Shuruppak (Sumerian:𒋢𒆳𒊒𒆠ŠuruppagKI, SU.KUR.RUki, "the healing place"), modernTell Fara, was an ancientSumerian city situated about 55 kilometres (35 mi) south ofNippur and 30 kilometers north of ancientUruk on the banks of theEuphrates inIraq'sAl-Qādisiyyah Governorate. Shuruppak was dedicated toNinlil, also called Sud, the goddess of grain and the air.[1] The Early Dynastic IIIa period is also sometimes called the Fara period. Not to be confused with the Levantine archaeological siteTell el-Far'ah (South).
"Shuruppak" is sometimes also the name of a king of the city, legendary survivor ofthe Flood, and supposed author of theInstructions of Shuruppak".
The earliest excavated levels at Shuruppak date to the Jemdet Nasr period about 3000 BC. Several objects made ofarsenical copper were found in Shuruppak/Fara dating to theJemdet Nasr period (c. 2900 BC). Similar objects were also found atTepe Gawra (levels XII-VIII).[2]
The city rose in importance and size, exceeding 40 hectares(0.4km2), during the Early Dynastic period.
In theSumerian King List is a ruler,Ubara-Tutu, the last ruler "before the flood". In some versions he is followed by a son,Ziusudra.[3] In later versions of theEpic of Gilgamesh, a man namedUtnapishtim, 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 ofAtrahasis.[4]
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.[5]
Cuneiform tablets from the Early Dynastic III period show a thriving, military oriented economy with links to cities throughout the region.[6] It has been proposed that Fara was part of a "hexapolis" withLagash,Nippur,Uruk,Adab, andUmma, possibly under the leadership of Kish.[7][8] It has been proposed that in the Early Dynastic IIIa period Shuruppak had passed from the control of Kish to that of Uruk and was part of joint military operations against Kish (with Adab, Nippur, Lagaš, Umma) under the leadership of Uruk.[9]
DuringUr III period (c. 2112-2004 BC), the city was ruled by a governors (ensi2) appointed by Ur. One is known to be Ur-nigar, son ofShulgi, 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 ofShu-Sin, next to last ruler of Ur III.[12] A few governors of Shurappak under the Ur III Empire are known from contemporary epigraphic remains, Ku-Nanna, Lugal-hedu, Ur-nigin-gar, and Ur-Ninkura.[13] In much later literary compositions several purported rulers are mentioned.
The report of the 1930s excavation mentions a layer of flood deposits at the end of theJemdet Nasr period at Shuruppak. Shuruppak in Mesopotamian legend is one of the "antediluvian" cities and the home of KingUtnapishtim, who survives the flood by making a boat beforehand. Schmidt wrote that theflood story of the Bible,[17]
seems to be based on a very real event or a series of such, as suggested by the existence atUr, atKish, and now at Fara, of inundation deposits, which accumulated on top of human inhabitation. There is finally “theNoah story,” which may possibly symbolize the survival of the Sumerian culture and the end of theElamite Jemdet Nasr culture.
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 three 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 byWilliam Loftus in 1850.[20]Hermann Volrath Hilprecht conducted a brief survey in 1900.[21] He found "copper goatheads; a copper, pre-Sargonid sword; a lamp in the shape of a bird; a very archaic seal cylinder; a number ofpre-Sargonid tablets, and 60 incised plates of mother of pearl".[17]
It was first excavated between 1902 and 1903 by Walter Andrae,Robert Koldewey andFriedrich Delitzsch of theGerman 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 (writtendSU.KUR.RU-da)". Among other finds, 847 cuneiform tablets and 133 tablet fragments ofEarly Dynastic III period were collected, which ended up in the Berlin Museum and the Istanbul Museum. They included administrative, legal, lexical, and literary texts. Over 100 of the tablets dealt with the disbursement of rations to workers.[22] 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.[23] In 1903 the site was visited byEdgar James Banks who was excavating at the site ofAdab, 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.[24]
Bill of sale Louvre AO3765
In 1926 it was visited by Raymond P, Dougherty during his archaeological survey of the region.[25] In March and April 1931, a joint team of theAmerican Schools of Oriental Research and theUniversity of Pennsylvania excavated Shuruppak for a further six week season, withErich Schmidt as director and with epigraphistSamuel 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 "inundation event" between Fara I and Fara II.[17][26] The excavation recovered 96 tablets and fragments—mostly from pre-Sargonic times—biconvex, and unbaked. The tablets included reference to Shuruppak enabling confirmation of the sites original name.[27]
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 theJemdet Nasr period, expanded greatly in theEarly Dynastic period, and was also an element of theAkkadian Empire and theThird Dynasty of Ur.[28]
A surface survey and a full magnetometer survey of the site was completed was conducted between 2016 and 2018 by a team from theLudwig Maximilian University of Munich led by Adelheid Otto and Berthold Einwag. The initial work was under the regional QADIS survey.[29] A drone was used to create a digital elevation model of the site.[30] 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.[31] 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.[31][32] A harbor and quay were also found.[33]
Said on theSumerian King List (SKL) to have held the title of,"King" of not just Shuruppak; but, to have held the"Kingship" overall of Sumer
He has been compared with the Biblical patriarchMethuselah
Historicity uncertain
"1 king; he ruled for 18,600 years. In 5 cities 8 kings; they ruled for 241,200 years. Then theflood swept over. After the flood had swept over, and the kingship had descended fromheaven, the kingship was inKish."
