Abu Salabikh
Encyclopedia
The low tell
Tell
A tell or tel, is a type of archaeological mound created by human occupation and abandonment of a geographical site over many centuries. A classic tell looks like a low, truncated cone with a flat top and sloping sides.-Archaeology:A tell is a hill created by different civilizations living and...

s at Abu Salabikh, around 12 miles northwest of the site of ancient Nippur
Nippur
Nippur was one of the most ancient of all the Sumerian cities. It was the special seat of the worship of the Sumerian god Enlil, the "Lord Wind," ruler of the cosmos subject to An alone...

 in Al-Qādisiyyah province, Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

 mark the site of a small Sumerian city
History of Sumer
The history of Sumer, taken to include the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods, spans the 5th to 3rd millennia BC, ending with the downfall of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BC, followed by a transition period of Amorite states before the rise of Babylonia in the 18th century BC. The first...

 of the mid third millennium BCE, with cultural connections to the cities of Kish
Kish (Sumer)
Kish is modern Tell al-Uhaymir , and was an ancient city of Sumer. Kish is located some 12 km east of Babylon, and 80 km south of Baghdad ....

, Mari
Mari, Syria
Mari was an ancient Sumerian and Amorite city, located 11 kilometers north-west of the modern town of Abu Kamal on the western bank of Euphrates river, some 120 km southeast of Deir ez-Zor, Syria...

 and Ebla
Ebla
Ebla Idlib Governorate, Syria) was an ancient city about southwest of Aleppo. It was an important city-state in two periods, first in the late third millennium BC, then again between 1800 and 1650 BC....

. Its contemporary name is uncertain: perhaps this was Eresh.Kesh
Kesh (Sumer)
Kesh was an ancient Sumerian city and religious site, whose patron goddess was Ninhursag. Its location is uncertain; some of the possible sites put forth include Al-Ubaid, near Ur, or Tell al-Wilayah near Adab or Abu Salabikh. Robert D...

 has also been suggested.

The Euphrates
Euphrates
The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia...

 was the city's highway and lifeline; when it shifted its old bed, 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.

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.
The site was a British concern after 1975, under the direction of Nicholas Postgate
Nicholas Postgate
Blessed Nicholas Postgate was an English, Catholic priest. He is one of the 85 English Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales, beatified by Blessed Pope John Paul II, in November 1987....

 for the British School of Archaeology in Iraq
British School of Archaeology in Iraq
The British Institute for the Study of Iraq is the only body in Britain devoted to research into the ancient civilizations and languages of Mesopotamia....

 (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.

The city, built on a rectilinear plan in Early Uruk times
Uruk period
The Uruk period existed from the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia, following the Ubaid period and succeeded by the Jemdet Nasr period. Named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia. It was...

, revealed a small but important repertory of cuneiform
Cuneiform
Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...

 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
Shuruppak
Shuruppak or Shuruppag was an ancient Sumerian city situated about 35 miles south of Nippur on the banks of the Euphrates at the site of modern Tell Fara in Iraq's Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate....

 (modern Fara, Iraq) included school texts, literary texts, word lists, and some administrative archives, as well as the Instructions of Shuruppak
Instructions of Shuruppak
Instructions of Šuruppak is a significant piece of Sumerian wisdom literature. Wisdom literature, intended to teach proper piety, inculcate virtue, and preserve community standards, was common throughout the ancient Near East...

, a well-known Sumerian
Sumerian language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...

 "wisdom' text
Wisdom literature
Wisdom literature is the genre of literature common in the Ancient Near East. This genre is characterized by sayings of wisdom intended to teach about divinity and about virtue...

of which the Abu Salabikh tablet is the oldest copy.

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.

External links

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