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49-509: "Shuruppak" is sometimes also the name of a king of the city, legendary survivor of the Flood , and supposed author of the Instructions of Shuruppak ". The earliest excavated levels at Shuruppak date to the Jemdet Nasr period about 3000 BC. Several objects made of arsenical copper were found in Shuruppak/Fara dating to the Jemdet Nasr period (c. 2900 BC). Similar objects were also found at Tepe Gawra (levels XII-VIII). The city rose in importance and size, exceeding 40 hectares(0.4km), during

98-471: A Stone Age society which lived close to the Mediterranean Sea could have been wiped out by the rising sea level , an event which could have served as the basis for the story. Archaeologist Bruce Masse stated that some of the narratives of a great flood discovered in many cultures around the world may be linked to an oceanic asteroid impact that occurred between Africa and Antarctica , around

147-494: A meteor or comet crashed into the Indian Ocean around 3000–2800 BCE, and created the 18-mile (29 km) undersea Burckle Crater and Fenambosy Chevron , and generated a giant tsunami that flooded coastal lands. Mesopotamia , like other early sites of riverine civilisation , was flood-prone; and for those experiencing valley-wide inundations, flooding could destroy the whole of their known world. According to

196-500: 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. In March and April 1931, a joint team of the American Schools of Oriental Research and

245-633: A cometary flood, but from cometary fire, and a cometary rain of stones." Footnotes Citations William Loftus (archaeologist) William Kennett Loftus (13 November 1820, in Linton, Kent – 27 November 1858, at sea) was a British geologist, naturalist, explorer and archaeological excavator. He discovered the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk in 1849. Loftus was brought up in Rye , East Sussex , and went to school at Newcastle Royal Grammar School . In Cambridge, where from 1840 he studied geology, he

294-458: A flood myth similar to the earlier versions. In it, the Bronze race of humans angers the high god Zeus with their constant warring. Zeus decides to punish humanity with a flood. The Titan Prometheus , who had created humans from clay, tells the secret plan to Deucalion , advising him to build an ark in order to be saved. After nine nights and days, the water starts receding and the ark lands on

343-505: 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. A drone was used to create a digital elevation model of the site. The researchers found thousands of robber holes left by looters which had disturbed surface in many places, with

392-522: A hoard of exquisite ivories. In 1854 he briefly excavated at Tell Sifr . In September 1856 Loftus was engaged as assistant geologist to the Geological Survey of India , but in India he suffered declining health and died at sea on the voyage back to Britain, aged 38. This article about a British explorer is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This biographical article about

441-584: A mountain. The Cheyenne , a North American Great Plains tribe, believe in a flood which altered the course of their history, perhaps occurring in the Missouri River Valley . Floods in the wake of the Last Glacial Period (c. 115,000 – c. 11,700 years ago) are speculated to have inspired myths that survive to this day. Plato's allegory of Atlantis is set over 9,000 years before his time, leading some scholars to suggest that

490-489: A shock of a comet would produce. A similar hypothesis was popularized by Minnesota congressman and pseudoarchaeology writer Ignatius L. Donnelly in his book Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel (1883), which followed his better-known book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882). In Ragnarok , Donnelly argued that an enormous comet struck the Earth around 6,000 BCE to 9,000 BCE, destroying an advanced civilization on

539-752: A tradition of before the flood apart from the actual King List, whereas the Ur III copy of the King List and the duplicate from the Brockmon collection indicate that the King List Proper once existed independent of mention of the flood and the tradition of before the flood. Essentially, Chen gives evidence to prove that the section of before the flood and references to the flood in the Sumerian King List were all later additions added in during

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588-494: A worldwide flood had been the result of a near-miss by a comet. The issue was taken up in more detail by William Whiston , a protégé of and popularizer of the theories of Isaac Newton , who argued in his book A New Theory of the Earth (1696) that a comet encounter was the probable cause of the Biblical Flood of Noah in 2342 BCE. Whiston also attributed the origins of the atmosphere and other significant changes in

