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Adab (Sumerian: Adabki,[1] D. D. Luckenbill, "Old Babylonian Letters from Bismya", The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 270–292, 1916 spelled UD.NUNKIJacobsen, Thorkild, "Some Sumerian city-names", Journal of Cuneiform Studies 21.1, pp. 100-103, 1967) was an ancient city between Girsu and Nippur, lying about southeast of the latter. It was located at the site of modern Bismaya or Bismya in the Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate of Iraq. The site was occupied at least as early as the 3rd millennium BC, through the Early Dynastic, Akkadian Empire, and Ur III Empire periods, into the Kassite dynasty period in the mid-2nd millennium BC. It is known that there were temples of Ninhursag, Iskur, Ashgi, Inanna and Enki at Adab and that the city-god of Adab was Parag'ellilegarra (Panigingarra) "The Sovereign Appointed by Enlil".Marchesi, Gianni and Marchetti, Nicolo, "Historical Framework", Royal Statuary of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, pp. 97-128, 2011Such-Gutiérrez, "Untersuchungen zum Pantheon von Adab im 3. Jt.", AfO 51, pp. 1–44, 2005-6
Bismaya is not to be confused with the small, later (Old Babylonian and Sassanian periods) archaeological site named Tell Bismaya, east of the confluence of the Diyala River and the Tigris rivers, excavated by Iraqi archaeologists in the 1980s or Tell Basmaya, southeast of modern Baghdad, excavated by Iraqi archaeologists in 2013-2014."Excavations in Iraq, 1981-82", Iraq, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 199–224, 1983Almamori, Haider, Taha K. Abod, Karim O. Swadi, Tim Clayden, Petra M. Creamer, Elena deVecchi, and Agnete Lassen, "Tell Basmaya - a Kassite Period Site in Trans-Tigridian Babylonia", Mesopotamia, Rivista Di Archeologia, Epigrafia e Storia Orientale Antica LVII, pp. 17–56, 2022
Initial examinations of the site of Bismaya were by William Hayes Ward of the Wolfe Expedition in 1885 and by John Punnett Peters of the University of Pennsylvania in 1890, each spending a day there and finding one cuneiform tablet and a few fragments.[2] John Punnett Peters, "Nippur, or Explorations and Adventures on the Euphrates; the narrative of the University of Pennsylvania expedition to Babylonia in the years 1888-1921", Volume 1, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1897[3] John Punnett Peters, "Nippur, or Explorations and Adventures on the Euphrates; the narrative of the University of Pennsylvania expedition to Babylonia in the years 1888-1921", Volume 2, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1897 Walter Andrae visited Bismaya in 1902, found a tablet fragment and produced a sketch map of the site.
Excavations were conducted there on behalf of the University of Chicago and led by Edgar James Banks for a total of six months beginning on Christmas Day of 1903 until May 25, 1904. Work resumed on September 19, 1904 but was stopped after 8 1/2 days by the Ottoman authorities. Excavation resumed on March 13, 1905 under the direction of Victor S. Persons and continued until the end of June, 1905. During the excavation of a city gate thousands of sling balls (some stone, most of baked clay), some flattened, were found which the excavator interpreted as the result of a battle. While Banks was better trained than the earlier generation of antiquarians and treasure hunters and used more modern archaeological methods the excavations suffered seriously from having never been properly published.[4] Edgar James Banks, "Bismya; or The lost city of Adab : a story of adventure, of exploration, and of excavation among the ruins of the oldest of the buried cities of Babylonia", G. P Putnam's Sons, New York, 1912[5] Banks, E. J., and Robert Francis Harper, "Report No. 23 from Bismya", The Biblical World 24.3, pp. 216-218, 1904[6] Banks, Edgar James, "Plain Stone Vases from Bismya", The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 35–40, 1905[7] Edgar James Banks, "The Oldest Statue in the World", The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 57–59, Oct 1904 The Banks expedition to Bismaya was well documented by the standards of the time and many objects photographed though no final report was ever produced due to personal disputes. In 2012, the Oriental Institute re-examined the records and objects returned to the institute by Banks and produced a "re-excavation" report. One issue is that Banks and Persons purchase objects from Adab locally while there and it is uncertain which object held at the museum were excavated vs being bought.
