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NIPPUR
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NIPPUR , one of the most See also:ancient of all the Babylonian cities of which we have any knowledge, the See also:special seat of the See also:worship of the Sumerian See also:god, En-lil, See also:lord of the See also:storm demons. It was situated on both sides of the Shatt-en-Nil See also:canal, one of the earliest courses of the See also:Euphrates, between the See also:present See also:bed of that See also:river and the See also:Tigris, almost too m. S.E. of See also:Bagdad, in 32° 7' N. 450 10' E. It is represented by the See also:great complex of ruin mounds known to the See also:Arabs as Nuffar, written by the earlier explorers Niffer, divided into two See also:main parts by the dry bed of the old Shatt-en-Nil (Arakhat). The highest point of these ruins, a conical See also: Hilprecht. The result of their See also:work is a fairly continuous See also:history of Nippur, and especially of its great See also:temple, E-kur, from the earliest See also:period. Originally a See also:village of See also:reed huts in the marshes, similar to many of those which can be seen in that region to-See also:day, Nippur under-went the usual vicissitudes of such villages—floods and conflagrations. For some See also:reason habitation persisted at the same spot, and gradually the site See also:rose above the marshes, partly as a result of the See also:mere See also:accumulation of debris, consequent on continuous habitation, partly through the efforts of the inhabitants. As these began to develop in See also:civilization, they substituted, at least so far as their See also:shrine was concerned, buildings of mud-See also:brick for reed huts. The earliest See also:age of civilization, which we may designate as the See also:clay age, is marked by See also:rude, See also:hand-made pottery and thumb-marked bricks, See also:flat on one See also:side, See also:concave on the other, gradually developing through several fairly marked stages. The exact See also:form of the See also:sanctuary at that period cannot be determined, but it seems to have been in some way connected with the burning of the dead, and extensive remains of such See also:cremation are found in all the earlier, pre-Sargonic strata. There is See also:evidence of the See also:succession on this site of different peoples, varying somewhat in their degrees of civilization. One stratum is marked by painted pottery of See also:good make, similar to that found in a corresponding stratum in See also:Susa, and resembling the See also:early pottery of the See also:Aegean NIPPUR 707 region more closely than any later pottery found in Babylonia. This See also:people gave way in See also:time to another, markedly inferior in the manufacture of pottery, but See also:superior, apparently, as builders. In one of these earlier strata, of very great antiquity, there was discovered, in connexion with the shrine, a conduit built of bricks, in the form of an See also:arch. Somewhere, apparently, in the 4th See also:millennium inc., we begin to find See also:inscriptions written on clay, in an almost linear script, in the Sumerian See also:tongue. The shrine at this time stood on a raised See also:platform and apparently contained, as a characteristic feature, an artificial See also:mountain or See also:peak, a so-called ziggurat, the precise shape and See also:size of which we are, however, unable to determine. So far as we can See also:judge from the inscriptions, Nippur did not enjoy at this time, or at any later period for that See also:matter, See also:political See also:hegemony, but was distinctively a sacred See also:city, important from the See also:possession of the famous shrine of En-lil. Inscriptions of Lugal-zaggisi and Lugal-kigub-nidudu, See also:kings of See also:Erech and Ur respectively, and of other early pre-Semitic rulers, on See also:door-sockets and See also: To the north-east of the ziggurat stood, apparently, the See also:House of Bel, and in the courts below the ziggurat stood various other buildings, shrines, treasure See also:chambers and the like. The whole structure was roughly orientated, with the corners towards the See also:cardinal points of the See also:compass. Ur-Gur also rebuilt the walls of the city in See also:general on the See also:line of Naram-Sin's walls.
The restoration of the general features of the temple of this and the immediately succeeding periods has been greatly facilitated by the See also:discovery of a See also:sketch See also:map on a fragment of a clay tablet. This sketch map represents a See also:quarter of the city to the eastward of the Shatt-en-Nil canal, which was enclosed within its own walls, a city within a city, forming an irregular square, with sides roughly 2700 ft. See also:long, separated from the other quarters of the city, as from the surrounding See also:country to the north and east, by canals on all sides, with broad quays along the walls. A smaller canal divided this quarter of the city itself into two parts, in the south-eastern See also:part of which, in the See also:middle of its S.E. side, stood the temple, while in the N.W. part, along the Shatt-en-Nil, two great storehouses are indicated. The temple proper, according to this See also:plan, consisted of an See also:outer and inner court (each covering approximately 8 acres), surrounded by See also:double walls, with ziggurat on the north-western edge of the latter.