637-673: Is finally “the Noah story,” which may possibly symbolize the survival of the Sumerian culture and the end of the Elamite Jemdet Nasr culture. The deposit is like that deposited by river avulsions , a process that was common in the Tigris–Euphrates river system . Tell Fara extends about a kilometer from north to south. The total area is about 120 hectares, with about 35 hectares of the mound being more than three meters above

686-727: The Early Dynastic III Period through to the Old Babylonian Period, and argues that the flood narrative was only added in texts written during the Old Babylonian Period . With regard to the Sumerian King List , observations by experts have always indicated that the portion of the Sumerian King List talking about before the flood differs stylistically from the King List Proper. Essentially Old Babylonian copies tend to represent

735-854: The Genesis flood narrative , the Mesopotamian flood stories, and the Cheyenne flood story. One example of a flood myth is in the Epic of Gilgamesh . Many scholars believe that this account was copied from the Akkadian Atra-Hasis , which dates to the 18th century BCE. In the Gilgamesh flood myth , the highest god, Enlil , decides to destroy the world with a flood because humans have become too noisy. The god Ea , who had created humans out of clay and divine blood, secretly warns

784-515: The Matsya Avatar of the Vishnu warns the first man, Manu , of the impending flood, and also advises him to build a giant boat. In Zoroastrian Mazdaism , Ahriman tries to destroy the world with a drought, which Mithra ends by shooting an arrow into a rock, from which a flood springs; one man survives in an ark with his cattle. Norbert Oettinger argues that the story of Yima and

833-647: 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

882-642: The Vara was originally a flood myth, and the harsh winter was added in due to the dry nature of Eastern Iran, as flood myths did not have as much of an effect as harsh winters. He has argued that the mention of melted water flowing in Videvdad 2.24 is a remnant of the flood myth, and mentions that the Indian flood myths originally had their protagonist as Yama, but it was changed to Manu later. In Plato 's Timaeus , written c.  360 BCE , Timaeus describes

931-807: The Ziggurat of Ur . Briefly, in February to April 1851, Loftus was released from the work of the commission to excavate at Susa on behalf of the British Museum , but was in June replaced by Hormuzd Rassam , together with whom Loftus subsequently explored the sites and collaborated on a report on the work at Susa. He is credited with the discovery of the Apadana , later excavated by the French amateur archaeologist Marcel-Auguste Dieulafoy . Engaged in 1853 by

980-549: The kingship was taken to Shuruppak." "1 king; he ruled for 18,600 years. In 5 cities 8 kings; they ruled for 241,200 years. Then the flood swept over. After the flood had swept over, and the kingship had descended from heaven , the kingship was in Kish ." Flood story A flood myth or a deluge myth is a myth in which a great flood , usually sent by a deity or deities, destroys civilization , often in an act of divine retribution . Parallels are often drawn between

1029-434: The "lost continent" of Atlantis . Donnelly, following others before him, attributed the Biblical Flood to this event, which he hypothesized had also resulted in catastrophic fires and climate change . Shortly after the publication of Ragnarok , one commenter noted, "Whiston ascertained that the deluge of Noah came from a comet's tail; but Donnelly has outdone Whiston, for he has shown that our planet has suffered not only from

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1078-696: The 1930s excavation mentions a layer of flood deposits at the end of the Jemdet Nasr period at Shuruppak. Shuruppak in Mesopotamian legend is one of the "antediluvian" cities and the home of King Utnapishtim , who survives the flood by making a boat beforehand. Schmidt wrote that the flood story of the Bible, seems to be based on a very real event or a series of such, as suggested by the existence at Ur , at Kish , and now at Fara, of inundation deposits, which accumulated on top of human inhabitation. There

1127-525: The 2020s BC, the Ur III Empire was hit by a major drought. It is thought to have been abandoned shortly around 2000 BC. 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 ( c. 1860–1837 BC), ruler of Isin, a sage of Nippur is recorded as leaving an herbal medicine at Shurappak. The report of

1176-624: The Early Dynastic period. 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 . The city expanded to its greatest extent at

