The city of Adab (modern site Bismaya), between Telloh and Nippur (modern-day Iraq), was important in the Ur III period but declined afterwards. Adab "suffered a short and not very successful excavation" by Edgar James Banks in 1903/04 in the words of A. Leo Oppenheim. The dig was sponsored by the Oriental Exploration Fund of the University of Chicago, but Banks later sold cuneiform tablets from the site to private collections. Fewer than fifty texts — scattered from Yale to California to Istanbul — have been published from this early site. The city of Nippur (Sumerian Nibru, Akkadian Nibbur) was one of the most ancient of all the Babylonian cities of which we have any knowledge, the special seat of the worship of the Sumerian god, Enlil, ruler of the cosmos subject to An alone. ... UR, Ur, or ur can refer to several things: The City of Ur Ur, the first known continent Royal Game of Ur Ur is the name of a minor Gnostic deity. ... Edgar James Banks (1866 - May 5, 1945) was an antiquities enthusiast and entrepreneurial roving archaeologist in the closing days of the Ottoman Empire, who has been held up as an original for the fictional composite figure of Indiana Jones. ...

A king of Adab in an early Sumerian king list, and a mention of the city in the law code of Hammurapi await the publication of the cuneiform tablets found at the site. In the meantime, there is a Sumerian comic tale of the three ox-drivers of Adab. The Sumerian king list is an ancient text in the Sumerian language listing kings of Sumer from Sumerian and foreign dynasties. ... This diorite head is believed to represent king Hammurabi Hammurabi (also transliterated Hammu-rapi or Khammurabi) was the sixth king of Babylon. ... Sumer (or Shumer, Sumeria, Shinar, native ki-en-gir) formed the southern part of Mesopotamia from the time of settlement by the Sumerians until the time of Babylonia. ...

Note that Adab, aside from being the name of a city, is also an important term in Arabic, used since the Middle Ages, and having meanings from, very generally, "culture," to something akin to modern concepts of etiquette. It also has specific use as a literary term.

See Also

• Kitab al-I'tibar, the autobiography of Usamah ibn Munqidh

The autobiography of Usāmah ibn-Munqidh Usāmahs autobiography is taken from his Kitāb al Itibār (i. ... Usamah ibn Murshid ibn Munqidh (also Osama, Usama, Ussama, or Usmah) (1095-1188), an Arab historian, politician, and diplomat, was one of the most important contemporary Arab chroniclers during the time of the Crusades. ...

External link

• "three ox-drivers from Adab"
• Edgar James Banks, Bismaya: or the lost City of Adab, 1912 (E-text)