The Cambridge Ancient History - BABYLONIA TO 1580 BC

EARLY BABYLONIA AND ITS CITIES

 

V. OTHER CITIES: UMMA, ADAB, NIPPUR

 

Umma (Yokha), east of the Shatt el-Kar, was like Lagash a pre-historic Sumerian city, which owed its situation to an artificial canal which left the old course of the Euphrates below Nippur and ran south to Umma and an unidentified site Umm el-Akrib, six miles below Umma. The English explorer, Loftus, visited Yokha in 1854. He remarked the abundance of fragments of sherds of the Sumerian period, diorite statues, bricks, flint and stone implements. The Americans, Peters and Ward, both visited the site during the course of their excavations at Nippur, and brought away a diorite door socket and a few tablets of the Ur period after a brief digging of five hours. The most accurate description of the mound is given by the German, W. Andrae, in his report of 1902-3. The ruins are of comparatively small dimensions, two-thirds of a mile long and reaching to a height of 47 feet. Unlike most ruins of Sumer these run nearly east to west. A terrace on the northern slope with a platform 280 feet square marks the site of the temple-tower and is made of baked bricks a foot square and 31 inches thick, which indicates the period of Dungi. On the central mound piano-convex bricks which characterize the period of Ur-Nina are abundant.

The name of this city is written with a curious ideograph which older Sumerian scribes render by Gish-khu, the second part of which is identical with the second part of the ideograph for the city Akshak or Opis. The reading is Umma, Ummi, apparently by assimilation from Ubme. The local deity was the god Shara (verdure); the grain-goddess Nidaba also had her local cult here. The tablets of grain-accounts from its archives show that Umma was the centre of a rich agricultural district, and the goddess Nidaba was known at Umma as Ninurra, “queen of the harvest”. The cult of Umma is first mentioned on the stele of Mesilim, king of Kish in the thirty-seventh century BC, who settled the dispute between Lagash and Umma concerning their rival claims to the district of Gu-edin. By the command of the earth-god Enlil the gods Ningirsu and Shara arranged their boundaries; so we read in Entemena's account of this ancient treaty, for in theory the territory of the city-states belonged to the local baal.

The oldest published monument of Umma is a small stone statuette inscribed with the name of Eabzu, who perhaps lived shortly before Ur-Nina. A late post-Sargonic seal represents the heraldic emblem as a lion-headed eagle grasping two ibexes. For the later period to the time of Lugal-zaggisi the only existing monument is a lapis lazuli tablet of Urlumma son of Enakalli. In it he claims the title of king for himself and his father, and mentions his construction of a temple to the otherwise unknown god Enkigal. Of the period of Lugal-zaggisi four tablets from the state archives have been recovered which reveal a method of dating peculiar to that city. Instead of naming the governor for the year (as at Shuruppak), or the ruling patesi or king (as at Lagash), at Umma the date read 'first year, 12th month', 'fourth year, 4th month', etc. For historical purposes this method is useless as the name of the ruler is not given, but the dates probably refer to the years of the reign of Lugal-zaggisi.

A few miles west of Umma beyond the old course of the Euphrates lie the imposing ruins of the as yet unidentified Hamman. The outline of a ziggurat is still visible; its construction is characterized by layers of reeds mixed with mud between the layers of bricks.

