Bad-tibira

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 File:Foundation nail Entemena Louvre AO22934.jpg
**Bad-tibira** (Sumerian: sux) is listed in the *Sumerian King List* as the second city to "exercise kingship" in Sumer before the flood, following Eridu. Its kings were said to be En-men-lu-ana, En-men-gal-ana and Dumuzid the Shepherd.

## Descent to the netherworld

The early Sumerian text *Inanna's descent to the netherworld* mentions the city's temple, E-mush-kalamma. In this tale, Inanna dissuades demons from the netherworld from taking Lulal, patron of Bad-tibira, who was living in squalor. They eventually take Dumuzid, who lived in palatial opulence at Uruk. This Dumuzid is called "the Shepherd", who on the King List resides at Bad-Tibira in contrast to the post-diluvian Dumuzid, the Fisherman, who reigns in Uruk.

## Historicity

Bad-tibira (bad3-tibiraki), "Wall of the Copper Worker(s)", or "Fortress of the Smiths", is identified with modern **Tell al-Madineh**, between Ash Shatrah and Tell as-Senkereh (ancient Larsa) in southern Iraq. *Bad-tibira* appears among the antediluvian cities listed in the Sumerian King List. Its Akkadian name was **Dûr-gurgurri**. It was also called Template:Lang (**Pantibiblos**) by Greek authors such as Abydenus, Apollodorus of Athens and Berossus. This may reflect another version of the city's name, **Patibira**, "Canal of the Smiths".

The "brotherhood text", cuneiform inscriptions on cones plundered from the Tell al-Madine site in the 1930s, records the friendship pact of Entemena, governor of Lagash, and Lugal-kinishedudu governor of Uruk. It identifies Entemena as the builder of the temple E-mush to Inanna and Dumuzid, under his local epithet Lugal-E-mush.

Archaeology at Tell al-Madine has badly effaced half-bricks on the surface of a mound that bore the inscription of Amar-Sin, of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Pieces of vitrified brick scattered over the surface of the large mound bore witness to the city's destruction by fire. Possession of the city passed between Larsa, whose king Sin-Iddinam claims to have built the great wall of Bad-tibira, and Isin, whose king Lipit-Ishtar, "the shepherd of Nippur", claimed to have built the "House of Righteousness" there.

## References

1. ↑ Inanna's descent to the netherworld - ETCSL
2. ↑ W.F. Albright and T.O. Lambdin, "The Evidence of Language", in *The Cambridge Ancient History* I, part 1 (Cambridge University Press), 1971, Template:ISBN, page 150.
3. ↑ Hallo, William W. and William Kelly Simpson, *The Ancient Near East: A History*, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York, 1971, p. 32
4. ↑ Vaughn E. Crawford, "The Location of Bad-Tibira", *Iraq* **22** "Ur in Retrospect. In Memory of Sir C. Leonard Woolley" (Spring - Autumn 1960:197-199); the secure identification is based on the recovery at the pillaged site of fragments of a known inscription of Entemena that had surfaced in the black market without provenance. Earlier excavations at a mound called Medain near the site of Lagash, following a report of a vendor of one of the inscriptions, had proved fruitless: see H. de Genouillac, *Fouilles de Telloh*, ii:139 (noted by Crawford 1960:197 note 7).
5. ↑ Collection of taxes from Dûr-gurgurri features in correspondence of Hammurabi (first half of the 18th century BCE) noted in L. W. King and H. R. Hall, *Egypt and Western Asia in the Light of Recent Discoveries* (New York, 2005) p. 306f; it remained a city of metal-workers and the principal settlement of the guild of *gugurrē*, "metalworkers" (L. W. King, *The Letters And Inscriptions Of Hammurabi, King Of Babylon About B.C. 2200* vol. III, p. 21, note 2.).
6. ↑ Hallo, William W. and William Kelly Simpson, *The Ancient Near East: A History*, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York, 1971, p. 32
7. ↑ Presumably the same temple as E-mush-kalamma, according to Crawford.
8. ↑ Crawford 1960:197.
9. ↑ Crawford 1960:198.
10. ↑ Ferris J. Stephens, "A Newly Discovered Inscription of Libit-Ishtar" *Journal of the American Oriental Society* **52**.2 (June 1932):182-185) p. 183.

## Further reading

* W.F. Leemans, Tablets from Bad-tibira and Samsuiluna's Reconquest of the South, JEOL, vol. 15, pp. 214–218, 1957/58