On Mound V, on what was originally thought to be an island but has since been understood to have resulted from a shift in the canal bed, stood the temple, E-mah, with a ziggurat. The temple had two occupational phases. E-Sar, the first (Earlier Temple), constructed of plano-convex bricks, was from the Early Dynastic period. That temple was later filled in with mud bricks and sealed off with a course of baked brick and bitumen pavement. A foundation deposit of Adab ruler E-iginimpa'e dated to Early Dynastic IIIa was found on that pavement containing "inscribed adze-shaped copper object (A543) with a copper spike (A542) inserted into the hole at its end and two tablets, one of copper alloy (A1160) and one of white stone (A1159)".Tsouparopoulou, Christina, "Hidden messages under the temple: Foundation deposits and the restricted presence of writing in 3rd millennium BCE Mesopotamia", Verborgen, unsichtbar, unlesbar – zur Problematik restringierter Schriftpräsenz, edited by Tobias Frese, Wilfried E. Keil and Kristina Krüger, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 17-32, 2014
The second temple (Later Temple) was faced by baked bricks, some with an inscription of the Ur III ruler Shulgi naming it the temple of the goddess Ninhursag.[8] Edgar James Banks, "The Bismya Temple", The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, vol. 22, vo. 1, pp. 29–34, Oct. 1905
Adab was evidently once a city of considerable importance, but deserted at a very early period, since the ruins found close to the surface of the mounds belong to Shulgi and Ur-Nammu, kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur in the latter part of the third millennium BC, based on inscribed bricks excavated at Bismaya. Immediately below these, as at Nippur, were found artifacts dating to the reign of Naram-Sin and Sargon or the Akkadian Empire, c. 2300 BC. Below these there were still of stratified remains, constituting seven-eighths of the total depth of the ruins. A large palace was found in the central area with a very large well lined with plan-convex bricks, marking it as being from the Early Dynastic period.
Besides the remains of buildings, walls, and graves, Banks discovered a large number of inscribed clay tablets of a very early period, bronze and stone tablets, bronze implements and the like. Of the tablets, 543 went to the Oriental Institute and roughly 1100, mostly purchased from the locals rather than excavated, went to the Istanbul Museum. The latter are still unpublished and are unavailable for study.Kraus, F. R., "Briefe aus dem Istanbuler Museum", Altbabylonische Briefe in Umschrift und Übersetzung 5, leiden:Brill, 1972Such-Gutiérrez, M., et al., "Der Kalendar von Adab im 3. Jahrtausend", RAI, iss. 56, pp. 325-340, 2013 Brick stamps, found by Banks during his excavation of Adab state that the Akkadian ruler Naram-Sin built a temple to Inanna at Adab, but the temple was not found during the dig, and is not known for certain to be E-shar.[9]Pagé-Perron, Émilie, "Gods of the City, Gods of the People: The Pantheons of Adab in the Third Millennium BC", Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2024 The two most notable discoveries were a complete statue in white marble, apparently the earliest yet found in Mesopotamia, now in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, bearing the inscription, translated by Banks as "E-mach, King Da-udu, King of, Ud-Nun", now known as the statue of Lugal-dalu and a temple refuse heap, consisting of great quantities of fragments of vases in marble, alabaster, onyx, porphyry and granite, some of which were inscribed, and others engraved and inlaid with ivory and precious stones.[10] Harper, Robert Francis, and E. J. Banks, "Reports No. 24 and 25 from Bismya", The Biblical World 24.5, pp. 377-384, 1904