^Maureen Gallery Kovacs, "TABLET XI", The Epic of Gilgamesh, edited by, Redwood City: Stanford University Press, pp. 95-108, 1989
^Leick, Gwendolyn (2002).Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City. London: Penguin.ISBN0-14-026574-0.
^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
^Pomponio, Francesco & Visicato Giuseppe, "Early Dynastic Administrative Tablets of Šuruppak", Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientalo di Napoli, 1994
^Steinkeller, Piotr, "A Campaign of Southern City-States against Kiš as Documented in the ED IIIa Sources from Šuruppak (Fara)", Journal of Cuneiform Studies 76.1, pp. 3-26, 2024
^Marchetti, Nicolò, 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 für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie, vol. 109, no. 2, pp. 214-237, 2019
^Sharlach, Tonia, "Princely Employments in the Reign of Shulgi", Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1-68, 2022
^Frayne, Douglas, "Table III: List of Ur III Period Governors", Ur III Period (2112-2004 BC), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. xli-xliv, 1997
^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.ISBN0-907695-02-7.
^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, München, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 209-246, 2015
^Heinrich, Ernst; Andrae, Walter, eds. (1931).Fara, Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft in Fara und Abu Hatab. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
^R.J.Matthews, "Fragments of Officialdom from Fara", Iraq, vol. 53, pp. 1–15, 1991
^Dougherty, Raymond P, "An Archæological Survey in Southern Babylonia I", Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 23, pp. 15–28, 1926
^Martin, Harriet P., "The Tablets of Shuruppak", in Le temple et le culte, Compte rendu de la vingtième Recontre Assyriologique Internationale, Leiden, pp. 173-182, 1975
^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
^Otto, A., & Einwag, B., "The survey at Fara - Šuruppak 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
^abOtto, A., Einwag, B., Al-Hussainy, A., Jawdat, J.A.H., Fink, C. and Maaß, H., "Destruction and Looting of Archaeological Sites between Fāra / Šuruppak and Išān Bahrīyāt / Isin: Damage Assessment during the Fara Regional Survey Project FARSUP", Sumer 64, pp. 35−48, 2018
Andrae, W., "Aus einem Berichte W. Andrae's über seineExkursion von Fara nach den südbabylonischen Ruinenstätten(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 über dieZeit vom 15. August 1902 bis 10. Januar 1903", Mitteilungen derDeutschen Orient-Gesellschaft,17, pp.4–35, 1903 (in German)
Cavigneaux, A., "Deux noveaux contrats de Fāra", in I. Arkhipov – L. Kogan – N. Koslova (eds), The Third Millennium. Studies in Early Mesopotamia and Syria in Honor of Walter Sommerfeld and Manfred Krebernik (Cuneiform Monographs 50), Leiden, pp. 240–258, 2020
[1]Anton Deimel, "Die Inschriften von Fara, Vol. II: Schultexte aus Fara", Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, Berlin, Wissenschaftliche Ver6ffentlichungen, Vol. XLIII, Leipzig, 1923
Anton Deimel, "Die Inschriften von Fara, Vol. III: Wirtschaftstexte aus Fara", Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, Berlin. Wissenschaftliche Ver6ffentlichungen, Vol. XLV, Leipzig, 1924
Edzard, D. O., "Fara und Abu Salabih. Die 'Wirtschaftstexte'", ZA 66, pp. 156-195, 1976
Edzard, D. O., "Die Archive von Šuruppag (FĀRA): Umfang und Grenzen der Auswertbarkeit", in E. Lipiñski, State and Temple Economy in the Ancient Near East. Vol. 1. OLA 5, Leuven: Department Oriëntalistiek, pp. 153-169, 1979
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
[2]Gori, Fiammetta, "Numeracy in early syro-mesopotamia. A study of accounting practices from Fāra to Ebla", University of Verona Disertation, 2024
Jabbar, Sattar A., "Excavations of German archaeological Expeditions In Al-Qadisiyah Governorate/Iraq (Isin, Tell Fara, Tell Abu Hatab)", Al-Qadisiyah Journal For Humanities Sciences 22.1, pp. 285-301, 2019
R. Jestin, "Tablettes sumériennes de Shuruppak conserves au Musée de Stamboul" Paris, 1937
Jestin, R., "Nouvelles tablettes sumériennes de Suruppak au musée d'Istanbul", Paris, 1957
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 fünf 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 Abū Ṣalābīḫ", In: J. Bauer, R. K. Englund and M. Krebernik (eds.), Mesopotamien. Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdynastische Zeit. OBO 160/1 (Freiburg–Göttingen), pp. 235−427, 1998
Krebernik, Manfred, "Prä-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 Zólyomi, 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.), Beiträge 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
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Steible, H. – Yıldız, F., "Kupfer an ein Herdenmat in Šuruppak?", in Ö. Tunca – D. Deheselle (eds), Tablettes et images aux pays de Sumer et Akkad. Mélanges offerts à Monsieur H. Limet, Liège, pp. 149-159, 1996
Steible, H. – Yıldız, F., "Lapislazuli-Zuteilungen an die “Prominenz” von Šuruppak", in S. Graziani (ed.), Studi sul Vicino Oriente Antico dedicati alla memoria di Luigi Cagni, Napoli, pp.985–1031, 2000
G. Visicato, "The Bureaucracy of Shuruppak : Administrative Centres, Central Offices, Intermediate Structures and Hierarchies in the Economic Documentation of Fara", Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995
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