Sippar-Amnanum (also Sippar-Annunitum, Sippar-rabum, Sippar-durum, and Sippar-Anunit ), modern Tell ed-Der (also Teil ed-Der) in Baghdad Governorate,

Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...

, was an

ancient Near Eastern The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran (or Persia), Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. As such, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Ne ...

city about 70 kilometers north of

Babylon Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-s ...

, 6 kilometers northeast of

Sippar Sippar (Sumerian language, Sumerian: , Zimbir) (also Sippir or Sippara) was an ancient Near Eastern Sumerian and later Babylonian city on the east bank of the Euphrates river. Its ''Tell (archaeology), tell'' is located at the site of modern Tell ...

and about 26 kilometers southwest of modern Baghdad. Occupation dates back to the days of the Akkadian Empire and later the Ur III period but most of the development was during the Old Babylonian period. Early archaeologists referred to the site as "Der" or Dair". In the late 1800s archaeologists proposed that this was the location of the city of Akkad, later disproved.

History

Sippar-Amnanum was the sister city (or suburb in some eyes) of

. Though occupied from the Akkadian Period, little is known of its history before the Old Babylonian period. Soundings have shown that occupation extends to 4 meters below the surface with the current water table at 2 meters making excavation of earlier occupation difficult. The oldest excavated layer of Level IV, dating from the

Ur III period The Third Dynasty of Ur or Ur III was a Sumerian dynasty based in the city of Ur in the 22nd and 21st centuries BC (middle chronology). For a short period they were the preeminent power in Mesopotamia and their realm is sometimes referred to by ...

, of which foundations are apparent. The chief deity of Sippar-Amnanum was Annunitum, a warlike aspect of

Ishtar Inanna is the List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian goddess of war, love, and fertility. She is also associated with political power, divine law, sensuality, and procreation. Originally worshipped in Sumer, she was known by the Akk ...

favored by the

Akkadians The Akkadian Empire () was the first known empire, succeeding the long-lived city-states of Sumer. Centered on the city of Akkad ( or ) and its surrounding region, the empire united Akkadian and Sumerian speakers under one rule and exercised ...

. She is the daughter of

Enlil Enlil, later known as Elil and Ellil, is an List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian god associated with wind, air, earth, and storms. He is first attested as the chief deity of the Sumerian pantheon, but he was later worshipped by t ...

. According to the Sippar Cylinder of Nabonidus the temple Eulmash of Anunitu (Amnanum) was rebuilt by that

Neo-Babylonian The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to ancient Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC ...

king. The cylinder also reports that the temple had earlier been rebuilt by Shagarakti-Shuriash (c, 1245–1233 BC, a king of the Kassite dynasty of

(having earlier been rebuilt by Kassite ruler Kurigalzu I), Nabonidus having found one of the original foundation Kassite foundation cylinders. Presumably the temple had been destroyed in the interim by Shutruk-Nakhkhunte of

Elam Elam () was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of modern-day southern Iraq. The modern name ''Elam'' stems fr ...

when he destroyed

. There was also a temple of

Shamash Shamash (Akkadian language, Akkadian: ''šamaš''), also known as Utu (Sumerian language, Sumerian: dutu "Sun") was the List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian Solar deity, sun god. He was believed to see everything that happened in t ...

in Sippar-Amnanum named Edikuda. Note that there is some confusion on the city's name since

Sîn-kāšid Sîn-kāšid (inscribed in : EN.ZU''-kà-ši-id'') was the Amorites, Amorite king of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Uruk during the 18th century BC. No date lists are known nor any year names so his regnal length is uncertain, but it is likely ...

, a king of

Uruk Uruk, the archeological site known today as Warka, was an ancient city in the Near East, located east of the current bed of the Euphrates River, on an ancient, now-dried channel of the river in Muthanna Governorate, Iraq. The site lies 93 kilo ...

, refers to himself in an inscription as "King of the Amnanum", where Amnanum is thought to be a tribal group.

Archaeology

The site covers around 51 hectares with an east and west tell divided by an ancient canal bed. Sippar-Amnanum was surrounded by a 3 kilometer large defensive wall much of which still remains. Tell ed-Der, along with

, was excavated by

Hormuzd Rassam Hormuzd Rassam (; ; 182616 September 1910) was an Assyriologist and author. He is known for making a number of important archaeological discoveries from 1877 to 1882, including the clay tablets that contained the ''Epic of Gilgamesh,'' the world ...

between 1878 and 1880. Most of the tablets ended up in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

. As was often the case in the early days of archaeology, excavation records were not made, particularly find spots. This makes it occasionally difficult to tell which tablets came from Sippar-Amnanum as opposed to Sippar. More Tell ed-Der tablets were purchased from locals by

E. A. Wallis Budge Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (27 July 185723 November 1934) was an English Egyptology, Egyptologist, Orientalism, Orientalist, and Philology, philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient ...

while he was in the region after brief attempts to dig there in 1891.
udge, E. A. W., and e. al., "By Nile and Tigris: A narrative of Journeys in Egypt and Mesopotamia on Behalf of the British Museum between the Years 1886-1913", Vol. 1 London: John Murray, 1920 In the 1930s the German archaeologists Walter Andrae and Julius Jordan visited the site and produced the first maps. A sounding was conducted there between 1940 and 1941 by the Directorate General of Antiquities of the Iraqi Government under the direction of Taha Baqir. Among their finds were the archives of Anum-pisha and Iku-pish (dating to the time of Bablonian rulers Sumu-abum and Sumu-la-El). Three hundred broken cuneiform tablets from the Old Babylonian period were found. Since the site is relatively close to

