Adab
Encyclopedia
Adab or Udab was an ancient Sumer
Sumer
Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....

ian city between Telloh and 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...

. It was located at the site of modern Bismaya or Bismya in the Wasit Governorate of 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....

.

History

Adab was occupied from at least the Early Dynastic period. According to 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...

 text Inanna's descent to the netherworld, there was a temple of Inanna
Inanna
Inanna, also spelled Inana is the Sumerian goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare....

 named E-shar at Adab during the reign of Dumuzid
Dumuzid
Dumuzid can refer to:*Dumuzid the Shepherd, an antediluvian king according to Sumerian mythology;*Dumuzid the Fisherman, a king of the 1st Dynasty of Uruk named on the Sumerian king list;...

 of Uruk
Uruk
Uruk was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, on the ancient dry former channel of the Euphrates River, some 30 km east of modern As-Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Uruk gave its name to the Uruk...

. In another text in the same series, Dumuzid's dream, Dumuzid of Uruk is toppled from his opulence by a hungry mob composed of men from the major cities of Sumer, including Adab.

A king 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 ....

, Mesilim
Mesilim
Mesilim or Mesalim was lugal of the Sumerian city-state of Kish.Though his name is missing from the Sumerian king list, Mesilim is among the earliest historical figures recorded in archaeological documents. He was a monarch in the 3rd Dynasty of Kish, reigning some time in the "Early Dynastic...

, appears to have ruled at Adab, based on inscriptions found at Bismaya. One king of Adab, Lugal-Anne-Mundu
Lugal-Anne-Mundu
Lugal-Anne-Mundu was the most important king of the city-state Adab in Sumer. The Sumerian king list claims he reigned for 90 years, following the defeat of Meskiaj-nanna of Ur...

, appearing in the Sumerian King List
Sumerian king list
The Sumerian King List is an ancient manuscript originally recorded in the Sumerian language, listing kings of Sumer from Sumerian and neighboring dynasties, their supposed reign lengths, and the locations of "official" kingship...

, is mentioned in few contemporary inscriptions; some that are much later copies claim that he established a vast, but brief empire stretching from Elam
Elam
Elam was an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran. Elam was centered in the far west and the southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province, as well as a small part of southern Iraq...

 all the way to Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

 and the Amorite
Amorite
Amorite refers to an ancient Semitic people who occupied large parts of Mesopotamia from the 21st Century BC...

 territories along the Jordan. Adab is also mentioned in some of the Ebla tablets
Ebla tablets
The Ebla tablets are a collection of as many as 1800 complete clay tablets, 4700 fragments and many thousand minor chips found in the palace archives of the ancient city of Ebla, Syria. The tablets were discovered by Italian archaeologist Paolo Matthiae and his team in 1974–75 during their...

 from roughly the same era as a trading partner of 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....

 in northern Syria, shortly before Ebla was destroyed by unknown forces.

A marble statue was found at Bismaya inscribed with the name of another king of Adab, variously translated as Lugal-daudu, Da-udu, Lugaldalu, and Esar.
Brick stamps, found by Banks during his excavation of Adab state that the Akkadian ruler Naram-Suen
Naram-Suen
Naram-Suen may refer to any of four kings in the history of Mesopotamia:* Naram-Sin of Akkad , an Akkadian king, the most famous of the four* Naram-Sin of Assyria , an Assyrian king* Naram-Sin of Uruk , a king of Uruk known from...

 built a temple to Inanna at Adab, but the temple was not found during the dig, and is not known for certain to be E-shar.

Several governors of the city under Ur III are also known. While no later archaeological evidence was found at Bismaya, the excavations there were brief, and there were later epigraphic references to Adab, such as in the Code of Hammurabi
Code of Hammurabi
The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved Babylonian law code, dating to ca. 1780 BC . It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world. The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay...

.

Archaeology

A group of ruin mounds are what remains of the ancient city. The mounds are about 1.5 km (0.93205910497471 mi) long and two miles (3 km) wide, consisting of a number of low ridges, nowhere exceeding 12 m (40 ft) in height, lying in the Jezireh, somewhat nearer to the Tigris
Tigris
The Tigris River is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq.-Geography:...

 than 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...

, about a day's journey to the south-east of Nippur.

Initial excavations of the site of Bismaya were by William Hayes Ward
William Hayes Ward
William Hayes Ward was an American clergyman, editor, and Orientalist, born at Abington, Mass.He graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, in 1852, Amherst College in 1856, and the Andover Theological Seminary in 1859. He served as pastor of a church at Oskaloosa, Kans. in 1859-60, and as...

 of
the Wolfe Expedition in 1885 and by John Punnett Peters of the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

 in 1889.
Excavations conducted there for six months, from Christmas of 1903 to June 1904, for the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, by Dr. Edgar James Banks
Edgar James Banks
Edgar James Banks . American diplomat, antiquarian and novelist. Banks was an antiquities enthusiast and entrepreneurial roving archaeologist in the closing days of the Ottoman Empire, who has been held up as an original for the fictional composite figure of Indiana Jones...

