Adab (Sumerian: Adabki, 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 Sumerian 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 period in the mid-2nd millennium BC. It is known that there were temples of Ninhursag/Digirmah, Iskur, Asgi, 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 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
Archaeology
The 400-hectare site consists of a number of mounds distributed over an area about long and wide, consisting of a number of low ridges, nowhere exceeding in height, lying somewhat nearer to the Tigris than the Euphrates, about a day's journey to the southeast of Nippur. It was surrounded by a double wall. In total, there are twelve mounds of which two (Mounds X and XII) are the result of sand dredged from the Iturungal canal, though some rooms and 20 tablets were found on the northern extension of X. Persons reported working on mound XIV and mound XVI but there is no record where they lay. Some private houses were noted outside the east wall. Notable mounds were Mound I - Palace, Isin/Larsa - Old Babylonian Periods. About 33 meters by 25 meters. Several hundred mostly fragmentary tablets Mound II - Cemetery and House by Bath. Seven burials (5 intramural graves, 2 tombs). Mound III - Administrative and light industrial near west corner. Early Dynastic, Akkadian, and Ur III levels. Most tablets found there date to reign of Akkadian Empire ruler Shar-kali-sharri. Mound IV - The Library. Over 2,000 tablets found here, originally held in reed baskets with labels. Akkadian period administrative center. Mound V - E-Sar/E-mah Temple. Mound 11 meters high and 90 meters in circumference. Ten occupation levels, atop pure sand, ranging from Early Dynastic I to Ur III. Inscribed bricks of Kurigalzu indicated restoration in the Kassite period. Two consecutive temples were built with the first ritually sealed before construction of the second. Mound VI - Large walls with inscribed bricks of Amar-Sin. Thought to be a temple.
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. 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 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. 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 Banks, E. J., and Robert Francis Harper, "Report No. 23 from Bismya", The Biblical World 24.3, pp. 216-218, 1904 Banks, Edgar James, "Plain Stone Vases from Bismya", The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 35–40, 1905 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 purchased 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. 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. 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. 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. 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