Exploring NIPPUR: A Glimpse into its Exceptional Status Among Other Babylonian Cities During the 1st Millennium BCE

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Johannes Hackl; Dr. Yuval Levavi
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 556302271

The Project aims to advance a more comprehensive and nuanced socio-economic history of the city of Nippur during the first millennium BCE, and by extension, of Baby-lonia as a whole. Despite its traditional centrality, no truly comprehensive investigation of Nippur during this period has ever been attempted. While Nippur’s role is relatively well-explored in the Neo-Assyrian and Late Achaemenid periods, the long 6th century (626-484 BCE), notably one of the best-documented periods of Babylonian history, has remained surprisingly neglected. The Project will address this knowledge gap along two dimensions: (1) a synchronic level, aiming for a better understanding of Nippur’s role during the long 6th century, away from the dominant Babylon-Uruk axis; and (2) a diachronic level, where these results will be compared with the well-researched Neo-Assyrian and Late Achaemenid periods. To this end, the project strives to achieve goals on three conceptual levels: (1) de-scriptive, (2) interpretative, and (3) contextualizing. On the descriptive level, the pro-ject will offer a comprehensive metadata-oriented catalog of the entire known corpus, including unpublished sources. On the interpretative level, the project aims to recon-struct the functional interaction of various actors within and between archives, repre-senting local government and ruling groups, as well as their relations with the agricul-tural hinterland to the south of Nippur. On the contextualizing level, the socio-economic history of Nippur during the long 6th century will be placed in a wider con-text with regard to both diachronic and spatial dimensions, with special emphasis on the imbalance present in scholarly discourse on Nippur. In this way, a significant contribution to the history of Nippur will be made by tracing its transformation from an important garrison city of the Assyrian Empire (8th and 7th centuries BCE) to a ‘backwater’ city in the 6th century BCE, and ultimately to a land-for-service hub of the Achaemenid Empire in the 5th century BCE. Drawing on prior large-scale projects and substantial data collections, the project integrates relevant philological, archaeological, and digital methodologies, closely aligning with data-gathering initiatives in Digital Humanities. This effort aims to break new ground in the study of urban history and Iron Age Babylonia in general.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants