What is it about?
So far unpublished evidence of pottery burials from the Ekur proper datable to around 2200 BC raised some doubts about cultic continuity durinc this time. In this article it is shown, that at least one burial with reconstructable findspot could point towards the different earlier borders of these sanctuary.
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Why is it important?
The establishment of different earlier borders of the Ekur temple brought to light a preferance to put some burials adjacent to the outer borders of such a temple. This could be even seen as an early precursor of the nowadays habit of burying the dead nearby sacred buildings like churches.
Perspectives
This is just one of a series of papers to publish the 19th century work at Nippur ialomgside fellow colleagues Aage Westenholz and Tim Clayden. The sharing of experiences with the documentation proofed to be invariable for the success of putting an order into the ancient evidence from Nippur. Cultic continuity at Enlils Ekur was ongoing for at least two and a half milennia until about 150 BC but probably even 300 years later, during the Parthian period, in different clothes but then again connected with a larger amount of burials in the environs including a tomb from within the perimeters of the building.
Bernhard Schneider
Uniwersytet Wroclawski
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Continuity and Change of a Sacred Space: The Evidence of Two Burials from the Old Akkadian Ekur, February 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004678316_005.
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