Dilbat


Dilbat was an ancient Sumerian minor tell located southeast from Babylon on the eastern bank of the Western Euphrates in modern-day Al-Qādisiyyah, Iraq. The ziggurat E-ibe-Anu, dedicated to the goddess Urash, was located in the center of the city and was mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

History

Dilbat was founded during the Sumerian Early Dynastic II period, around 2700 BC. It is known to have been occupied, at least, during the Akkadian, Old Babylonian, Kassite, Sasanian and Early Islamic periods. It was an early agricultural center cultivating einkorn wheat and producing reed products. It lay on the Arahtum canal.

Archaeology

The site of Tell al-Deylam consists of two mounds, a small western mound with 1st millennium BC and Early Islamic remains and a larger east mound, roughly 500 meters in circumference, with remains from the 1st to 3rd millennium BC. Dilbat was excavated briefly by Hormuzd Rassam, who recovered some cuneiform tablets at the site, mainly from
the Neo-Babylonian period. The site was worked in 1989 by J. A. Armstrong of the Oriental Institute of Chicago. Though Dilbat itself has only been lightly excavated by archaeologists, numerous tablets from there have made their way to the antiquities market over the years as the result of unauthorized digging.