Adab (also pronounced Udab, Usab), 25 miles south of Nippur, was supplied by a canal which branched from the Euphrates east-ward, passing through the city and feeding other regions on its way toward the Shatt el-Hai. In the centre of the city the canal divides to form an island on which stood the prehistoric temple of the mother-goddess Aruru. It is known as Emakh, a name common to all the temples of the goddess of birth (Aruru, Nin- kharsag, Ninlil, Gula). The goddess herself has the title Makh (the far-famed) at Adab. The cult of Adab was entirely devoted to the worship of the earth-mother. The latest rebuilders were the kings of Ur; and the bricks of Ur-Engur, Dungi and Bur-Sin are found only five feet below the top of the mound, which rises go feet above the plain. Only two and three feet below the platform of Ur-Engur lie the works of the kings of Akkad, which follow closely upon the rectangular grooved bricks of the Entemena period. These statements (from the reports of Banks, who excavated Adab for the University of Chicago) prove that no great interval separates the age of Sargon from that of the dynasty of Ur. At a depth of ten feet are the piano-convex bricks of the period of Ur-Nina. Ten feet below this level lies a pavement of limestone blocks from the remote age before the invention of brick-making. At a depth of 48 feet Banks came upon abundant fragments and complete specimens of thin wheel-made pots obviously of the period of geometrical thin pottery, but unpainted. Such is the enormous age of civilization at Adab. The stage-tower or ziggurat dates from pre-Sargonic times and is one of the oldest in Sumer. In its stratum was discovered a blue stone vase decorated with designs of a four-stage tower; and this would seem to settle the problem regarding the antiquity of stage-towers which were supposed to have originated in post-Sargonic times. These towers had only four stages in the early period, but seven from Ur-Bau onward.

The most remarkable archaeological discovery made at Adab is an elegant white marble head of a Semite belonging to the archaic period, with inset eyes and grooved eyebrows. This head has a full beard, moustache and well-defined Semitic features, and has the distinction of being the oldest known representation of a Semite in Sumer. Its presence in the pre-Sargonic strata of a Sumerian city is probably explained by the fact that Adab belonged to the kingdom of Kish in the age of Ur-Nina and that it is the head of a royal official. The role of Adab in the history of Sumerian cities is obscure. In the period of the kings and patesis of Lagash it probably enjoyed a restricted independence, and like Lagash it was incorporated in the kingdom of Lugal-zaggisi. Its status under the kings of Akkad and Ur is better known; these rulers bestowed great labour upon the sacred and secular buildings, and bricks from the temple mound bear an inscription of Dungi which records the construction of a reservoir for Ninkharsag. None of the numerous tablets excavated at Adab have been published. The present writer copied a few in a private collection in 1921. They were temple-records of the period of Dungi, and revealed the interesting fact that the calendar then contained month-names which, although hitherto unknown, partly agree with the names of months employed in the calendars of Ur and Umma. This points to an ancient association with Ur and Umma rather than with Nippur and Lagash.

ISIN, LARAK

The history of every ancient Sumerian city involves its relations with Nippur, the sacred city situated on the Euphrates, in the very centre of the Sumerian lands. Here was established the national cult of the earth-god Enlil whose name means 'lord of the winds'; an epithet derived from the myth of a cave of the winds in the earth. His proper title Enki, “lord of the earth”, was later transferred to the third member of the trinity, the water-god of Eridu, whose cult was appropriately located at the mouth of the Great River (the Euphrates). These two cities owed their importance in Sumer and their influence in the religions of Babylonia and all Western Asia almost exclusively to their two great cults and theological schools. Throughout Sumer and Akkad the rulers of all cities derived their authority from Enlil, and hence the possession of Nippur was the sacred obligation of every great dynasty. Even the kings of Maer in the far north assumed the title great priest king of Enid. Nippur is written by an ideograph meaning “the city of Enlil”, its chief temple, E-kur, means “house of the earth mountain”; its ziggurat has several names, Eduranki (“house of the under-world mountain”), etc., all of which connect the city, its temple and tower with cosmological ideas of the earth as a mountain in whose vast interior repose the dead. The three great deities about whom all the great Nippurian cult revolves are Enlil the earth-god, Ninlil his consort (a degraded form of Nintud, Aruru, Ninkharsag, the earth-mother as patroness of birth) and their son Ninurasha, god of the spring sun and war.

The prehistoric city was built on the western bank of the Euphrates and was grouped about the temple of the earth-god. The mound now lies on the eastern bank of the Shatt en-Nil. In the period of Ur-Nina the temple area was enlarged. A great rectangular terrace of piano-convex bricks was constructed extending far beyond the temple-area and affording space for the temple and tower at the southern end; a large court north of the temple, store-houses and commodious cloisters for the priests occupied the spacious areas of the terrace. The temple itself had a wide fore-court and an inner court surrounded by thick walls, and provided with chambers for the temple archives. A clay tablet of the Kassite period, now unfortunately lost, had a drawing of this terrace-wall, its moats and buildings and gates with their names inscribed; only photographs of this, the most important architectural design which has ever been recovered from Sumer, are accessible. The temple-enclosure is orientated with its corners to the cardinal points and the tower of pre-Sargonic origin stood on the northern side of the inner court; the temple of Ekur with its chapels to various deities, occupied the area beside the tower along the eastern side. All the important rulers of Sumerian and Assyro-Babylonian history regarded the preservation of this temple as a religious obligation. Naram-Sin and Ur-Engur whose platforms are separated by only two feet of debris, rebuilt the temple and tower, and Ashur-banipal of Assyria in the seventh century restored the entire sanctuary. The temple-library and its archives were found in a mound south of the temple. The residential and commercial quarters lay west of the temple area, separated from it by a canal, now the Shatt en-Nil. Here have been found the archives of Kassite kings and of great business houses of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods.

In dealing with the history of Lagash reference has bee; made to its possible sovereignty over Nippur. Entemena dedicated a vase to Enlil, and Urukagina not only claimed the hegemony of Nippur but sent great presents and sacrifices to the chapels of two deities of the nether-world there. No trace of its ever having been a capital of a kingdom exists. A legendary nobleman of Nippur, Lal-uralim, became in later tradition the type of a just man who endured manifold sorrows. He was the Babylonian Job, and portions of a long Semitic poem concerning his sufferings and final justification have been recovered. The earliest royal dedications to the temple Ekur are the vases of the kings of Erech, who succeeded the Mesilim kingdom at Kish (3688-3558). A patesi of Nippur, Ur-Enlil, who probably served under one of the rulers of Lagash or Kish, is known from two vases dedicated to Enlil for his life. Not later than the age of Enshagkushanna of Erech are two vases dedicated by the son ( ?) of Lugal-ezen to the mother-goddess, Bau or Gula, “Queen who gives life to the dead”, for the life of his wife and children, that “Abaranna his wife might live”. The goddess of healing, especially worshipped at Lagash as consort of Ningirsu, seems to have been the consort of Ninurasha at Nippur. Two other vases to Nintindigga, or Gula of healing, from the period of Ur-Nina (c. 3100) are known; from sources of the later period the cult of the goddess of healing and medicine seems to have had its centre at Nippur. Ninlil, consort of the earth-god, is only a satellite of this patroness of life, and vases were also dedicated to her for wives and children.

A great cult of Gula and Sakkut sprang up at Isin, possibly the ruins of Zibliyya, or rather of Bahriyat. Isin is of very late foundation, appearing in the inscriptions only in the last years of the Ur-Engur dynasty of Ur. But such was the power of local tradition that a cult of the type of Nippur was imposed there. Larak, the little-known city east of Nippur, also had its cult of the goddess of life, Gula, with her consort, Pabilsag, a feeble reflection of Enlil. In the traditions reported by Berosus, Opartes, father of Xisuthrus (that is, Ubar-Tutu, father of Ut-Napishtim), ninth of the mythical kings before the Flood, lived at Larankha (Larak). It was known to the later Assyrian kings as a military post, and business records of the period of Darius from Nippur state that it was situated on the old bed of the Tigris. Its cult of the god Pabilkharsag, later Pabilsag, and of Gula the goddess of healing, were recognized throughout Sumer; this we know from their incorporation in the canonical liturgies.

