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A rediscovered Akkadian city

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

F. N. H. Al-Rawi  and
J. A. Black
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Extract

A newly recovered inscription of Maništūšu records the building of a temple of Ninhursaa at a city whose name is written HA.A KI. The text is inscribed on a stone door-socket (now in private hands) found in situ and excavated, probably in the 1930s, at Kharā'ib Ghḍairīfe. Ghḍairīfe is a large mound on the right bank of the 'Aḍaim close to its confluence with the Tigris.

There are several other tells in the immediate vicinity, such as Tell al-Dhuhūbe and Tell 'Uṣaimī, and it is likely that together these form the remains of one ancient site. The locations can be identified in the Atlas of the archaeological sites in Iraq, map 21:

sites nos.

2 Kharā’ib Ghḍairīfe

3 Tell al-Dhuhūbe

4 Tell ‘Uṣaimī

A nineteenth-century map of the Turkish Empire marks ‘ruin’ at exactly this spot. Information about the sites in the immediate vicinity is currently limited to the details recorded in Archaeological sites in Iraq, pp. 76f., which gives all of them as Islamic in date, with the exception of site 1, Tell Abū Ḫalīj (Hassuna and Isin-Larsa/Old Babylonian), and site 9, Khirbet Shahāb al-Aḫmad (Neo-Babylonian).

However, there are indications of earlier periods at Ghḍairīfe also, especially Akkadian ceramic remains and small metal figurines. Also found there were several silver Islamic coins, including an Umayyad coin dated 16 A.H.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 55 , October 1993 , pp. 147 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1993

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References

1 From ghuḍairīfah, a taḥbīb of ghuḍrūf, ‘cartilage’.

2 Directorate General of Antiquities, Baghdad, 1976.

3 Published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 15.10.1843.

4 Directorate General of Antiquities, Baghdad, 1970.

5 The bilingual passages are cited by George, A.R., Babylonian Topographical Texts (Louvain, 1992), pp. 379ffGoogle Scholar.

6 See Jacobsen, T., AS 11, p. 88 n. 126Google Scholar; Gelb, I.J., Hurrians and Subarians, pp. 94ff.Google Scholar; Gurney, O.R., in Iraq 36 (1974), p. 49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Steinkeller, P., in JCS 32 (1980), 23ff.Google Scholar; McEwan, G., ‘The writing of Urum in pre-Ur III sources’, JCS 33 (1981)Google Scholar; Heimpel, W., RIA s.v. Ku'ara (1982)Google Scholar; Geller, M.J., Forerunners to Udug-hul, FAOS 12 (Stuttgart 1985), p. 13 Google Scholar; Green, M.W., ‘Urum and Uqair’, ASJ 8 (1986), pp. 77–83 Google Scholar; Cooper, J.S., in Festschrift A. Sachs, p. 86:11 and noteGoogle Scholar; Kutscher, R., in Z4 76 (1986), pp. 1–3 Google Scholar; George, A.R., in Sumer 44 (1985/1986), pp. 17ff.Google Scholar; id., Babylonian Topographical Texts, esp. pp. 379ff. The latter hypothesises a third toponym, Kumari, distinct from Kuara; but this seems less necessary now.