NIPPUR. - City of ancient Babylonia.

The various hills (= tell) of N. - situated between Kūt el-Amārah and Dīwānijjeh (in the desert between the Euphrates and the Tigris) - separated by the bed of the dry canal Satt en-Nil, rise 14-17 m. above the level of the plain. After a first exploration made by A. H. Layard and W. K. Loftus, in 1889 an American expedition composed of J. P. Peters, P. H. Field (architect), R. Fr. Harper and H. V. Hilprecht (Assyriologists) and J. H. Haynes began to excavate. But subsequently only either J. P. Peters or J. H. Haynes excavated (without architects and without Assyriologists) until 1900, in which year H. V. Hilprecht again, with 2 architects, attempted to coordinate the various results.

Two circuits of walls have been found: Imgur-Marduk, which encircles the sanctuary of Enlil, that is, tower, temple and courtyard, and another more extensive one, Nimit-Marduk, which also includes the palace of the sovereign.

In the north-eastern corner is the temple of the god Enlil, a most celebrated sanctuary of ancient Mesopotamia, and immediately to the west the tower (ziqqurat), in front of which extends a great courtyard that communicates through a wide gate with another courtyard (to the south-east). The ziqqurat

(tower), restored by Ashurbanipal (668-626?), and earlier by the Kassite king Kadašman-Turgu (1294-1278) and by Ur-Ninurta of Isin (1864-1837), had been built by the king Ur-nammu (of the 3rd dynasty of Ur, ca. 2050-2030), but contains within itself another even more ancient tower of the king Narām-Sin (of the 1st dynasty of Akkad, ca. 2275-2238). In the temple of the god Enlil there came to light fragments of votive gifts and of statues of the ancient Sumerian and Akkadian kings of Mesopotamia. Around the temple were found tombs, whose corpses had been subjected to the action of fire before burial.

In the tell, especially in the "hill of the tablets", more than 23,000 cuneiform tablets were excavated, among which are economic and juridical texts of the pre-Sargonic and Sargonic period, of the 3rd dynasty of Ur down to the Persian period; also many Sumerian poetic texts came to light. From the last epoch is the archive of the banker and merchant Murašū and sons under Artaxerxes I (465-424 B.C.) and Darius II (424-405 B.C.).

From 1949 a new American expedition of the Pennsylvania University (Philadelphia) and of the Oriental Institute of Chicago, under the direction of Donald E. McCown, excavated in two places of N. In the temple of Enlil the results of 50 years ago were thus verified. The other place is the "hill of the tablets", the scribes' quarter, where excavation proceeds in two sectors, which have already yielded 750 tablets and a good collection of ceramics.

Bibliography5 works

BIBL.: J. P. Peters, Nippur or Explorations and Adventures on the Euphrates, 2 vols., New York-London 1897; H. V. Hilprecht, Die Ausgrabungen der Universität von Pennsylvania im Bel-Tempel zu Nippur, Leipzig 1903. Texts: from the year 1893 in The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania. Series A: Cuneiform Texts; from the year 1911 replaced by University of Pennsylvania. The University Museum. Publications of the Babylonian Section; M. S. Fisher, Excavations at Nippur, Philadelphia 1905; D. E. McCown, Interim Report on the Excavations at N., in Sumer, 6 (1950), pp. 99-100.

Alfredo Pohl

@incollection{ec8_nippur, author = {Pohl, Alfredo}, title = {Nippur}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VIII}, pages = {1897--1898}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/nippur} }

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NIPPUR. - City of ancient Babylonia.

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