Nippur

Nippur was never a political capital, and that was its position: it was the religious centre of Sumer, home of Enlil, the god whose sanction legitimised kings, so rulers of competing cities all endowed its temples. Its scribal schools produced tens of thousands of clay tablets, and it is from Nippur that a great part of Sumerian literature survives, including versions of the flood story and the hymns and laments that fill the corpus. The mound holds the ziggurat of Enlil, temple precincts, and the excavated scribal quarter; a nineteenth-century American expedition worked here and later teams continued. What a visitor sees is a large mound with a brick ziggurat core standing above the plain and trenches cut across the site.

History

Nippur, the special seat of the god Enlil, never held political power of its own, but control of it mattered because, through its Ekur temple, it could confer kingship on the rulers of other city-states. The Tummal Chronicle says Enmebaragesi, an early ruler of Kish, was the first to build up the temple (Wikipedia, Nippur).

What's there

• The Enlil ziggurat - the brick core standing above the mound.
• Temple precincts - excavated foundations around the sacred area.
• The scribal quarter - the area that produced the tablet archives.
• Deep trenches - cuts left by more than a century of excavation.

When to go

November to March; summer on the open plain is severe. Mornings are best. Spring can bring mud on the approach tracks after rain.

Before you go

The site is mudbrick and trenches; it rewards preparation more than a casual look. There is no interpretation on site. Permission and a local driver are needed. Tablets from Nippur are held in Philadelphia, Istanbul and Baghdad, not here.

Nearby

Kish lies northwest; Diwaniyah is west.

Key facts