Adab (city)

Bismaya

Adab
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Adab Shown within Iraq
Alternative name	Bismya
Location	Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Iraq
Region	Mesopotamia
Coordinates	31°56′49″N 45°58′8″E / 31.94694°N 45.96889°E / 31.94694; 45.96889
Site notes
Excavation dates	1885, 1890, 1902, 1903–1905, 2001, 2016-2019
Archaeologists	W.H. Ward, J.P. Peters, W. Andrae, E.J. Banks, Nicolò Marchetti

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Adab (Sumerian: 𒌓𒉣𒆠 Adab^ki,^[1] spelled UD.NUN^KI[2]) was an ancient Sumerian city between Girsu and Nippur, lying about 35 kilometers southeast of the latter. It was located at the site of modern Bismaya or Bismya in the Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate of Iraq. The site was occupied at least as early as the 3rd Millenium BC, through the Early Dynastic, Akkadian Empire, and Ur III empire periods, into the Kassite period in the mid-2nd millennium BC. It is known that there were temples of Ninhursag/Digirmah, Iskur, Asgi, Inanna and Enki at Adab and that the city-god of Adab was Parag'ellilegarra (Panigingarra) "The Sovereign Appointed by Ellil".^[3][4]

Not to be confused with the small, later (Old Babylonian and Sassanian periods) archaeological site named Tell Bismaya, 9 kilometers east of the confluence of the Diyala and the Tigris rivers, excavated by Iraqi archaeologists in the 1980s.^[5]