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The archaeological site of Abu Salabikh (Tell Abū Ṣalābīkh), around northwest of the site of ancient Nippur and about 150 kilometers southeast of the modern city of Baghdad in Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Iraq marks the site of a small Sumerian city that existed from the Neolithic through the late 3rd millennium, with cultural connections to the cities of Kish, Mari and Ebla.Pettinato, G., "L’Atlante Geografico Del Vicino Oriente Antico Attestato Ad Ebla e Ad Abū Şalābīkh (I)", Orientalia, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 50–73, 1978Pomponio, Francesco, "Notes on the Lexical Texts from Abū Salābīkh and Ebla", Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 285–90, 1983 Its ancient name is unknown though Eresh and Kesh have been suggested as well as Gišgi.Cohen, Mark E., “The Name Nintinugga with a Note on the Possible Identification of Tell Abu Salābīkh", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 82–92, 1976 Kesh was suggested by Thorkild Jacobsen before excavations began.Biggs, Robert D., "An Archaic Sumerian Version of the Kesh Temple Hymn from Tell Abū Ṣalābīkh", vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 193-207, 1971 The Euphrates was the city's highway and lifeline; when it shifted its old bed (which was identified to the west of the Main Mound by coring techniques), in the late third millennium BC, the city dwindled away. Only eroded traces remain on the site's surface of habitation after the Early Dynastic Period. There is another small archaeological site named Abu-Salabikh in the Hammar Lake region of Southern Iraq, which has been suggested as the possible capital of the Sealand dynasty.Roux, G., "Recently Discovered Ancient Sites in the Hammar Lake District-Southern Iraq", Sumer, XVI, no. 1-2, pp. 20-31, 1960
Abu Salabikh was excavated by an American expedition from the Oriental Institute of Chicago led by Donald P. Hansen in 1963 and 1965 for a total of 8 weeks. They found the site, lying in a salt bog, had numerous robber holes. Unlike the nearby site of Nippur which continued to be occupied for millennia, at Abu Salabikh the Early Dynastic remains were near the surface. The expedition found around 500 tablets and fragments, containing some of the earliest ancient literature.Alster, Bendt, "Early Dynastic Proverbs and Other Contributions to the Study of Literary Texts From Abū Ṣalābīkh", Archiv Für Orientforschung, vol. 38/39, pp. 1–51, 1991[1] Alberti, A., "A Reconstruction of the Abu Salabikh God-list", Studi Epigraphici e linguistici sul Vicino Oriente 2, pp. 3–23, 1985 A number of animal remains were also found including domestic dog, lion, equid, pig, cattle, gazelle, caprines (sheep and goat), and antelope.Clutton-Brock, Juliet, and Richard Burleigh, "The Animal Remains from Abu Salabikh: Preliminary Report", Iraq, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 89–100, 1978 Remains of various birds were also found.Eastham, Anne, "The bird bones from Abu Salabikh", Iraq, vol. 71, pp. 99–114, 2009
Between 1975 and 1990 Abu Salabikh was excavated by a British School of Archaeology in Iraq team under the direction of Nicholas Postgate. Finds included beveled rim bowls.Nicholas Postgate, "Excavations at Abu Salabikh 1976", Iraq, vol. 39, pp. 269–299, 1977Nicholas Postgate, "Excavations at Abu Salabikh 1977", Iraq, vol. 40, pp. 89-100, 1978Nicholas Postgate, "Excavations at Abu Salabikh 1978-79", Iraq, vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 87–104, 1980 Excavations were suspended in 1990 with the Invasion of Kuwait and have not been resumed. The city, built on a rectilinear plan in the early Uruk period, revealed a small but important repertory of cuneiform texts on some 500 tablets, of which the originals were stored in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad.M. Krebernik and J. N. Postgate, "The tablets from Abu Salabikh and their provenance", Iraq, vol. 71, pp. 1- 32, 2009 Texts, comparable in date and content with texts from Shuruppak (modern Fara, Iraq) included school texts, literary texts, word lists, and some administrative archives, as well as the Instructions of Shuruppak, a well-known Sumerian "wisdom' text of which the Abu Salabikh tablet is the oldest copy.Krebernik, Manfred, "Die Texte aus Fara und Tell Abu Salabikh", In Mesopotamien: Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdynastische Zeit, ed. P. Attinger and M. Wäfler, Annäher-ungen 1. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, pp. 237-427, 1998 While the writing remained Sumerian, Semitic scribal names became more common as the Early Dynastic period wore on.Biggs, R. D., "The Semitic Personal Names from Abu Salabikh and the Personal Names from Ebla", in Eblaite Personal Names and Semitic Name-giving, ed. A. Archi, ARES 1. Rome: Missione Archeologica Italiana in Siria, pp.89–98, 1988Biggs, Robert D., "Semitic Names in the Fara Period", Orientalia, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 55–66, 1967 The archaic form of Sumerian in the texts is not fully understood however a number of literary compositions were found that had beforehand been thought to have not existed until half a millennium later in the Old Babylonian period.[2] Nicholas Postgate, "Abu Salabikh", in J. Curtis, ed., Fifty Years of Mesopotamian Discovery, London, pp. 48–61, 1982 Originally it was thought that the tablet, contemporary with the ones found at Shuruppak were dated to the period of Early Dynastic III ruler of First dynasty of Lagash Ur-Nanshe (c. 2500 BC). Subsequent study pushed the dating to a century before Ur-Nanshe though it has also been suggested that the dating was after Ur-Nanshe though before Eannatum of Lagash, his grandson. This is still an open issue.Hallo, William W., "The Date of the Fara Period A Case Study in the Historiography of Early Mesopotamia", Orientalia, vol. 42, pp. 228–38, 1973
On the Uruk mound, which was abandoned after the Jemdet Nasr period, 1650 high fired clay sickles were found.[3] Benco, Nancy L., "Manufacture and Use of Clay Sickles from the Uruk Mound, Abu Salabikh, Iraq", Paléorient, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 119–34, 1992 Two grain samples from the Middle Uruk layer of the Uruk Mound were accelerator radiocarbon dated with calibrated dates of 3520 ± 130 BC.Susan Pollock, Caroline Steele and Melody Pope, "Investigations on the Uruk Mound, Abu Salabikh, 1990", Iraq, vol. 53, pp. 59–68, 1991 Calibration was based on that of Pearson.Pearson, G. W. et al., "High precision 14C measurement of Irish oaks to show the natural 14C variation from a.d. 1840 to 5210 b.c.", Radiocarbon 28, pp. 911-34, 1986
Seventy-four Neolithic clay accounting tokens were found at the site.Baker, H.D., M.P. Charles, Gillian Clark, Anthony Green, Harriet P. Martin, R.J. Matthews, et al. Abu Salabikh Excavations: The 6G Ash-Tip and Its Contents: Cultic and Administrative Discard from the Temple? Melksham, England: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 1993, p. 133.Overmann, Karenleigh A., The Material Origin of Numbers: Insights from the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Piscataway, NJ, USA: Gorgias Press, Table 9.2, pp. 169-170, 2019 Over one hundred pottery shards that had been filed into 3 centimeter discs and pierced were found, suggested as for use in abacus type counting devices.Woods, Christopher, "The Abacus in Mesopotamia: Considerations from a Comparative Perspective", The First Ninety Years: A Sumerian Celebration in Honor of Miguel Civil, edited by Lluís Feliu, Fumi Karahashi and Gonzalo Rubio, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 416-478, 2017
Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Akkad, the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire wrote a collection of 42 Temple Hymns, with the final one, which survives in fragmentary form, dedicated to E-Zagin, the temple of Nisaba in Eresh.
In the Hymn to Nisaba it states "Eresh he has constructed in abundance".Feliu, Lluís, "A New Fragment of Nisaba A", Altorientalische Forschungen, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 27-37, 2010
In the Sumerian literary composition Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana, a sorcerer, Urgirinuna, goes to Eresh and makes all the cows and goats stop giving milk.Attinger, P., "Remarques a Propos de la 'Malédiction d'Accad'", Revue d’Assyriologie et d’archéologie Orientale, vol. 78, no. 2, pp. 99–121, 1984Michalowski, Piotr, "Maybe Epic: the origins and reception of Sumerian heroic poetry". Epic and History, pp. 7-25, 2010 In the Sumerian literary composition Marriage of Enlil and Sud it reads "He (Enlil) said, "Quick, please, Nuska, I will give you instructions about this, I want to send you to Eresh, Nidaba's city, the city whose grounds are august".Meier, S. A., "Preparation for the Mission", in The Messenger in the Ancient Semitic World. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1988
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