3]

seems to be based on a very real event or a series of such, as suggested by the existence at Ur, at Kish, and now at Fara, of inundation deposits, which accumulated on top of human inhabitation. There is finally “the Noah story,” which may possibly symbolize the survival of the Sumerian culture and the end of the Elamite Jemdet Nasr culture.

The deposit is like that deposited by river avulsions, a process that was common in the Tigris–Euphrates river system.[26][27]

See also

References
  1. Jacobsen, Thorkild (1 January 1987). The Harps that Once--: Sumerian Poetry in Translation. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07278-5.
  2. Leick, Gwendolyn (2002). Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-026574-0.
  3. Schmidt, Erich (1931). "Excavations at Fara, 1931". University of Pennsylvania's Museum Journal. 2: 193–217.
  4. Heinrich, Ernst; Andrae, Walter, eds. (1931). Fara, Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft in Fara und Abu Hatab. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
  5. R.J.Matthews, "Fragments of Officialdom from Fara", Iraq, vol. 53, pp. 1–15, 1991
  6. Edgar James Banks, "Bismya; or The lost city of Adab : a story of adventure, of exploration, and of excavation among the ruins of the oldest of the buried cities of Babylonia", G. P Putnam's Sons, New York, 1912
  7. Dougherty, Raymond P, "An Archéological Survey in Southern Babylonia I", Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 23, pp. 15–28, 1926
  8. Kramer, Samuel N. (1932). "New Tablets from Fara". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 52 (2): 110–132. doi:10.2307/593166. JSTOR 593166.
  9. Martin, Harriet P., "The Tablets of Shuruppak", in Le temple et le culte, Compte rendu de la vingtiĂšme Recontre Assyriologique Internationale, Leiden, pp. 173-182, 1975
  10. Martin, Harriet P. (1983). "Settlement Patterns at Shuruppak". Iraq. 45 (1): 24–31. doi:10.2307/4200173. JSTOR 4200173. S2CID 130046037.
  11. Marchetti, N., Einwag, B., Al-Hussainy, A., Luglio, G., Marchesi, G., Otto, A., Scazzosi, G., Leoni, E., Valeri, M. and Zaina, F., "QADIS. The Iraqi-Italian 2016 Survey Season in the South-Eastern Region of Qadisiyah", Sumer 63, pp. 63−92, 2017
  12. Otto, A., & Einwag, B., "The survey at Fara - Ơuruppak 2016-2018", In Otto, A., Herles, M., Kaniuth, K., Korn, L., & Heidenreich, A. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Vol. 2. Wiesbaden, pp. 293–306. Harrassowitz Verlag, 2020
  13. Otto, A., Einwag, B., Al-Hussainy, A., Jawdat, J.A.H., Fink, C. and Maaß, H., "Destruction and Looting of Archaeological Sites between Fāra / Ć uruppak and Iƥān BahrÄ«yāt / Isin: Damage Assessment during the Fara Regional Survey Project FARSUP", Sumer 64, pp. 35−48, 2018
  14. Otto, A., Einwag, B., Al-Hussainy, A., Jawdat, J. A. H., Fink, C., & Maaß, H., "Destruction and looting of archaeological sites betweenFara/ˇSuruppak and Iˇsan BahrÄ«yat/Isin damage assessment during the Fara Regional Survey Project FARSUP", Sumer,64, pp. 35–48, 2018
  15. Hahn, Sandra E.; Fassbinder, Jörg W. E.; Otto, Adelheid; Einwag, Berthold; Al‐Hussainy, Abbas Ali (2022). "Revisiting Fara: Comparison of merged prospection results of diverse magnetometers with the earliest excavations in ancient Ć uruppak from 120 years ago". Archaeological Prospection. 29 (4): 623–635. doi:10.1002/arp.1878. S2CID 252827382.
  16. Fassbinder, Jörg, Sandra Hahn, and Marco Wolf, "Prospecting in the marshland: the Sumerian city Fara-Ơuruppak (Iraq)", Advances in On-and Offshore Archaeological Prospection: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Archaeological Prospection, 2023
  17. Daniel T. Potts, Mesopotamian Civilization: The Material Foundations. Cornell University Press, 1997 ISBN 0801433398 p167
  18. Jacobsen, Thorkild and Moran, William L., "Early Political Development in Mesopotamia", Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture, Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, pp. 132-156, 1970
  19. Marchetti, NicolĂČ, Al-Hussainy, Abbas, Benati, Giacomo, Luglio, Giampaolo, Scazzosi, Giulia, Valeri, Marco and Zaina, Federico, "The Rise of Urbanized Landscapes in Mesopotamia: The QADIS Integrated Survey Results and the Interpretation of Multi-Layered Historical Landscapes", Zeitschrift fĂŒr Assyriologie und vorderasiatische ArchĂ€ologie, vol. 109, no. 2, pp. 214-237, 2019
  20. Sharlach, Tonia, "Princely Employments in the Reign of Shulgi", Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1-68, 2022
  21. Martin, Harriet P. (1988). FARA: A reconstruction of the Ancient Mesopotamian City of Shuruppak. Birmingham, UK: Chris Martin & Assoc. p. 44, p. 117 and seal no. 579. ISBN 0-907695-02-7.
  22. Adams, Robert McC. (1981). Heartland of Cities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fig. 33 compared with Fig. 21. ISBN 0-226-00544-5.
  23. Rochberg, Francesca, "The Babylonians and the Rational: Reasoning in Cuneiform Scribal Scholarship", In the Wake of the Compendia: Infrastructural Contexts and the Licensing of Empiricism in Ancient and Medieval Mesopotamia, edited by J. Cale Johnson, Berlin, MĂŒnchen, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 209-246, 2015
  24. Thorkild Jacobsen, "The Sumerian King List", The University Of Chicago Press Chicago Illinois, 1939
  25. Maureen Gallery Kovacs, "TABLET XI", The Epic of Gilgamesh, edited by , Redwood City: Stanford University Press, pp. 95-108, 1989
  26. Morozova, Galina S. (2005). "A review of Holocene avulsions of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and possible effects on the evolution of civilizations in lower Mesopotamia". Geoarchaeology. 20 (4): 401–423. doi:10.1002/gea.20057. ISSN 0883-6353. S2CID 129452555.
  27. William W. Hallo and William Kelly Simpson (1971). The Ancient Near East: A History.

Further reading
  • Andrae, W., "Aus einem Berichte W. Andrae's ĂŒber seineExkursion von Fara nach den sĂŒdbabylonischen RuinenstĂ€tten(TellǏd, Jǒcha und Hamam)", Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft,16, pp. 16–24, 1902 (in german)
  • Andrae, W., "Die Umgebung von Fara und Abu Hatab (Fara,Bismaja, Abu Hatab, Hˇetime, Dschidr und Juba’i)", Mitteilungen derDeutschen Orient-Gesellschaft,16, pp. 24–30, 1902 (in german)
  • Andrae, W., "Ausgrabungen in Fara und Abu Hatab. Bericht ĂŒber dieZeit vom 15. August 1902 bis 10. Januar 1903", Mitteilungen derDeutschen Orient-Gesellschaft,17, pp.4–35, 1903 (in german)
  • Foster, B., "Shuruppak and the Sumerian City State", in L. Kogan, N. Kosolova et.al. (eds.), Babel and Bibel 2. Memoriae Igor M. Diakonoff Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, pp.71–88, 2005
  • R. Jestin, "Tablettes sumĂ©riennes de Shuruppak conserves au MusĂ©e de Stamboul" Paris, 1937
  • Koldewey, R., "Acht Briefe Dr. Koldewey's (teilweise im Auszug)(Babylon, Fara und Abu Hatab)", Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft,15, pp. 6–24, 1902 (in german)
  • Koldewey, R., "Auszug aus fĂŒnf Briefen Dr. Koldewey's (Babylon,Fara und Abu Hatab)", Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft,16, pp. 8–15, 1902 (in german)
  • Krebernik, M., "Die Texte aus Fāra und Tell AbĆ« áčąalābÄ«áž«", In: J. Bauer, R. K. Englund and M. Krebernik (eds.), Mesopotamien. SpĂ€turuk-Zeit und FrĂŒhdynastische Zeit. OBO 160/1 (Freiburg–Göttingen), pp. 235−427, 1998
  • Krebernik, Manfred, "PrĂ€-Fara-zeitliche Texte aus Fara", Babel und Bibel 8: Studies in Sumerian Language and Literature: Festschrift Joachim Krecher, edited by Natalia Koslova, E. Vizirova and Gabor ZĂłlyomi, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, pp. 327-382, 2014
  • Lambert, Maurice, "Quatres nouveaux contrats de l’époque de Shuruppak", in: Manfred Lurker (ed.), BeitrĂ€ge zu Geschichte, Kultur und Religion des Alten Orients, In memoriam Eckhard Unger, Baden-Baden, pp. 27–40, 1971
  • M. Lambert, "La Periode pr6sargonique, la vie economique a Shuruppak", Sumer 9, pp. 202-205, 1953
  • Nöldeke, A., "Die RĂŒckkehr unserer Expedition aus Fara", Mitteilun-gen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft,17, pp. 35–44, 1903 (in german)
  • Pomponio, Francesco, "Notes on the Fara Texts", Orientalia 53.1, pp. 1-18, 1984
  • Pomponio, Francesco; Visicato, Giuseppe; Westenholz, Aage; Martin, Harriet P. (2001). The Fara Tablets in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. CDL Press. ISBN 1-883053-66-8.
  • Steible, H. and Yildiz, F., "Wirtschaftstexte aus Fara II", WVDOG 143, Wiesbaden, 2015
  • G. Visicato, "The Bureaucracy of Shuruppak : Administrative Centres, Central Offices, Intermediate Structures and Hierarchies in the Economic Documentation of Fara", MĂŒnster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995
  • Visicato, Giuseppe, "Some Aspects of the Administrative Organization of Fara", Orientalia, vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 94–99, 1992
  • Wencel, M. M., "New radiocarbon dates from southern Mesopotamia (Fara and Ur)", Iraq, 80, pp. 251-261, 2018
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