Less is known of the religion of the prehistoric Sumerian cities Kish and Akshak, of the north, later occupied by the Semites. Kish (El-Oheimir), with the neighboring ruins of Inghara (not Tell el-Bandar), had already in the age of Mesilim a cult of Ka-Di (Isir), an earth goddess. The site lay near the old bed of the Euphrates and was identified by bricks bearing the stamp of Adad-apal-idinnam, who rebuilt there the temple of Ilbaba, E-meteursag. Nebuchadrezzar restored this famous temple and its central chapel E-kishibba, and names Ilbaba and his consort Bau as the local deities of Kish. Ilbaba is only a local title of Ninurasha, the son of Enlil of Nippur, and another consort of Gula-Bau, the mother-goddess. Kish, which was the capital of two legendary and two historical kingdoms, and whose name became synonymous with universal dominion, passed into the possession of the Sumerian kingdom of Lugal-zaggisi. Little is known of its history, and when the Semites of the north, under the great Sargon, possessed themselves of the hegemony of all Mesopotamia they abandoned Kish and selected Agade, 40 miles northward on the Euphrates, for their capital. But royal traditions are not easily suppressed, and the city led by one Ipkhur-Kish instigated a rebellion against the mighty Naram-Sin of Agade, and made its last effort to retain the proud position of capital of Western Asia. The works of Nebuchadrezzar bear witness to its religious importance. Its cult belongs to the pantheon of Nippur and the worship of the earth-mother, and the canonical liturgies include its god and goddess, its temple and chief chapel in the litanies to Enlil Ninurasha and their various local types.

Another deity of the Nippur pantheon, Nergal, lord of the lower world and the dead, with his consort Ninmug or Ereshkigal, queen of the lower world, had his chief cult at Cuthah, the Biblical Cuthah, perhaps to be identified (after Sir Henry Rawlinson) with the ruins of Tell Ibrahim. This mound, which lies 20 miles north of Kish and 35 miles south-east of Sippar, is two miles in circumference and 60 feet high. The temple of Nergal at Cuthah was named E-meslam or House of Meslam. Meslam is an epithet for the lower world and the god Nergal has also the title Meslamtaea, “He who rises from Meslam”, referring to his solar character as god of the scorching summer sun. As a god of the waning summer sun he was connected with the waning moon and the new moon, and the stage-tower of Cuthah bore the name E-Nannar, “House of the New Moon”. The name Nergal is derived from Ne-unugal, “Power of the vast-abode”, lord of the lower world where he was the judge of those that died. The cult of the terrible deities of the dead, plague and judgment, Nergal and Laz of Cuthah, belongs to the prehistoric pantheon; their titles and temple occur regularly in the canonical liturgies. The city was of no political importance and never became the seat of a dynasty. Like Sippar, Akshak and Kish it belonged to the Semitic sphere of influence in the north. The cult of its god Nergal was established in every Sumerian city and Cuthah was kept in repair by all Sumerian and Semitic rulers to the last centuries before our era.

KISH, CUTHAH, SIPPAR

Sippar, now the ruins of Abu Habba (Father of Corn), was situated in ancient times on the east bank of the Euphrates just south of the Royal Canal. The temple E-babbar or “House of the Sun”, and its stage-tower E-iluanazagga, “House of the threshold of the bright heaven”, occupied a terrace 1300 feet square beside the river. East of the temple-complex and separated from it by a wide avenue lay the great residential quarter, and the whole was surrounded by a wall. The exterior wall of the city forms a rectangle 14.00 yards long and 860 yards wide, the long sides facing north and south. The city walls were pierced by numerous wide gates. Excavations conducted here by Rassam (1881-2), principally at the temple in the northern part of the eastern mounds and the stage-tower south of the temple, produced over 60,000 tablets, chiefly contracts, grammatical and religious texts from the neo-Babylonian period. The antiquity of the city is shown by the fact that Lugal-zaggisi (c. 2900) calls the Euphrates the River of Sippar. A canal whose name was actually pronounced “Canal of Sippar” is said to have been dug by Ammi-zaduga (1977-1957 BC).

