Abū Ṣalābīḫ
Coordinates: 32 ° 15 ′ 11.1 ″ N , 45 ° 3 ′ 15.5 ″ E
Abū Ṣalābīḫ ( Arabic أبو صلابيخ Abū Salābīch ) is the modern Arabic name of an archaeological site in the al-Qadisiya governorateof today's Iraq , the historical name of which has not yet been clarified.
In Abū Ṣalābīḫ, not far from Nippur , there are several small tells that were created by a primeval and a subsequent Sumerian settlement. The place lost already in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. Its importance when the Euphrates, on which this settlement was located, changed its bed and thus the water supply of the place was cut off. The place is considered important today primarily because of the clay tablet archives found there . A lion's head is depicted on several cylinder seals.
First excavations in Abū Ṣalābīḫ took place in the 1960s by the University of Chicago Oriental Institute under the direction of Donald P. Hansen . Around 500 clay tablets were found. Further excavations by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq (then British School of Archeology in Iraq ) under the direction of Nicholas Postgate began in 1975 and ended with the second Gulf War . The clay tablets found in Abū Ṣalābīḫ were kept in the Iraqi National Museum and were lost when it was looted .
literature
- Robert D. Biggs: The Abū Ṣalābīkh Tablets: A Preliminary Survey. In: Journal of Cuneiform Studies 20, 1966, pp. 73-88.
- Robert D. Biggs: Inscriptions from Tell Abū Ṣalābīkh (= Oriental Institute Publications 99). Chicago 1974. ISBN 0-226-62202-9 ( online ).
- Nicholas Postgate: Excavations at Abu Salabikh 1976–1988 , in: Iraq 39–52, 1977–1990.
Web links
- List of texts from Abū Ṣalābīḫ Link via web archive
- Objects from Abū Ṣalābīḫ lost in the looting