Of the Adab tablets that ended up at the University of Chicago, sponsor of the excavations, all have been published and also made available in digital form online. [11] Daniel David Luckenbill, "Cuneiform Series, Vol. II: Inscriptions from Adab", Oriental Institute Publications 14, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1930 After the end of excavation, on a later personal trip the region in 1913, Banks purchased thousands of tablets from a number of sites, many from Adab, and sold them sold piecemeal to various owners over years. Some have made their way into publication. Many more have subsequently made their way into the antiquities market from illegal looting of the site and some have also been published. A number ended up in the collection of the Cornell University.Maiocchi, Massimo, "Classical Sargonic tablets chiefly from Adab in the Cornell University collections", CUSAS 13, vol. 13. CDL Press, 2009 Maiocchi, M. Visicato, G., "Classical Sargonic Tablets Chiefly from Adab in the Cornell, University Collections. Part II", CUSAS 19, Bethesda, 2012Pomponio, Francesco Vincenzo, and Giuseppe Visicato, "Middle Sargonic tablets chiefly from Adab in the Cornell University collections", Vol. 20, CDL Press, 2015Visicato, Giuseppe, and Aage Westenholz, "Early dynastic and early Sargonic tablets from Adab in the Cornell University collections", Vol. 11, CDL Press, 2010
In response to widespread looting which began after the war 1991, the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage conducted an excavation at Adab in 2001. The site has now been largely destroyed by systematic looting which increased after the war in 2003, so further excavation is unlikely.Gibson, M., "From the Prevention Measures to the Fact‐finding Mission", Museum International, 55(3-4), pp. 108–118, 2003 On the order of a thousand tablets from that looting, all from the Sargonic Period, have been sold to various collectors and many are being published, though missing archaeological context. Of the 9,000 published tablets from the Sargonic Period (Early Dynastic IIIb, Early Sargonic, Middle Sargonic and Classic Sargonic) about 2,300 came from Adab.Pomponio, Francesco Vincenzo, "Le tavolette cuneiformi di Adab. Le tavolette cuneiformi di varia provenienzia. (Le tavolette cuneiformi delle collezioni della Banca d'Italia 1 & 2)", Banca d'Italia, Roma, 2006
From 2016 to 2019, the University of Bologna and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage led by Nicolò Marchetti conducted a program, the Qadis survey, of coordinated remote sensing and surface surveys in the Qadisiyah province including at Bismaya (QD049). Results included a "Preliminary reconstruction of the urban layout and hydraulic landscape around Bismaya/Adab in the ED III and Akkadian periods".[12] Marchetti, Nicolò, et al., "New Results on Ancient Settlement Patterns in the South-Eastern Qadisiyah Region (Iraq). the 2016-2017 Iraqi-Italian Qadis Survey Project", Al-Adab Journal 123, pp. 45-62, 2017[13] Marchetti, Nicolò, et al., "The rise of urbanized landscapes in Mesopotamia: The QADIS integrated survey results and the interpretation of multi-layered historical landscapes" Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 109.2, pp. 214-237, 2019 A previously unknown palace was discovered and the extent of looting identified. It was determined that the city was surrounded by canals. The overall occupation of the site in the Early Dynastic III period was determined to have been 462 hectares.[14] Marchetti, Nicolò, and Federico Zaina. "Rediscovering the Heartland of Cities", Near Eastern Archaeology 83, pp. 146-157, 2020 The Qadis survey showed that Adab had a 24-hectare central harbor, with a maximum length of 240 meters and a maximum width of 215 meters. The harbor was connected to the Tigris river via a 100-meter–wide canal.Marchetti, N., Campeggi, M., D'Orazio, C., Gallerani, V., Giacosa, G., Al-Hussainy, A., Luglio, G., Mantellini, S., Mariani, E., Monastero, J., Valeri, M., & Zaina, F., "The Iraqi-Italian Qadis project: Report on six seasons of integrated survey", Sumer, LXVI, pp. 177–218, 2020 In 2001 a statue became available to the Baghdad Museum which was inscribed "Temple Builder, of the goddess Nin-SU(?)-KID(?): Epa'e, King of Adab".al-Mutawalli, Nawala and Miglus, Peter A., "Eine Statuette des Epa’e, eines frühdynastischen Herrschers von Adab", Altorientalische Forschungen, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 3-11, 2002