The Sumerian name of the city (Zib-Bar-Nun) seems to have meant “Radiant chamber of the Prince”. “Prince” (Nun) refers here to the water-god Enki or Ea of Eridu, and 'radiant' (Bar) is one of the titles of the sun-god whose principal cult was here and whose temple was known as E-barra or E-babar. The name of the city reveals its original connection with the sun-cult as well as its relation to the river of the water-god. The Semitic Shamash was identified with the Sumerian sun-god Utu or Babbar of Larsa, and his cult installed at Sippar. At Larsa the temple of the sun-god was called E-babbar and the same name was given to the new temple at Sippar. At Sippar, and apparently also at Larsa, the wife of the sun-god was known as Aja, a form of Innini, as queen of heaven. But at Agade the Semites worshipped Ishtar as queen of heaven, or goddess of battle, also named Anunit; and here her temple has a Sumerian name, E-ulmash.

Six miles north-east of Sippar lies Sippar-Yakhruru, now the mound ed-Der, “the monastery”, excavated by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge in 1891. There is good reason to suppose that this represents the site of Agade. It is also possible that Sargon's famous city was known during the first Babylonian dynasty as Sippar-Yakhruru, but in later times was usually called Agade, or “the city Akkadu”, or Sippar-Anunit. The most ancient name is Agade and the city is said to have been founded by Sargon. The location of the city which was to become the capital of the first great empire is important; and it is regrettable that the identification with Sippar-Yakhruru is somewhat uncertain.

All the old cities which lay in central Sumer and in the north from Lagash to Akshak were consistently attached to the worship of earth-deities. Only in the extreme south along the lower Euphrates are found grouped together the other great cults which complete the pantheon, the cult of Arm, the sky-god at Erech, of Babbar, the sun-god at Larsa, of Zu-en or Sin, the moon-god at Ur, and of the god of fresh water, Enki or Ea at Eridu. This remarkable religious topography can be explained only by design and not by accident.

ERECH, LARSA (ELLASAR)

The Sumerian word Unug, which became Uruk (the biblical Erech), seems to be a compound of Unu, “dwelling”, and the Elamitic-Sumerian locative ending -ak. As the home of the cults of Anu, the father of all the gods, and of the great virgin goddess Innini, Erech, like Nippur and Eridu, was a place of the greatest sanctity. Ninana, the queen of heaven, whose name became Innini by phonetic decay, is a transformation of the oldest deity of the Sumerians, Geshtin the goddess of the vine, who as such is only a specific form of the prehistoric earth-goddess of Central Asia. The great virgin-goddess Innini and her mystically begotten son, Abu or Tammuz, are the most impressive figures in Sumerian theology and ritual. As a counterpart of heaven she became associated from unknown antiquity in an abstract way with Anu as his female principle and acquired the title Innini, “queen of heaven”. Hence her cult was associated with that of Anu, who never was much more than an abstract figure in the pantheon. The name of the principal temple at Erech was E-anna, “house of heaven”—it was apparently the earlier name of the city itself; but the cult of Innini or Ishtar, because of its more human appeal, usurped the position of the old god and dominated the religious interests. She was widely known as “the Erechian goddess”. Her cult is of course found established everywhere like that of her companion (Nintud) the goddess of birth, but Erech was her home. A grammatical text records eleven epithets of this holy city, among them Illag or Illab, the enclosure; Antiranna, the forest of heaven (an ordinary name of the Milky Way); Ubimin, the seven regions; Daimin, the seven sides; Geparimin, the seven dark chambers. The three last names refer to the tower, Egeparimin, whose seven stages in accordance with the usual belief symbolized the seven regions. Erech was also called “the sleeping place of Anu”. Its mythical dynasty has already been noticed.

