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Mashkan-shapir is the name of the archaeological site in southern Iraq about 35km north of the ancient city of Nippur, 70km east of Babylon, and near the ancient watercourse of the Tigris River. About 2000 BCE, during the height of the city’s extent, it was the second capital of the Kingdom of Larsa. It appears that Mashkan-shapir was abandoned about 200 years later, and generally left untouched until a survey and partial excavation took place under the direction of Elizabeth C. Stone and Paul E. Zimansky, from 1987-1990 (as a result of the general lawlessness in the countryside following the US occupation of Iraq in 2003, the site has been completely destroyed by gangs of roving looters, leaving nothing but hundreds of empty potholes in their wake).
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The vast expanse |
The original ancient name of the site was discovered during the second season of excavation written in cuneiform on a broken pieces of baked clay cylinders, apparently dedicatory inscriptions for the city’s fortification walls. The name of Mashkan-shapir, meaning, roughly, encampment of the overseer, appears in other texts of the earlier Akkadian Period, in the late third millennium, but the city apparently did not rise to prominence until the collapse of Ur’s domination just before 2000 BCE when the area came under the control of the cities of Larsa and Isin. At that time, according to ancient writings, Mashkan-shapir became an important capital city, housing a sanctuary to the god of death, Nergal. The city was eventually abandoned following the reunification of the region under Hammurabi and his successors around 1720 BCE, probably as a result of some catastrophic shifts in the river regimes of southern Mesopotamia. Mashkan-shapir then began to decay; never to become fully occupied again, other than a brief Parthian-era habitation.
The remains of the large city as discovered through excavation, surface survey, satellite imagery interpretation, and aerial photography using a camera-bearing kite, show an urban center quite unlike what had been our presumed view of early-second-millennium southern Mesopotamian cities. The extent enclosed within the city walls (apparently built by the Larsa king Sin-iddinam, who reigned only from c.1845 to 1843 BCE) is more than 70 hectares , making it at that time larger than the enclosed area of Ur. Investigations have revealed that the city was divided into distinct functionally separate precincts by a series of canals and two harbors, including areas for manufacturing, religion, residences, city administration, a large garden, and a cemetery.
Reference
Page Created: October 5, 2004
Page Updated: October 5, 2004
URL:
Page Author: The Institute for the Visualization
of History