The temple continued to be built upon or rebuilt by kings of various succeeding dynasties, as shown by bricks and votive objects bearing the inscriptions of the kings of various dynasties of Ur and Isin. It seems to have suffered severely in some
708
manner at or about the time of the Elamite invasions, as shown by broken fragments of statuary, votive vases and the like, from that period, but at the same time to have won recognition from the Elamite conquerors, so that Eriaku (Sem. Rim-Sin, biblical Arioch), the Elamite See also: After that E-kur appears to have gradually fallen into decay, until finally, in the Seleucid period, the ancient temple was turned into a fortress. Huge walls were erected at the edges of the ancient terrace, the courts of the temple were filled with houses and streets, and the ziggurat itself was curiously built over in a cruciform shape, and converted into an See also:acropolis for the fortress. This fortress was occupied and further built upon until the close of the See also:Parthian period, about A.D. 250; but under the succeeding See also:rule of the Sassanids it in its turn See also:fell into decay, and the ancient sanctuary became, to a considerable extent, a mere See also:place of sepulture, only a little village of mud huts huddled about the ancient ziggurat continuing to be inhabited. The See also:store-house quarter of the temple See also:town had not been explored as See also:late as 1909. As at Tello, so at Nippur, the clay archives of the temple were found not in the temple proper, but on an outlying See also:mound. South-eastward of the temple quarter, without the walls above described, and separated from it by a large See also:basin connected with the Shatt-en-Nil, See also:lay a triangular mound, about 25 ft. in See also:average height and 13 acres in extent. In this were found large See also:numbers of inscribed clay tablets (it is estimated that upward of 40,000 tablets and fragments have been excavated in this mound alone), dating from the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C. onward into the See also:Persian period, partly temple archives, partly school exercises and See also:text-books, partly mathematical tables, with a consider-able number of documents of a more distinctly See also:literary See also:character. For an See also:account of one of the most interesting fragments of a literary or religious character, found at Nippur, see below. The great complex of ruin mounds lying S.W. of the Shatt-en-Nil canal, larger in extent and See also:mass than the N.E. complex, had not up to 1909 been so fully explored as the mounds to the N.E. Almost directly opposite the temple, however, a large See also:palace was excavated, apparently of the Cossaean period, and in this neighbourhood and further southward on these mounds large numbers of inscribed tablets of various periods, including temple archives of the Cossaean and commercial archives of the Persian period, were excavated. The latter, the " books and papers " of the house of Murashu, commercial agents of the See also:government, throw See also:light on the See also:condition of the city and the See also:administration of the country in the Persian period, the 5th century B.C. The former give us a very good See also:idea of the administration of an ancient temple. The whole city of Nippur appears to have been at that time merely an See also:appanage of the temple. The temple itself was a great landowner, possessed of both farms and pasture land. Its tenants were obliged to render careful accounts of their administration of the See also:property entrusted to their care, which were preserved in the archives of the temple. We have also from these archives lists of goods contained in the temple treasuries and See also:salary lists of temple officials, on tablet forms specially prepared and marked off for periods of a See also:year or less. On the upper See also:surface of these mounds was found a considerable Jewish town, dating from about the beginning of the Arabic period onward to the zoth century A.D., in the houses of which were large numbers of See also:incantation See also:bowls. Jewish names, appearing in the Persian documents discovered at Nippur, show, however, that Jewish See also:settlement at that city See also:dates in fact from a much earlier period, and the discovery on some of the tablets found there of the name of the canal Kabari suggests that the Jewish settlement of the See also:exile, on the canal Chebar, to which See also:Ezekiel belonged, may have been somewhere in this See also:neighbour-See also:hood, if not at Nippur itself. Hilprecht indeed believes that the Kabari was the Shatt-en-Nil. Of the history and conditions of Nippur in the Arabic period we learn little from the excavations, but from outside See also:sources it appears that the city was the seat of a Christian bishopric as late as the 12th century A.D. The excavations at Nippur were the first to reveal to us the extreme antiquity of Babylonian civilization, and, as already stated, they give us the best consecutive See also:record of the development of that civilization, with a continuous occupancy from a period of unknown antiquity, long ante-dating 5000 B.C., onward to the middle ages. But while Nippur has been more fully explored than any other old Babylonian city, except Babylon and See also:Lagash, still only a small part of the great ruins of the ancient site had been examined in z9og. These ruins have been particularly fruitful in' inscribed material, especially clay tablets, many of them from the very earliest periods; but little of See also:artistic or architectural importance has been discovered. Excavation at Nippur is particularly difficult and costly by reason of the in-accessibility of the site, and the dangerous and unsettled condition of the surrounding country, and still more by reason of the immense mass of later debris under which the earlier and more important Babylonian remains are buried. See A. H. Layard, See also:Nineveh and Babylon (1853); John P. Peters, Nippur (1897); H. V. Hilprecht, Excavations in See also:Assyria and Babylonia (1904); See also:Clarence S. See also:Fisher, Excavations at Nippur (1st part 1905, 2nd part 1906); Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, a monumental edition of the See also:cuneiform texts found at Nippur, with brief introductions and notes of a more general character (1893 See also:foil.). For a plan of the Parthian palace see See also:ARCHITECTURE, vol. ii. p. 381. (J. P. PE.)