1225-467: The Earth to the effects of comets. In Pierre-Simon Laplace 's book Exposition Du Systême Du Monde ( The System of the World ), first published in 1796, he stated: [T]he greater part of men and animals drowned in a universal deluge, or destroyed by the violence of the shock given to the terrestrial globe; whole species destroyed; all the monuments of human industry reversed: such are the disasters which

1274-563: The Mediterranean Sea into the Black Sea basin. This has become the subject of considerable discussion. The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis offered another proposed natural explanation for flood myths. However, this idea was similarly controversial and has been refuted. The earliest known hypothesis about a comet that had a widespread effect on human populations can be attributed to Edmond Halley , who in 1694 suggested that

1323-452: The Old Babylonian Period, as the Sumerian King List went through updates and edits. The flood as a watershed in early history of the world was probably a new historiographical concept emerging in the Mesopotamian literary traditions during the Old Babylonian Period, as evident by the fact that the flood motif did not show up in the Ur III copy and that earliest chronographical sources related to

1372-523: The ark perishes. After the waters recede, all those aboard the ark disembark and have Yahweh's promise that he will never judge the earth with a flood again. Yahweh causes a rainbow to form as the sign of this promise. In Hindu mythology , texts such as the Satapatha Brahmana ( c. 6th century BCE) and the Puranas contain the story of a great flood, manvantara -sandhya , wherein

1421-576: The discovery of such remains in such locations; the Greeks hypothesized that Earth had been covered by water on several occasions, citing the seashells and fish fossils found on mountain tops as evidence of this idea. Speculation regarding the Deucalion myth has postulated a large tsunami in the Mediterranean Sea, caused by the Thera eruption (with an approximate geological date of 1630–1600 BCE), as

1470-581: The end of the Early Dynastic III period (2600 BC to 2350 BC) when it covered about 100 hectares. Cuneiform tablets from the Early Dynastic III period show a thriving, military oriented economy with links to cities throughout the region. It has been proposed that Fara was part of a "hexapolis" with Lagash , Nippur , Uruk , Adab , and Umma , possibly under the leadership of Kish. In the Akkadian Period ( c. 2334–2154 BC), Shuruppak

1519-449: The excavation report of the 1930s excavation at Shuruppak (modern Tell Fara, Iraq), the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic layers at the site were separated by a 60-cm yellow layer of alluvial sand and clay, indicating a flood, like that created by river avulsion , a process common in the Tigris–Euphrates river system . Similar layers have been recorded at other sites as well, all dating to different periods, which would be consistent with

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1568-569: The flood show up in the Old Babylonian Period. Chen also concludes that the name of " Ziusudra " as a flood hero and the idea of the flood hinted at by that name in the Old Babylonian Version of " Instructions of Shuruppak " are only developments during that Old Babylonian Period, when also the didactic text was updated with information from the burgeoning Antediluvian Tradition. In the Hebrew Genesis ( 9th century BC ),

1617-560: The flood waters of these myths and the primeval waters which appear in certain creation myths , as the flood waters are described as a measure for the cleansing of humanity, in preparation for rebirth . Most flood myths also contain a culture hero , who "represents the human craving for life". The flood-myth motif occurs in many cultures, including the manvantara -sandhya in Hinduism , Deucalion and Pyrrha in Greek mythology ,

1666-759: The floor of the Gulf, which was a huge (800 km × 200 km, 500 mi × 120 mi) low-lying and fertile region in Mesopotamia, in which human habitation is thought to have been strong around the Gulf Oasis for 100,000 years. A sudden increase in settlements above the present-day water level is recorded at around 7,500  BP . The historian Adrienne Mayor theorizes that global flood stories may have been inspired by ancient observations of seashells and fish fossils in inland and mountain areas. The ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans all documented

1715-445: The god Yahweh , who had created man out of the dust of the ground, decides to flood the earth because of the corrupted state of mankind. Yahweh then gives the protagonist, Noah , instructions to build an ark in order to preserve human and animal life. When the ark is completed, Noah, his family, and representatives of all the animals of the earth are called upon to enter the ark. When the destructive flood begins, all life outside of

