Abu Salabikh

Abu Salabikh
Shown within Iraq
Location Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Iraq
Region Mesopotamia
Coordinates 32°16′00″N 45°05′00″E / 32.26667°N 45.08333°E / 32.26667; 45.08333Coordinates: 32°16′00″N 45°05′00″E / 32.26667°N 45.08333°E / 32.26667; 45.08333
Type Settlement
History
Founded Middle of the third millennium BCE

The low tells at Abu Salabikh, around 20 km (12 mi) northwest of the site of ancient Nippur in Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Iraq mark the site of a small Sumerian city of the mid third millennium BCE,[1] with cultural connections to the cities of Kish, Mari and Ebla.[2] Its contemporary name is uncertain: perhaps this was Eresh.[3] Kesh has also been suggested. The Euphrates was the city's highway and lifeline; when it shifted its old bed,[4] in the middle third millennium BCE, the city dwindled away. Only eroded traces remain on the site's surface of habitation after the Early Dynastic Period of Sumer.[5]

Archaeology

Abu Salabikh was excavated by an American expedition from the Oriental Institute of Chicago led by Donald P. Hansen in 1963 and 1965 for a total of 8 weeks, finding around 500 tablets and fragments. [6] The site was a British concern after 1975, under the direction of Nicholas Postgate for the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (1975–89), after which excavations were suspended with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990; "plans to resume fieldwork have now been abandoned in the light of current political conditions" Postgate reports.[7] The city, built on a rectilinear plan in Early Uruk times, revealed a small but important repertory of cuneiform texts on some 500 tablets, of which the originals were stored in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad, and were largely lost when the museum was looted in the early stages of the Second Iraq War; fortunately they had been carefully published. Texts, comparable in date and content with texts from Shuruppak (modern Fara, Iraq) included school texts, literary texts,[8] word lists, and some administrative archives, as well as the Instructions of Shuruppak, a well-known Sumerian "wisdom' text of which the Abu Salabikh tablet is the oldest copy. A list of deities includes the oldest known mention of the Semitic god Baʿal.[9] Postgate's interdisciplinary approach was integrated under the broad aim of describing the daily life of a small Sumerican city, down to the lives of the simplest illiterate inhabitants.[10]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ↑ Ian Shaw, in Shaw and Robert Jameson, eds., A Dictionary of Archaeology (Blackwell) 2002, s.v. "Abu Salabikh".
  2. ↑ P. R. S. Moorey, "Abu Salabikh, Kish, Mari and Ebla: Mid-Third Millennium Archaeological Interconnections", American Journal of Archaeology 85.4 (October 1981:447–448).
  3. ↑ Roger Matthews, The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: Theories and Approaches (Routledge) 2003:163; see also Mark E. Cohen's speculation in note below
  4. ↑ Identified to the west of the Main Mound by coring techniques.
  5. ↑ "Occupation ceased at the end of Early Dynastic IIIa, or shortly thereafter, and the site was never reoccupied:", concludes D. Hanson in Oriental Institute Papers 99, p. 55).
  6. ↑ R. D. Biggs, with a chapter by D. P. Hansen. Inscriptions from Tell Abu Salabikh, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), 1974 ISBN 0-226-62202-9. Transcribes all of the cuneiform tablets excavated at Tell Abu Salabikh in 1963 and 1965. (also available online OIP 99
  7. ↑ Prof. Nicholas Postgate Archived April 12, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.: Postgate turned his attention to the multiperiod site at Kilise Tepe, in the province of Mersin in southern Turkey.
  8. ↑ "We are now able to behold the earliest creative period of Sumerian belles lettres", remarked Mark E. Cohen in 1976 (Cohen, "The Name Nintinugga with a Note on the Possible Identification of Tell Abu Salābīkh" Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 28.2 [April 1976:82–92]). Cohen identifies the contemporaneous name of the city, from the "zà-mì hymns", as Gišgikidu, "Gišgi, the good place".
  9. ↑ Herrmann (1999), p. 132.
  10. ↑ Postgate summarized the discoveries at Abu Salabikh in the relevant article in J. Curtis, ed., Fifty Years of Mesopotamian Discovery(London) 1982:48–61.

Bibliography

Further reading

External links

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