RuBab

The focus of the project will be the countryside in Southern Mesopotamia (Al-Qadisiyya
province, Southern Iraq) in the hinterland to the Southeast of Nippur, the ancient religious
capital of the Sumerians and home of the main god Enlil, will be focus of the study. This area,
off-side of the urban center, will be examined through a combination of excavation and
survey of known sites from the period under the leadership of Assyrians, Babylonians and
Persians until the reign of the Seleucids (1st Millennium BC) without excluding the
overlapping material culture of other periods. Earlier work of landscape archaeology until
the 1980ies as well as the recent work (2016-18) of a team from Bologna, mainly focusing on
the 3rd Millennium BC, exposed only a part of the huge potential this region has for the study
of the 1st Millennium BC.
As a pilot study for further exploration will serve the excavation of Ishan Hafudh 25 km
Southeast of Nippur. With this archaeological site, for the first time a rural settlement
prospering in the middle of the 1st Millennium BC will be excavated. Ishan Hafudh is
promising because of a set of finds made in the 1920ies. An amount of more than 80 bullae
with sealings point on the importance of this small site during the 5th century BC. Examples
without a sealing but including a description (in Babylonian cuneiform script) of an
unfinished sealing point towards the existence of a seal-cutters workshop at Ishan Hafudh.
Small settlements named after the profession of the inhabitants, known from the cuneiform
archives of nearby Nippur from the 5th century BC, existed in the region. Therefore, the site
could be a settlement of “seal cutters”.
The work will include also an examination of the surrounding plain where already during the
1920ies other sites could be detected which are to be re-identified in lack of a precise map.
With the support of modern drone photography and satellite imagery a geo-referenced map
should be produced including the collection and analysis of pottery of promising sites for
further research.
Another factor of importance this area provides for the study of long-term processes is the
situation on an old channel running from Northwest to Southeast which was on main cultic
as well as economic axis from Nippur (Enlil’s city) down via the administrative center at
Drehem and the sanctuary of Ninlil (Enlil’s wife) at Tummal 1500 years earlier. It went out of
use when the central government broke down during the first half of the 2nd Millennium BC,
for Ishan Hafudh the last datable find comes from the reign of Ur-Ninurta. It was only again
re-introduced into service during the Neo-Babylonian and Persian period (622-333 BC)
through the settlement of large deported groups of people from places as far West as Egypt
and the western Anatolia coast (Ionia and Caria).