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

, it was a popular target for illegal excavations. More recently, Tell ed-Der was excavated in a number of seasons between 1968 and 1988 by the Belgian Archaeological Expedition to Iraq (Comite Belge de Recherches Historiques en Mesopotamie) led by L. De Meyer and M. H. Gasche. The "House of Ur-Utu" was excavated in the mid 1970s. This residence, of the kalamahhum-priest (lamentation priest) of Annunitum, held around 2500 cuneiform tablets and tablet fragments forming a household archive spanning several centuries. Of these 204 were of Ur-Utu (and his father Inanna-mansum). The destruction of the house by fire helped preserve the tablets. Most of the tablets were contemporary with the reigns of Ammisaduqa and

Ammi-ditana Ammi-Ditana was a king of Babylon who reigned from 1683–1640s BC. He was preceded by Abi-Eshuh. Year-names survive for the first 37 years of his reign, plus fragments for a few possible additional years. His reign was a largely peaceful one; ...

of the

First Babylonian dynasty The Old Babylonian Empire, or First Babylonian Empire, is dated to , and comes after the end of Sumerian power with the destruction of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and the subsequent Isin-Larsa period. The Chronology of the Ancient Near East, chrono ...

. A number of cuneiform tablets from "uncontrolled digging" at Sippar-Amnanum have appeared in various museums, beginning in the late 1800s. In the dromos of chamber tomb T. 272, four equid legs together with some pig and ox remains were found. Gasche, H., "La Babylonie au 17ème siècle avant notre ère. Approche archéologique, problèmes et perspectives", Mesopotamian History and Environment. Series ii, Memoirs 1 Ghent: University of Ghent, 1989

References

*As, Abram van, "Technological Research of Palaeo- and Meso-Babylonian Pottery from Tell ed-Der - First Report", Akkadica 47, pp. 24–25 ,1986 *De Graef, Katrien., "An Account of the Redistribution of Land to Soldiers in Late Old Babylonian Sippar-Amnānum", Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 141–78, 2002 *Dekiere, L., "La généaologie d’Ur-Utu, gala.mah à Sippar-Amnanum", in H. Gasche, M. Tanret, C. Janssen and A. Degraeve (eds), Cinquante-deux réflexions sur le Proche-Orient ancien offertes en homage à Léon de Meyer (Mesopotamian History and Environment, Occasional Publications, 2), Leuven, Peeters, 125–141, 1994 *Gohde, Hildegard, "Zwei altbabylonische Siegelabrollungen aus Tell ed-Der: Identifizierung von zwei weiblichen Gottheiten", in O. Loretz, K.A. Metzler and H. Schaudig (eds.), Ex Mesopotamia et Syria Lux: Festschrift fur Manfried Dietrich zu seinem 65. Geburtstag (AOAT 281), Munster: Ugarit-Verlag, pp. 159–168, 2002 *Rivkah Harris, Ancient Sippar: A Demographic Study of an Old Babylonian City (1894-1595 B.C.), Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch-Historisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1975 *Janssen, C., H. Gasche, and Tanret, M., "Du chantier à la tablette: Ur-Utu et l’histoire de sa maison à Sippar-Amnanum", in H. Gasche, M. Tanret, C. Janssen and A. Degraeve (eds), Cinquante-deux réflexions sur le Proche-Orient ancien offertes en homage à Léon de Meyer (Mesopotamian History and Environment, Occasional Publications, 2), Leuven, Peeters, 91–123. 1994 *Leemans, W. F., "Les Tablettes Des Fouilles Iraqiennes de Tell Ed-Dēr", Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 195–204, 1978 *L. De Meyer et al., Tell ed-Der: La vie en Babylonie il y a 4000 ans, Archeologia, no. 195, pp. 8–25, 1984 *L. De Meyer, Tell ed-Der, Tome II, Peeters, 1978, *L. De Meyer, Tell ed-Der, Tome III, Peeters, 1980, *L. De Meyer, Tell ed-Der, Tome IV, Peeters, 1984, *de Meyer, L., and H. Gasche, "Rapport des activites archeologiques en Iraq Fouilles de Tell ed-Deir 1970" Sumer 26, pp. 105–108, 1970 *Richardson, Seth, "Hard Times for Sippar Women: Three Late Old Babylonian Cases", Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 319-350, 2022 *Tanret, Michel, "Tanret, Michel. "The works and the days... On scribal activity in old babylonian Sippar-Amnānum", Revue d’Assyriologie et d’archéologie Orientale, vol. 98, pp. 33–62, 2004 *Tanret, Michel, "As Years Went by in Sippar-Amnanum...", Historiography in the cuneiform world ; proceedings of the XLVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, edited by IT Abusch et al., CDL Press, pp. 455–66, 2001 *Tanret, M., "Verba volant, scripta non manent Tablettes nomads dans les archives des gala.maḫ à Sippar-Amnānum", in Nomades et Sédentaires dans le Proche-Orient ancien. Compte rendu de la XLVIe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Paris, 10–13 juillet 2000), ed. C. Nicolle, Amurru 3, Paris: ERC, pp. 249–270, 2004 *Van Lerberghe, Karel, "Un ‘Elamite’ à Sippar-Amnānum", in Fragmenta Historiae Aelamicae, Mélanges offerts à M-J. Steve, ed. Léon de Meyer, et al., Paris: Éditions Recherche surles Civilisations, pp.151‒55, 1986

External links

Digital Sippar-Amnanum tablets at CDLI
{{Authority control 1880s archaeological discoveries History of Baghdad Governorate Archaeological sites in Iraq Former populated places in Iraq

History

Archaeology

See also

References

Further reading

External links