Famous from prehistoric times the city retained its prestige to the end; in the times of Strabo its great school of astronomers rivaled the astronomers of Borsippa. Uruk (Greek, Orchoe), now Warka, lay on the western bank of the old Euphrates, now the Shatt el-Kar, whose course has shifted a few miles eastward. Its outer walls, six miles in circumference, enclose a nearly circular area of about 1100 acres. Three great mounds and numerous smaller ones lie within the walled area. The temple E-anna and its tower stood in the eastern side of the city beside the river; its huge moat walls built by Ur-Engur are still intact. The walls of this huge structure consist of layers of bricks interrupted at intervals of four feet by a layer of reed mats, on which account the Arabs have named this mound Buwariya (reed mats). The base of the tower was 200 feet square; it stood together with the temple at the western angle of a great platform built with the corners facing the cardinal points. At this mound Loftus, who excavated in 1854, uncovered a unique system of late mural decoration, a kind of mosaic made of painted cone-heads and cone-shaped pots with narrow tops and shallow cavities. These walls consist of cones or pots laid with their heads outward. To the west of the temple and separated from it by a ravine in the centre of the city lies the high mound Wuswas, which is regarded as the site of the palace of pre-Sargonic kings and also of the patesis. A great number of valuable religious texts have been recovered from the temple library; they date from a period so late as 70 BC, and reveal in astonishing manner the interesting ideas of the priestly school of Erech, at the very beginning of our era.

Fifteen miles south-east of Erech on the western bank of the old Euphrates lie the ruins of Larsa, now the mounds of Senkereh. They are 4’5 miles in circumference, and the temple-area of the central mound measured 320 by 220 feet. As the centre of the worship of the Sumerian sun-god Babbar or Utu, Larsa must be one of their oldest cities. Babbar, the son of the moon-god of Ur, was regarded as the lord of justice and divination throughout Sumer. Enannatum in his stele of victory appealed to the god of Larsa to consecrate and protect his treaty with Umma, and he sent sacrifices of oxen from Lagash for the temple E-babbar. But its political relation to Lagash and the reigning dynasties of Akshak and Kish in pre-Sargonic times is unknown. Being in the vicinity of the greater city, Erech, it is reasonable to suppose that its political history coincided largely with that of the neighbouring metropolis. The name of the city is written Ud-Unu-(ki), “City of the abode of the sun (god)”. All the prehistoric names, like Lagash, Nippur, Uruk, etc., are much more ancient than the pictographs by which they were written, and the written signs almost invariably refer to the city-cults. The name of the city was read Za-Ra-Ar-Ma, that is Ilrar-ma or Ilrar. The Sumerian r readily passed into s, and the word became Ilasar, or, as Gen. XIV, writes it, Ellasar. The Babylonians, at least in the late period, pronounced the name Larsa, and the name was sometimes written with an ideograph which means “Holy throne”.

Ur, the famous city of the moon-god, was situated 30 miles south of Erech. But before the period of Rim-Sin the Euphrates seems to have run west of Ur, reaching the sea at Eridu. Apparently Rim-Sin was the first to straighten the southern course of the Euphrates so as to bring the stream past Ur, leaving Eridu an inland city. When Entemena's great canal was dug from the Tigris to the Euphrates it probably reached the Great River above Ur. The river has shifted eastward six miles, and the canal, now the Shatt el-Hai, joins it at the modern town Nasriyeh. The ruins of Ur rise above the plain west of the Euphrates, twelve miles south-south-west of Nasriyeh. The ruins have been named by the Arabs Mu-kayyar, or “the pitched”. J. E. Taylor, British Vice-Consul at Basra, excavated here in 1854. The mounds occupy a large oval whose greatest diameter from north to south is about five-eighths of a mile with a circumference of a miles. An old canal passed along its western side, coming from the north. A ravine, the remains of an old canal, crosses the city from east to west at the southern end. At the northern end of the city stands the best preserved stage-tower of Babylonia, called E-lugal-galgasidi, “House of the lord who directs wisdom”, a reference to the moon-god Sin as lord of wisdom. The two lower stages are still in good condition, but this tower is rectangular, not square like the other ziggurats. The corners face the cardinal points; the north-east and south-west sides of the base measure 188 feet and the north-west and south-east ends 133 feet. In each corner of the second storey of the tower Taylor found a barrel-cylinder of Nabonidus, the last king who repaired the sacred edifices of Ur. South-east of the tower was a large building, probably the temple of Sin; it was called “the temple of light”. Its lower stratum is built of piano-convex bricks, which indicate a very early foundation. In a mound at the centre of the city he uncovered numerous graves, of the 'capsule' type, of inverted tub type, and fine vaulted brick tombs. Taylor's work was very well done, but with the publication of the results of the excavations conducted at Ur by the British Museum, new and fuller light will be thrown upon the archaeology and history of this important city.

