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NIPPUR

(Sum. Nibru)

Fragment of a clay tablet with a plan of Nippur showing the locations of temples, walls, gates,
and canals. Early Period (Kassite period, ca. 1300 b.c.e.) (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena)

A city with a unique role in Mesopotamian history and society as its millennia-long religious center yet never a political base. Nippur (Tell Nuffar) was established on the bank of the Euphrates River during the 6th millennium b.c.e. and, except for relatively brief periods, was continuously occupied until its abandonment in the 9th century c.e. At some stage it became the primary dwelling of the chief god of the Sumerian pantheon, Enlil, and control of the city provided legitimacy to a ruler’s control over Mesopotamia. At its maximum, the city covered ca. 150 ha. (370 a.) surrounded by a roughly rectangular wall breached by nine main gates. At times a branch of the Euphrates ran through the city itself while others flowed west of the city.

The triple mounds of Nippur — Tablet Hill, Temple Hill, and West Mound — were the focus of the first American excavations in Ottoman Iraq from 1889-1890, undertaken by the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Subsequent excavations from 1948-1952 were by the joint University Museum–Oriental Institute expedition, augmented in 1953-1962 by the American Schools of Oriental Research and culminating in 10 seasons of work between 1964 and 1989 by the Oriental Institute.

The city was dominated by the great ziggurat complex, built by Ur-Nammu (ca. 2100), situated in the Ekur, the sacred temple precinct dedicated to Enlil from at least the early 4th until the mid-1st millennium. Other sacred temple precincts also existed in the city, including the temple of Inanna on Temple Hill and the North Temple. Tablet Hill appears to have contained both administrative structures and private dwellings; here were found the major finds of perhaps 50 thousand tablets and fragments constituting the majority of known Sumerian literary and lexical texts and numerous private administrative archives from many periods. The West Mound revealed additional private dwellings, a temple founded in the 3rd millennium, a Kassite palace (ca. 1300), a Parthian villa, and the major settlement of the Islamic period.

The earliest levels of Nippur are not very well explored because of their depth beneath later accumulations of occupation debris. Sumerian sources attribute the building of the Tammal, a temple complex dedicated to Enlil, to the reign of Enmebaragesi of Kish who lived in the Early Dynastic II period. But it was not until the rise of the Akkadian dynasty under Sargon the Great in the 23rd century that major construction in the Enlil temple complex took place. The North Temple was built during the same period; a contemporary archive of a governor of Nippur was excavated on the West Mound.

In the subsequent Ur III period (21st century) Ur-Nammu initiated the construction of the three-tiered ziggurat for Enlil and an accompanying sacred complex that was to dominate the city for the following 1500 years. After the collapse of the Ur III dynasty and the subsequent Amorite settlement, Nippur quickly regained its prominence under the Hammurabi dynasty with its capital in Babylon. It was during this period that the worship of Enlil was partially combined with that of Marduk, the patron god of Hammurabi. Towards the latter part of the Old Babylonian period (late 18th-17th centuries), Nippur appears to have been abandoned or greatly reduced in size, perhaps due to a shift in the course of the Euphrates.

By the late 15th century the ruling Kassite dynasty had established a palace on West Hill and instituted a major building and reconstruction of temples at Nippur as well as the restoration of the city walls depicted on the remarkable map preserved on a clay tablet of the period. During the mid-13th century the city was attacked, possibly by Elamites, and mostly abandoned except perhaps for the sacred Ekur area. However, the city recovered after a hiatus and by the mid-8th century was once again a flourishing town, well documented by the Governor’s Archive.

During the 7th century Nippur came under Assyrian control and once again underwent major restoration of the Ekur. With Assyrian troops stationed there, it remained under Assyrian rule until it was captured by the Babylonians after a prolonged siege in 612. It remained under their control until they too were defeated in 539 by Cyrus. Under Achaemenid rule the city flourished and is well documented in the archives of the great merchant family of Murashu. The city continued as an important center through the Seleucid era and into the Parthian period, when it was subjected to massive alterations due to the construction of a huge fortress which incorporated the ziggurat and Ekur. The subsequent Sassanian occupation from the 3rd to 7th centuries c.e. is best known from Talmudic sources, which attest to a prosperous Jewish community at the site. Hundreds of incantation bowls written in Judeo-Aramaic, Mandaic, and Syriac are vivid reminders of their presence. After the Arab conquest in the 7th century the city remained under Islamic rule until the shifting course of the Euphrates River deprived it of its major source of water. The city was abandoned in the 9th century and the region slowly reverted to a desert.

Bibliography. S. W. Cole, Nippur, 4: The Early Neo-Babylonian Governor’s Archive from Nippur. OIP 114 (Chicago, 1996); M. Gibson, “Patterns of Occupation at Nippur,” in M. deJ. Ellis, ed., Nippur at the Centennial (Philadelphia, 1992), 33-54; D. E. McCown, R. C. Haines, and D. P. Hansen, Nippur, 1: Temple of Enlil, Scribal Quarter, and Soundings. OIP 78 (Chicago, 1978); M. W. Stolper, Entrepreneurs and Empire: The Murašu Archive, the Murašu Firm, and Persian Rule in Babylonia (Istanbul, 1985); E. C. Stone, Nippur Neighborhoods. SAOC 44 (Chicago, 1987); Stone and D. I. Owen, Adaption in Old Babylonian Nippur and the Archive of Mannum-mešu-lissur. Mesopotamian Civilizations 3 (Winona Lake, 1991); R. L. Zettler, “Nippur,” OEANE 4:148-52.

David I. Owen

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NIPPUR

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)