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Shuruppak ( , SU.KUR.RUki, "the healing place"), modern Tell Fara, was an ancient city situated about 55 kilometres (35 mi) south of Nippur and 30 kilometers north of ancient Uruk on the banks of the Euphrates in Iraq's Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate. Shuruppak was dedicated to Ninlil, also called Sud, the goddess of grain and the air. The Early Dynastic IIIa period is also sometimes called the Fara period. Not to be confused with the Levantine archaeological site Tell el-Far'ah (South).
"Shuruppak" is sometimes also the name of a king of the city, legendary survivor of Flood story, and supposed author of the Instructions of Shuruppak".Samet, Nili, "Instructions of Shuruppak: The World's Oldest Instruction Collection", Human Interaction with the Natural World in Wisdom Literature and Beyond. Essays in Honour of Tova L. Forti, hrsg. v. Mordechai Cogan, Katherine J. Dell, David Glatt-Gilad (The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 720), pp. 216-229, 2023
In the Sumerian King List is a ruler, Ubara-Tutu, the last ruler "before the flood". In some versions he is followed by a son, Ziusudra. In later versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh, a man named Utnapishtim, son of Ubara-Tutu, is noted to be king of Shuruppak. This portion of Gilgamesh is thought to have been taken from another literary composition, the Myth of Atrahasis.Maureen Gallery Kovacs, "TABLET XI", The Epic of Gilgamesh, edited by, Redwood City: Stanford University Press, pp. 95-108, 1989
Cuneiform tablets from the Early Dynastic III period show a thriving, military oriented economy with links to cities throughout the region.Jacobsen, Thorkild and Moran, William L., "Early Political Development in Mesopotamia", Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture, Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, pp. 132-156, 1970 It has been proposed that Fara was part of a "hexapolis" with Lagash, Nippur, Uruk, Adab, and Umma, possibly under the leadership of Kish.Pomponio, Francesco & Visicato Giuseppe, "Early Dynastic Administrative Tablets of Šuruppak", Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientalo di Napoli, 1994 It has been proposed that in the Early Dynastic IIIa period Shuruppak had passed from the control of Kish to that of Uruk and was part of joint military operations against Kish (with Adab, Nippur, Lagaš, Umma) under the leadership of Uruk.Steinkeller, Piotr, "A Campaign of Southern City-States against Kiš as Documented in the ED IIIa Sources from Šuruppak (Fara)", Journal of Cuneiform Studies 76.1, pp. 3-26, 2024
Governors: Dada; Hala-adda;
A Isin-Larsa cylinder seal and several pottery plaques which may date to early in the second millennium BC were found at the site. Surface finds are predominantly Early Dynastic. In the 2nd year of Enlil-bani ( 1860–1837 BC), ruler of Isin, a sage of Nippur is recorded as leaving an herbal medicine at Shurappak.Rochberg, Francesca, "The Babylonians and the Rational: Reasoning in Cuneiform Scribal Scholarship", In the Wake of the Compendia: Infrastructural Contexts and the Licensing of Empiricism in Ancient and Medieval Mesopotamia, edited by J. Cale Johnson, Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 209-246, 2015
It was first excavated between 1902 and 1903 by Walter Andrae, Robert Koldewey and Friedrich Delitzsch of the German Oriental Society for eight months. They used a new "modern" system which involved excavating trenches 8 feet wide and 5 feet deep every few yards running across the entire width of the larger mound. If a building wall was found in a trench it was further explored. Preliminary identification of the site as Suruppak came from a Ur III period clay nail which mentioned "Haladda, son of Dada, the patesi of Shuruppak (written SU.KUR.RUki) repaired the ADUS of the Great Gate of the god Shuruppak (written dSU.KUR.RU-da)". Among other finds, 847 cuneiform tablets and 133 tablet fragments of Early Dynastic III period were collected, which ended up in the Berlin Museum and the Istanbul Museum. They included administrative, legal, lexical, and literary texts. Over 100 of the tablets dealt with the disbursement of rations to workers. About a thousand Early Dynastic clay sealings and fragments (used to secure doors and containers) were also found. Most from cylinder seals but 19 were from stamp seals.Matthews, R. J., "Clay Sealings in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia: A Functional and Contextual Approach", Ph.D. Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1989R.J.Matthews, "Fragments of Officialdom from Fara", Iraq, vol. 53, pp. 1–15, 1991 In 1903 the site was visited by Edgar James Banks who was excavating at the site of Adab, a four-hour walk to the north. Banks took photographs of the German trenches and noted a 20 foot in diameter well, constructed with plano-convex bricks, in the center of the larger mound as well as an arched sewer, similarly constructed. The latter was where tablets were found. Banks also noted that the smaller mound held a cemetery.