Ur and its cult of the moon-god Sin or Nannar belong to the prehistoric sites of Sumer. The city was the seat of a prehistoric dynasty of four kings who succeeded the first kingdom of Erech. A second prehistoric kingdom reigned at Ur, but we know of its existence only from the summary of the dynastic list of Nippur. Eannatum invokes the moon-god Sin to solemnize his treaty with Umma in his stele of victory and sent offerings to the temple at Ur. This victorious patesi of Lagash conquered Erech, Larsa, Ur, and probably all of these great cities belonged temporarily to that city-state. The name of the city (Shesh-Unu-ki) means “City of the habitation of the brother”, a reference to Sin as the brother of Nergal, god of the summer-sun. Both of these deities were regarded as sons of the earth-god Enlil of Nippur. Nannar, god of the new moon, seems to have been an aspect of the lunar-god who became an independent deity, and had his own temple, Enunmakh, at Ur. The name of the city is ordinarily read U-ri-ma, but also Uri and Uru, and in this shortened form it passed into Hebrew as Ur.

Ten to twelve miles south-west of Ur lie the ruins of Abu Shah-rein, “Father of the two moons”, commonly supposed to be the site of Eridu. This identification was first based upon the slender evidence of a stamp of Bur-Sin, found on bricks in the buildings of Abu Shahrein and Mukayyar. The inscription ends, “he built for Enki his beloved lord the Apsu”. Enki, the god of fresh water, was worshipped chiefly here and his temple was known as E-abzu or “House of the nether sea”. The apsu, or sea of fresh water, on which the earth was supposed to rest and from which fountains and rivers sprang, was often represented by a great bowl or apsu in the temple courts of other cults. Ur-Nina constructed an apsu at Lagash, and Ur-Bau built a temple to Enki there. The cults of Ningirsu, a god of irrigation, and of Nina, “queen of the waters”, and daughter of Enki, were intimately connected with the cult of the water-god of Eridu. At Lagash the sacred apsu had its own priesthood; also at Babylon, Marduk, son of Enki or Ea, and the great god of the ritual of atonement, possessed an apsu adorned with gold in his temple, Esagila.

The early connection of Eridu and Lagash is due to the fact that both were once practically sea-board cities. Lagash and Babylon both possessed water-cults, offspring of the worship at Eridu, and the fact is explicable on topographical grounds. Eridu is said to have lain at the junction of two rivers and the site of Abu Shahrein excellently satisfies the references to Eridu, and the identification has received universal acceptance. The report of Taylor's excavations (published in 1855) was the only source of information concerning Eridu, until R. Campbell Thompson, then Captain, conducted excavations here in 1918 under orders of the British IV Mesopotamian Army. He found the bricks of Bur-Sin, al-ready uncovered by Taylor, whose inscription mentions the apsu. A few bricks of Ur-Engur are stamped with an inscription which ends with the words “he built the temple of Enki of Eridu”. Thompson also found a long brick stamp of Nur-Adad, eighth king of the dynasty of Larsa, which commemorates his work at Eridu, and there is now no longer any doubt that this city is Abu Shahrein.