The Nippur See also:Deluge Fragment.—From among the many tablets and fragments of tablets discovered at Nippur one of more than See also:ordinary See also:interest was published in 1910. Though mutilated portions of only a few of its lines have been preserved, and the text contains no proper name, it is clear that the tablet represents part of a Babylonian version of the Deluge See also:Legend.' The portion of the See also:story covered by the text relates to the warning given by See also:Ea to Ut-napishtim, the Babylonian See also:equivalent of the See also:Hebrew See also:Noah. The god here states that he is about to send a deluge, which will cause destruction to all mankind, and he gives directions for the building of a great See also:ship in which " the beasts of the See also: 278 f. 8 See Meissner, Mitteil. der Vorderas. Gesellschaft (1902), i. For other Semitic legends of this early period, see Cuneiform Texts in the British Museum, pt. xv. (1902), Pls. I.-VI., and cf. King, The Seven Tablets of Creation, p. lxxvii. f. is said to throw upon a disputed problem of biblical See also:criticism. According to its discoverer it represents the See also:oldest account of the Babylonian Deluge story extant; and he considers it of fundamental importance for determining the age of See also:Israel's earliest traditions, since he would regard it as having been written " before See also:Abraham had See also:left his Babylonian See also:home in Ur of the Chaldees." Beyond the fact that it was found at Nippur during the See also:fourth of the See also:American expeditions, there does not appear to be any exact record of its provenance; and, in See also:order to determine its date, it is necessary to rely on the See also:external and See also:internal evidence furnished by the tablet itself. A number of See also:hymns and prayers addressed to the See also:chief Babylonian gods, and written throughout in the Sumerian See also:language, have been found at Nippur, and these may be dated in the era of the kings of Ur and Isin, since some of them are mentioned by name in the petitions. To the latter part of this period See also:Professor Hilprecht would assign the new Deluge fragment. It is natural that under the Sumerian revival, which characterized the See also:united See also:kingdom of See also:Sumer and Akkad, the ancient See also:ritual should have been revived and the Sumerian service-books adapted for the use of the reigning monarch. Sumerian, in fact, predominated, not only on the historical monuments, but also throughout the religious literature, a fact which militates against assigning the newly discovered Semitic legend to the period of these early Sumerian texts. It has already been noted that the earliest deluge-fragment previously recovered dates from the latter half of the First Dynasty of Babylon, when the Western Semites had succeeded in establishing their authority through-out the greater part of the country. But, to judge from the photographic See also:reproduction of the Nippur tablet, the characters upon it do not appear to resemble those in use at the time of the First Dynasty, nor those of the period of the Dynasties of Ur and Isin. On purely epigraphic grounds the See also:suggestion has indeed been made that it should be assigned to the Kassite period (not earlier than 1700 B.C.), during which a very large number of the tablets found at Nippur were inscribed.' But, even so, the fragment is one of the most interesting that has been recovered on the site of Nippur. For it strikingly illustrates the fact that the temple of En-lil, like that of the See also:Sun-god at Sippar and the other great temples in Babylonia, possessed a See also:body of mythological and religious texts, which formed subjects for study and comment among the priestly See also:scribes. It was by the collection and reproduction of such documents, preserved in the ancient religious centres, that Assurbard-pal was enabled to form his unique library of tablets at Nineveh. The temple of E-kur thus formed no exception to the rule that the great temples of Babylonia were centres of literary, as well as of religious, activity. The text of this Deluge fragment also furnishes one more See also:proof of the existence of parallel versions of the same legend. In some in-stances, as in the great Creation See also:Series of Babylon, the later scribes subjected the different versions to processes of editing, with the result that the earlier forms gave place to the redactions of a militant priesthood. But where no theological nor See also:local prejudices were involved, the tendency to a faithful reproduction of the earlier texts prevailed. Thus the resemblances which have been claimed between the Nippur Deluge fragment and the version of the " Priestly Code " in See also:Genesis, in themselves furnish no significant evidence as to the latter's date. The possibility that Hebrew traditions were subject to Babylonian influence from the period of the Canaanite conquest has long been recognized, and to the Exilic and See also:post-Exilic See also:Jew the See also:mythology of Babylon may well have presented many See also:familiar features. (L. W. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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