In 1926 it was visited by Raymond P, Dougherty during his archaeological survey of the region.Dougherty, Raymond P, "An Archæological Survey in Southern Babylonia I", Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 23, pp. 15–28, 1926 In March and April 1931, a joint team of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the University of Pennsylvania excavated Shuruppak for a further six week season, with Erich Schmidt as director and with epigraphist Samuel Noah Kramer being prompted by reports of illicit excavations in the area. They were able to stratify the major occupation levels as Jemdat Nasr (Fara I), Early Dynastic (Fara II), and Ur III empire (Fara III). There was an "inundation event" between Fara I and Fara II. The excavation recovered 96 tablets and fragments—mostly from pre-Sargonic times—biconvex, and unbaked. The tablets included reference to Shuruppak enabling confirmation of the sites original name.Martin, Harriet P., "The Tablets of Shuruppak", in Le temple et le culte, Compte rendu de la vingtième Recontre Assyriologique Internationale, Leiden, pp. 173-182, 1975
In 1973, a three-day surface survey of the site was conducted by Harriet P. Martin. Consisting mainly of pottery shard collection, the survey confirmed that Shuruppak dates at least as early as the Jemdet Nasr period, expanded greatly in the Early Dynastic period, and was also an element of the Akkadian Empire and the Third Dynasty of Ur.
A surface survey and a full magnetometer survey of the site was completed was conducted between 2016 and 2018 by a team from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich led by Adelheid Otto and Berthold Einwag. The initial work was under the regional QADIS survey.Marchetti, N., Einwag, B., Al-Hussainy, A., Luglio, G., Marchesi, G., Otto, A., Scazzosi, G., Leoni, E., Valeri, M. and Zaina, F., "QADIS. The Iraqi-Italian 2016 Survey Season in the South-Eastern Region of Qadisiyah", Sumer 63, pp. 63−92, 2017 A drone was used to create a digital elevation model of the site.Otto, A., & Einwag, B., "The survey at Fara - Šuruppak 2016-2018", In Otto, A., Herles, M., Kaniuth, K., Korn, L., & Heidenreich, A. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Vol. 2. Wiesbaden, pp. 293–306. Harrassowitz Verlag, 2020 The researchers found thousands of robber holes left by looters which had disturbed surface in many places, with the top several meters of the main mound destroyed.Otto, A., Einwag, B., Al-Hussainy, A., Jawdat, J.A.H., Fink, C. and Maaß, H., "Destruction and Looting of Archaeological Sites between Fāra / Šuruppak and Išān Bahrīyāt / Isin: Damage Assessment during the Fara Regional Survey Project FARSUP", Sumer 64, pp. 35−48, 2018 They were able to use remains of the 900 meter long trench left by excavators in 1902 and 1903 to orient old excavation documents and aerial mapping with their geomagnetic results. Part of the site was inaccessible because of the spoil heaps from the excavations. A city wall was found (in Area A), which had been missed in the past. A harbor and quay were also found.
Further excavations seasons occurred in 2022 and 2024. Work occurred in an area where the early German excavators found over 1000 seal impressions from about 500 seals (trench Id/Ie), in an area now heavily looted out. The seals covered a wide period, Jemdet Nasr, ED I and ED II so it was assumed the area was a rubbish dump. A location was chosen where sand encroachment had somewhat deterred the robbers. a trench was excavated measuring 4 meters long by 3 meters wide, to a depth of 2.5 meters without reaching virgin soil. A total of 180 clay sealings were found often matching those earlier excavated including an unusually large seal (3.5 centimeters) in the "Elegant Style".Otto, A., "Jahre nach den Pionierleistungen der DOG: Neue Forschungen in Fāra/Schuruppak, einer sumerischen Stadt des 3. Jahrtausends v. Chr", in Marzahn, J. and Wicke, D. eds. Zwischen Schwarzem Meer und Persischem Golf. 125 Jahre Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, pp. 152-159, 2023 Portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analysis of clay sealings suggested that rather than being deposited over a long period of time all of the various seal styles were being used at the same time.Otto, Adelheid, "To change, or not to change… Transitional glyptic styles in ED II Fara/Šuruppak and their relation to officialdom", TRACING TRANSITIONS & CONNECTING COMMUNITIES, pp. 103-117, 2025
| Early Dynastic I period () | ||||||
| 1st | Ubara-Tutu 𒂬𒁺𒁺 | Son of En-men-dur-ana (?) | Uncertain, (18,600 years) |
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| 2nd | Ziusudra 𒍣𒌓𒋤𒁺 | Son of Ubara-Tutu (?) | Uncertain, (36,000 years) |
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