A king of Kish, Mesilim, appears to have ruled at Adab, based on inscriptions found at Bismaya. One inscription, on a bowl fragment reads "Mesilim, king of Kish, to Esar has returnedthis, Salkisalsi being patesi of Adab".[15] Luckenbill, D. D., "Two Inscriptions of Mesilim, King of Kish", The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 219-223, 1914 One king of Adab, Lugal-Anne-Mundu, appearing in the Sumerian King List, is mentioned in few contemporary inscriptions; some that are much later copies claim that he established a vast, but brief empire stretching from Elam all the way to Lebanon and the Amorite territories along the Jordan.[16] Chen, Yanli, and Yuhong Wu., "The Names of the Leaders and Diplomats of Marḫaši and Related Men in the Ur III Dynasty", Cuneiform Digital Library Journal 2017 (1), 2017 Adab is also mentioned in some of the Ebla tablets from roughly the same era as a trading partner of Ebla in northern Syria, shortly before Ebla was destroyed by unknown forces.Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg eds, "Eblaitica: Essays on the Ebla Archives and Eblaite Language, Volume 3", Eisenbrauns, 1992
A marble statue was found at Bismaya inscribed with the name of another king of Adab, variously translated as Lugal-daudu, Da-udu, and Lugaldalu.[17] G.A. Barton, "The Names of Two Kings of Adab", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 33, pp. 295—296, 1913[18] Banks, Edgar James, "Statue of the Sumerian King David", Scientific American 93.8, pp. 137-137, 1905 An inscription of Eannatum, ruler of Lagash was also found at Adab.Curchin, Leonard, "Eannatum and the Kings of Adab", Revue d’Assyriologie et d’archéologie Orientale, vol. 71, no. 1, pp. 93–95, 1977
| Early Dynastic IIIa period () | |||||
| Lugal-Anne-Mundu 𒈗𒀭𒉌𒈬𒌦𒆕 | Unclear succession | King of the Four Quarters of the World King of Sumer lugal of Adab | Uncertain; this ruler may have sometime during the Early Dynastic (ED) III period (90 years) |
| |
| Lumma 𒈝𒈠 | Unclear succession | Governor of Adab | Uncertain; this ruler may have sometime during the Early Dynastic (ED) IIIa period | ||
| Nin-kisalsi 𒎏𒆦𒋛 | Unclear succession | Governor of Adab | Tempore of: | ||
| Medurba 𒈨𒄙𒁀 | Unclear succession | King of Adab | Uncertain; these two rulers may have sometime during the ED IIIa period | temp. of: | |
| Epa'e 𒂍𒉺𒌓𒁺 | Unclear succession | King of Adab | temp. of: | ||
| Early Dynastic IIIb period () | |||||
| Lugal-dalu 𒈗𒁕𒇻 | Unclear succession | King of Adab | temp. of: | ||
| Paraganedu 𒁈𒃶𒉌𒄭 | Unclear succession | Governor of Adab | Uncertain; this ruler may have sometime during the EDIIIb period | temp. of: | |
| E-iginimpa'e 𒂍𒅆𒉏𒉺𒌓𒁺 | Unclear succession | Governor of Adab | temp. of: | ||
| Mug-si 𒈮𒋛 | Unclear succession | Governor of Adab | temp. of: | ||
| Ursangkesh | Unclear succession | Uncertain; these two rulers may have sometime during the EDIIIb period | temp. of: | ||
| Enme'annu | Unclear succession | temp. of: | |||
| Proto-Imperial period () | |||||
| Hartuashgi | Unclear succession | Uncertain; these two rulers may have sometime during the Proto-Imperial period | temp. of: | ||
| Meskigal 𒈩𒆠𒅅𒆷 | Unclear succession | Vassal governor of Adab under Umma and (later) Akkad | temp. of: | ||
| Akkadian Period () | |||||
| Sarru-alli | Unclear succession | Vassal governor under Akkadian Empire | temp. of: | ||
| Lugal-ajagu 𒈗𒀀𒈬 | Unclear succession | Vassal governor of Adan under Sargonic dynasty | temp. of: L. Lippmann Collection (with the collaboration ofM .E. Milone andE. Markina). Catálogo del Gabinete de Antigüedades 1.1.6. Madrid | ||
| Lugal-gis 𒈗𒄑 | Unclear succession | Vassal governor of Adab under Akkad | temp. of: | ||
| Ur-tur 𒌨𒀭𒌉 | Unclear succession | Vassal governor of Adab under Akkad | temp. of:
| ||
| Amar-Suba 𒀫𒍝𒈹 | Unclear succession | Vassal governor of Adab under Akkad | temp. of:
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| Gutian period () | |||||
| Urdumu | Unclear succession | Governor of Adab | Uncertain | temp. of: | |
| Ur III period () | |||||
| Amar-Suba 𒀫𒍝𒈹 | Unclear succession | Vassal governor of Adab under Ur | Uncertain | temp. of: | |
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