Thompson noted quantities of fresh-water mussels in the lower strata, which prove that the city stood by a fresh-water lake. The site yielded the ordinary evidence of the late stone age, polished flints, stone hoes and baked clay sickles, and pots with small spouts. Fragments of alabaster vessels, beautifully carved, indicate a flourishing city in the historic period. The burials are almost exclusively early, the age being indicated by the shape of the pots in the graves. The Kassite, Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian kings do not appear to have paid any attention to Eridu, although the cult of this god was one of the most sacred and important in all periods. The city and its famous school sank into oblivion after the age of Hammurabi. The god of wisdom and philosophy, of atonement and consecration, continued to hold his place of almost supreme importance in religion, poetry and tradition. So necessary was his cult to the practice of religion that every city possessed a temple or chapel to Enki or Ea. In such circumstances, his ancient city, which probably became uninhabitable owing to the retreat of the shore-line and the diversion of the Euphrates, lost its position in the history of Babylonia without detriment to its god.

ERIDU, THE MYTH OD ADAPA, ASHUR

Eridu was never the seat of a dynasty and in fact it did not even possess a patesi under the various reigning kingdoms. One of its citizens, Adapa, a legendary sage endowed with vast intelligence by Ea, became the hero of the Eridu myth of the Fall of Man. This tale of the fisherman of Eridu who was summoned to the court of heaven for his sins and who lost eternal life by the ruse of his divine counsellor, Ea, is told in a fragmentary Semitic poem, the Sumerian text of which, if it ever existed, has not been found.

The fundamental theory of this myth is that mankind lost eternal life through the jealousy of a god. Adapa, a sage of Eridu, who, in the tradition preserved by Berosus, was the second king of Babylonia after the Flood, and reigned 10,800 years, was said to have been initiated into all wisdom by Ea, the god of wisdom; but eternal life was withheld from him. One day, while he was fishing, the south wind blew violently and threw him into the sea. In his fury he broke the wings of the south wind which then ceased to blow. Anu, the heaven god, summoned him to the gates of heaven for punishment. But Ea in his jealousy advised him to beware of partaking of bread and water which Anu would offer him. On his arrival before Anu, Tammuz and Gishzida interceded for him and explained to Anu that Ea had revealed all wisdom to this man, and that he would be a god, did he possess eternal life. Anu offered him the bread and water of life which he refused. Thus he lost eternal life and mankind became mortal.

Throughout Sumerian religion and speculation there are two main streams of thought represented by the schools of Eridu and of Nippur. A large portion of the texts of the Nippurian school has been recovered, but the library of the temple of E-abzu has eluded the search of excavators.

The excavation of the old capital of Assyria, Ashur (Ashshur), on the upper Tigris, has proved that a Sumerian city existed here in the pre-Sargonic period. Statuettes of the period of Ur-Nina reveal pure Sumerian type. The name of the old Sumerian city may not have been Ashur, and even the god of the city, Ashir or Ashur, may belong to a later period and a foreign (Mitannian) race. But names of places and cults are among the things most tenacious in the history of man and until new material disproves the conjecture it may be assumed that a northern Sumerian city, Ashur, existed from prehistoric times. Its relation to the city-states and kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad is unknown. Not a trace of Ashur has been found in the inscriptions of the great kingdoms of Erech and Akkad which now assume the hegemony of the whole of Western Asia. Nevertheless Ashur must be included in the survey of the rise and progress of the prehistoric cities and as we descend the stream of history its power and importance will continue to attract attention.

Such were the city-states and cults of Mesopotamia when Lugal-zaggisi of Umma wrested the supremacy of the two lands from Kish, and subdued the rival states of Sumer (c. 2897); and we now enter upon a new stage in their lengthy history.

 

THE MYTH OF ADAPA the first man