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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:40:16 GMT -5
Notes on Nippur
Nippur was an ancient Mesopotamian city that was located in modern Nuffar in Afak, Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Iraq. The patron deity of Nippur was Enlil, son of An. Enlil was the head of the Mesopotamian Pantheon. His temple at Nippur was the E-kur (House which is a Mountain). The Ziggurat at Nippur was the E-tu-hur-sag (House of the Mountain wind). The site rises nearly 20 meters high and occupies about 150 hectares or 1.5 square kilometers. The city's history extends from the early sixth millennium (Ubaid period) to 800 AD, with intermittent breaks in occupation.
Nippur was considered the border between the southern region Kiengir which was the land of the Sumerians and the northern region Wari which was inhabited by Semites that would later be called the Akkadians. It was for this reason that it is believed that Enmebaragesi, King of Kish, made Nippur the holy city of Mesopotamia by elevating it's patron deity Enlil to the head of the national pantheon.
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:40:55 GMT -5
Other cults located in Nippur included: The cult of Enlil's wife Ninlil. Her temple was the E-Tummal (Tummal House). The cult of Nuska, God of Fire & Light. His temple was the E-melem-hush (House of terrifying radiance). The shrine inside his temple was the Esh-mah (Magnificent shrine). Nuska-s son was Gibil, God of heat. The cult of Ninurta, God of Agriculture/War. His was the E-me-ur-ana (House which gathers the divine powers of heaven) or sometimes the E-shu-me-sha. The shrine in the temple of Ninurta at Nippur was the E-igi-shugalam (House in front of Shugalam). There was a cult that worshiped Ninshubar. His temple at Nippur was the E-akkil-duku (House of Lamentation, pure mound). There was a cult of Ninimma at Nippur. The shrine of Ninimma was the E-igi-hush-a (House of the angry eye).
The East side of Nippur was a temple complex called the Dur-an-ki. The Dur-an-ki is where many of Nipput's temples were located such as the temples dedicated to Enlil, Ninlil, Enki and Damgalnunna and Inana.
House Most High: The Temples of Ancient Mesopotamia
By A.R. George (1993)
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:42:26 GMT -5
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:43:44 GMT -5
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:44:31 GMT -5
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:45:55 GMT -5
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:47:23 GMT -5
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:48:59 GMT -5
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:50:06 GMT -5
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:51:22 GMT -5
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:52:24 GMT -5
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:53:07 GMT -5
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:54:37 GMT -5
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:55:51 GMT -5
"Nippur was full of Temples. A tablet discovered in a terracotta jar full of inscribed objects lists the total surface areas covered by Temples in the city. During its time of composition, in the kassite period, there were tweenty-two shrines in the city, not counting the large ones of Enlil and Ninlil, Ninurta and Ninnibru."
Gwendolyn Leick in "Mesopotamia: The invention of the City" (2001)
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Post by inimgina on Jul 23, 2016 11:56:59 GMT -5
Biggs identified the North Temple of the Dur-an-ki complex as the temple of Ninurta (JCS 19). This identification was refuted by Aage Westenholz in Old Sumerian and Old Akkadian Texts in Philadelphia (Museum Tusculanum Press, 1987)
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Post by sheshki on Jul 31, 2016 8:41:23 GMT -5
Picture taken from CANE, The Development of Cities in Ancient Mesopotamia  |
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Post by sheshki on Aug 12, 2016 13:23:24 GMT -5
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Post by sheshki on Aug 12, 2016 14:05:53 GMT -5
From: A MANUAL OF SUMERIAN GRAMMAR AND TEXTS by JOHN L. HAYES
Nibru (Nippur)
This was one of the more ancient cities in Mesopotamia, occupied at least as early as
5000 BCE. It never wielded much political power, yet was always important in the religious life
of Mesopotamia. Kramer has called it the "spiritual and intellectual center" of Sumer (1963:72).
Jacobsen has said:
From the very beginning of historical times Nippur and Enlil were recognized as
an undisputed source of rule over Sumer as a whole, and kings of Sumer would
derive their authority from recognition in Nippur rather than from their own city
and its city-god (1970 [I957] 139).
The importance of Nippur can be seen by the fact that in The Curse of Agade, a 281-line
poem describing the destruction of the Dynasty of Akkad by the Guti, it was Naram-Sin's
desecration of Nippur and its temple Ekur which was the proximate cause of the fall of the
Dynasty.
The modern name of the site is Nuffar. It was the first tell to be excavated by American
archaeologists. The University of Pennsylvania started excavations in 1887, and work has continued
off and on until recently. The Inanna temple in particular has been studied by Richard
Zettler in his The Ur III Temple of Inanna at Nippur (1992).
Over thirty thousand cuneiform tablets were found during the course of the initial excavations,
mostly written in Sumerian, ranging from the third to the first millennium BCE. Large
numbers of these tablets are still unpublished. The majority of our preserved Sumerian literary
texts are Old Babylonian copies of earlier texts, found at Nippur.
...
The Sumerian pronunciation of the name of the city of Nippur is known from lexical lists,
where En-lil2ki is spelled out as Ni-ib-ru. Similarly, the Akkadian pronunciation of the city name
is also known from lexical lists, where it is spelled out as Ni-ip-pu-ru.
The Sumerian writing of the place name represents a not uncommon instance where the
writing system tells us nothing about the pronunciation of the place name. The etymology of
Nibru is unknown; it is presumably a pre-Sumerian substrate name. However, the city was
especially associated with the god Enlil. Therefore, the name of the city was written with the
same two signs used in the spelling of the name of the god, but followed by the determinative
for GNs: En-lil2ki That is, the writing does not attempt to reproduce the phonetic sequence
/nibru/. Rather, the Sumerian reader would understand the written signs as standing for "the
place associated with the god Enlil", that is, "Nippur".
...
The rather old-fashioned transliteration of this city name is En-lil2ki. But since the pronunciation
as /nibru/ is well established, it is most commonly transliterated today as Nibruki.
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