1764-478: The hero Utnapishtim of the impending flood and gives him detailed instructions for building a boat so that life may survive. Both the Epic of Gilgamesh and Atra-Hasis are preceded by the similar Eridu Genesis ( c.  1600 BCE ) —the oldest surviving example of such a flood-myth narrative, known from tablets found in the ruins of Nippur in the late 1890s and translated by assyriologist Arno Poebel . Academic Yi Samuel Chen analyzed various texts from

1813-520: The myth's historical basis. Although the tsunami hit the South Aegean Sea and Crete , it did not affect cities in the mainland of Greece, such as Mycenae , Athens , and Thebes , which continued to prosper, indicating that it had a local rather than a region-wide effect. The Black Sea deluge hypothesis offers a controversial account of long-term flooding; the hypothesis argues for a catastrophic irruption of water about 5600 BCE from

1862-619: The nature of river avulsions. Shuruppak in Mesopotamian legend was the city of Uta-napishtim , the king who built a boat to survive the coming flood. The alluvial layer dates from around 2900 BC. The geography of the Mesopotamian area changed considerably with the filling of the Persian Gulf after sea waters rose following the last glacial period. Global sea levels were about 120 m (390 ft) lower around 18,000  BP and rose until 8,000 BP when they reached current levels, which are now an average 40 m (130 ft) above

1911-522: The newly founded Assyrian Excavation Fund to conduct excavations in Warka, Loftus worked at the site from January to April 1854, uncovering the famous coloured clay cone wall and some tablets written in cuneiform script. In October of the same year he transferred to Nineveh , and also worked at Nimrud , where in February 1855 he found the so-called "Burnt Palace" of the Assyrian king Assurnasirpal II and

1960-711: 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.RU) repaired the ADUS of the Great Gate of the god Shuruppak (written SU.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

2009-588: The sites original name. 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

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2058-472: The surrounding plain, with a maximum of 9 meters. The site consists of two mounds, one larger than the other, separated by an old canal bed as well as a lower town. It was visited by William Loftus in 1850. Hermann Volrath Hilprecht conducted a brief survey in 1900. He found "copper goatheads; a copper, pre-Sargonid sword; a lamp in the shape of a bird; a very archaic seal cylinder; a number of pre-Sargonid tablets, and 60 incised plates of mother of pearl". It

2107-466: 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. 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

2156-403: The time of a solar eclipse , that caused a tsunami . Among the 175 myths he analyzed were a Hindu myth speaking of an alignment of the five planets at the time, and a Chinese story linking the flood to the end of the reign of Empress Nu Wa . Fourteen flood myths refer to a full solar eclipse . According to Masse these indications point to the date May 10, 2807 BC. His hypothesis suggests that

2205-556: The top several meters of the main mound destroyed. 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. The following list should not be considered complete: "Then Sippar fell and

2254-497: Was a student at Caius College . In 1845 he married Charlotte Thulbourne. From 1849 he served as geologist and naturalist with the British government's Turco-Persian Boundary Commission , under Colonel Fenwick Williams (Royal Artillery). The work of the mission gave Loftus and his friend Henry Adrian Churchill the chance to visit ancient sites and, in 1850, to excavate for a month at Uruk (Warka) and Larsa (Senkereh), discovering

2303-489: 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

2352-523: Was ruled by a governor holding the title patesi . Like most cities on the Euphrates, it declined during the Akkadian Empire. A clay cone from the Akkadian Empire period found at Shurappak read "Dada, governor of Suruppak: Hala-adda, gover[nor] of Suruppak, his son, laid the ... of the city gate of the goddess Sud". Governors: Dada; Hala-adda; During Ur III period (c. 2112-2004 BC), the city

2401-492: Was ruled by a governors (ensi 2 ) appointed by Ur. One is known to be Ur-nigar, son of Shulgi , first rulers of Ur III. One of the tablets found at the site is dated by a year name to the beginning of the reign of Shu-Sin , next to last ruler of Ur III. A few governors of Shurappak under the Ur III Empire are known from contemporary epigraphic remains, Ku-Nanna, Lugal-hedu, Ur-nigin-gar, and Ur-Ninkura. In much later literary compositions several purported rulers are mentioned. In

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