, proved that these mounds covered the site of the ancient city of Adab (Ud-Nun), hitherto known only from the Sumerian king list
Sumerian king list
The Sumerian King List is an ancient manuscript originally recorded in the Sumerian language, listing kings of Sumer from Sumerian and neighboring dynasties, their supposed reign lengths, and the locations of "official" kingship...

 and a brief mention of its name in the introduction to the Hammurabi Code . The city was divided into two parts by a canal
Canal
Canals are man-made channels for water. There are two types of canal:#Waterways: navigable transportation canals used for carrying ships and boats shipping goods and conveying people, further subdivided into two kinds:...

, on an island in which stood the temple
É (temple)
É is the Sumerian word or symbol for house or temple, written ideographically with the cuneiform sign .The Sumerian term É.GAL denoted a city's main building....

, E-mach, with a ziggurat
Ziggurat
Ziggurats were massive structures built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels.Notable ziggurats include the Great Ziggurat of Ur near Nasiriyah, Iraq; the Ziggurat of Aqar Quf near...

, or stepped tower. It was evidently once a city of considerable importance, but deserted at a very early period, since the ruins found close to the surface of the mounds belong to Shulgi
Shulgi
Shulgi of Urim was the second king of the "Sumerian Renaissance". He reigned for 48 years, dated to 2029 BCE–1982 BCE...

 and Ur-Nammu
Ur-Nammu
Ur-Nammu founded the Sumerian 3rd dynasty of Ur, in southern Mesopotamia, following several centuries of Akkadian and Gutian rule...

, kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur
Third Dynasty of Ur
The Third Dynasty of Ur, also known as the Neo-Sumerian Empire or the Ur III Empire refers simultaneously to a 21st to 20th century BC Sumerian ruling dynasty based in the city of Ur and a short-lived territorial-political state that some historians regard as a nascent empire...

 in the latter part of the third millennium B.C, based on inscribed bricks excavated at Bismaya. Immediately below these, as at 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...

, were found artifacts dating to the reign of Naram-Suen
Naram-Suen
Naram-Suen may refer to any of four kings in the history of Mesopotamia:* Naram-Sin of Akkad , an Akkadian king, the most famous of the four* Naram-Sin of Assyria , an Assyrian king* Naram-Sin of Uruk , a king of Uruk known from...

 and Sargon of Akkad
Sargon of Akkad
Sargon of Akkad, also known as Sargon the Great "the Great King" , was an Akkadian emperor famous for his conquest of the Sumerian city-states in the 23rd and 22nd centuries BC. The founder of the Dynasty of Akkad, Sargon reigned in the last quarter of the third millennium BC...

, ca. 2300 BC. Below these there were still 10.5 m (35 ft) of stratified remains, constituting seven-eighths of the total depth of the ruins. Besides the remains of buildings, walls and graves, Dr. Banks discovered a large number of inscribed clay tablets of a very early period, bronze and stone tablets, bronze implements and the like.
Of the tablets, 543 went to the Oriental Institute
Oriental Institute
Oriental Institute may refer to a number of institutes of Oriental studies:United States* Oriental Institute, Chicago, part of the University of ChicagoEngland* Oriental Institute, Oxford, part of the University of Oxford...

 and roughly 1100, mostly purchased from the locals rather than excavated, went to the Istanbul Museum. The latter are still apparently unpublished.

But the two most notable discoveries were a complete statue in white marble, apparently the earliest yet found in Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

, now in the museum in Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

, bearing the inscription,
translated by Banks as "E-mach, King Da-udu, King of, Ud-Nun";

and a temple refuse heap, consisting of great quantities of fragments of vases in marble, alabaster
Alabaster
Alabaster is a name applied to varieties of two distinct minerals, when used as a material: gypsum and calcite . The former is the alabaster of the present day; generally, the latter is the alabaster of the ancients...

, onyx
Onyx
Onyx is a banded variety of chalcedony. The colors of its bands range from white to almost every color . Commonly, specimens of onyx contain bands of black and/or white.-Etymology:...

, porphyry
Porphyry (geology)
Porphyry is a variety of igneous rock consisting of large-grained crystals, such as feldspar or quartz, dispersed in a fine-grained feldspathic matrix or groundmass. The larger crystals are called phenocrysts...

 and granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

, some of which were inscribed, and others engraved and inlaid with ivory
Ivory
Ivory is a term for dentine, which constitutes the bulk of the teeth and tusks of animals, when used as a material for art or manufacturing. Ivory has been important since ancient times for making a range of items, from ivory carvings to false teeth, fans, dominoes, joint tubes, piano keys and...

 and precious stones.

Of the Adab tablets that ended up at the University of Chicago, sponsor of the
excavations, all have been published and also made available in digital form
online. Of the purchased tablets sold piecemeal to various owners, a few have also made their way into publication.

There is a 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...

comic tale of the Three Ox-drivers from Adab.

External links

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