Shuruppak

Flood Myth

The report of the 1930s excavation mentions a layer of flood deposits at the end of the Jemdet Nasr period at Shuruppak. Shuruppak in Mesopotamian legend is one of the "antediluvian" cities and the home of King Utnapishtim, who survives the flood by making a boat beforehand. Schmidt wrote that the flood story of the Bible,

seems to be based on a very real event or a series of such, as suggested by the existence at Ur, at Kish, and now at Fara, of inundation deposits, which accumulated on top of human inhabitation. There is finally “the Noah story,” which may possibly symbolize the survival of the Sumerian culture and the end of the Elamite Jemdet Nasr culture.

The deposit is like that deposited by river avulsions, a process that was common in the Tigris–Euphrates river system.

Archaeology

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 by William Loftus in 1850. Hermann Volrath Hilprecht conducted a brief survey in 1900. He found "copper goatheads; a copper, pre-Sargonid sword; a lamp in the shape of a bird; a very archaic seal cylinder; a number of pre-Sargonid tablets, and 60 incised plates of mother of pearl".

It was first excavated between June 1902 and March 1903 by Walter Andrae, Robert Koldewey and Friedrich Delitzsch of the German 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 Šuruppak came from a Ur III period clay nail which mentioned "Haladda, son of Dada, the patesi of Shuruppak (written SU.KUR.RU^ki) repaired the ADUS of the Great Gate of the god Shuruppak (written ^dSU.KUR.RU-da)". Among other finds, 847 cuneiform tablets and 133 tablet fragments of Early Dynastic IIIa "Fara" period (c. 2600–2475 BC) 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. 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. In 1903 the site was visited by Edgar James Banks who was excavating at the site of Adab, 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.

In 1926 it was visited by Raymond P, Dougherty during his archaeological survey of the region. In March and April 1931, a joint team of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the University of Pennsylvania excavated Shuruppak for a further six week season, with Erich Schmidt as director and with epigraphist Samuel 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. 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.

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 the Jemdet Nasr period, expanded greatly in the Early Dynastic period, and was also an element of the Akkadian Empire and the Third Dynasty of Ur.

A surface survey and a full magnetometer survey of the site was completed was conducted between 2016 and 2018 by a team from LMU Munich led by Adelheid Otto and Berthold Einwag. The initial work was under the regional QADIS survey. A drone was used to create a digital elevation model of the site. 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. 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. A harbor and quay were also found.

Further excavations seasons occurred in 2022 and 2024 by a team from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Work occurred in an area where the early German excavators found over 1000 seal impressions from about 500 seals (trench Id/Ie), in an area now heavily looted out. The seals covered a wide period, Jemdet Nasr, ED I and ED II so it was assumed the area was a rubbish dump. A location was chosen where sand encroachment had somewhat deterred the robbers. a trench was excavated measuring 4 meters long by 3 meters wide, to a depth of 2.5 meters without reaching virgin soil. A total of 180 clay sealings were found often matching those earlier excavated including an unusually large seal (3.5 centimeters) in the "Elegant Style". Portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analysis of clay sealings suggested that rather than being deposited over a long period of time all of the various seal styles were being used at the same time.

List of rulers

The following list should not be considered complete: