The office of šandabakku, inscribed or sometimes as , the latter designation perhaps meaning "archivist of Enlil," was the name of the position of governor of the Mesopotamian city ofNippur from the Kassite period onward. Enlil, as the tutelary deity of Nippur, had been elevated in prominence and was shown special veneration by the Kassite monarchs, it being the most common theophoric element in their names. This caused the position of the šandabakku to become very prestigious and the holders of the office seem to have wielded influence second only to the king.
The term šandabakkufirst appears in texts from Mari, where it seems to represent a high-ranking administrative official, but it is not until the Kassite period that it became synonymous with the city of Nippur. Nippur had been depopulated sometime towards the end of the reign of Samsu-iluna and remained abandoned until the end of the fifteenth century when the Kassites began a program of restoration of cultic centers. The earliest inscriptions of this restoration belong to Kurigalzu I. The office may be related in some manner to that of the nišakku of Enlil, probably the senior priestly or dignitary position of the Ekur. Whether the post was held concurrently with that of the šandabakku, or at some, perhaps, earlier stage in the career of the prospective governor, has yet to be determined, but it is clear that Enlil-kidinni and his immediate successors, all held both offices, and Amil-Marduk and Enlil-šuma-imbī were similarly honored. Only during the reign of Nazi-Maruttaš, were they held by separate individuals, with Nūr-Delebat and his son Ninurta-rēṣušu assuming the nišakku-priest position, the latter of whom naming Enlil-kidinni’s father Enlil-bānī and Amīlatum as ancestors, on his clay quadrangular prism, a votive dedication to the storm-god Adad. The most prominent of the šandabakku officials were - Enlil-kidinni, who corresponded and exchanged gifts with the Assyrian crown princeEnlil-nirari, if his name has been correctly restored, and, Amil-Marduk around a hundred years later, under whose rule Nippur experienced significant restoration work undertaken by servile laborers whose purchase documents and ration lists make up much of the so-called “governor's library.” In the later Achaemenid period, from the reign of Xerxes I, the title was replaced by that of the paqdu.
