Video
The Nippur Region: From the “Heartland of the Cities” to a Rural Imperial Landscape?
Abstract
The region around Nippur was literally clustered with urban settlements until about the end of the first half of the 2nd Millennium BC, followed by a supposed depopulation at the turn to the 1st century BC. This development was not reversed until about the Neo-Babylonian period. Already Robert McCormick Adams pointed out that only during the latter period a reversing process began which culminated in a revitalization of the irrigation system during the Achaemenid period. The exceptionally good textual record is based mainly on the chance find of the so-called Murašû archive (454-405 BC) which derives from a single room of a private house at Nippur. It provides us with a vast amount of information concerning different groups of foreign origins, settled in a rural environment in the hinterland of the city. Here, the still understudied archaeological evidence within the study area during the Achaemenid period will be re- analyzed. Furthermore, an outlook on the upcoming project RuBab will be given.
Citation
Schneider, Bernhard. "The Nippur Region: From the “Heartland of the Cities” to a Rural Imperial Landscape?" Pourdavoud Institute: Achaemenid Workshop 2 (July 4, 2023).
About the Speaker
Bernhard Schneider
University of Warsaw
Bernhard Schneider earned his PhD at the University of Innsbruck with a diachronic study of the main Sumerian sanctuary of Enlil at Nippur. He is held a Post-Doc position in the project “MeMaRe: Mesopotamian Material Religion: Shifting Landscapes of Human-Divine Networks in Ancient Mesopotamia” at the UKSW Warsaw (NCN, OPUS 21). Since 2024, he has been the PI of the project RuBab – Rural Southern Babylonian Sites During the Early “Age of Empire” (ca. 720-150 BC), based at the University of Wroclaw (MSCA Cofund with NCN, POLONEZ BIS 2).