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In the period of the Hebrew captivity the city still ranked as a great commercial market and as one of the most sacred repositories of Babylonian religious tradition. We know that not far off was Tel-abib, the seat of one of the colonies of Jewish exiles, for that lay "by the river of Chebar", which we may identify with the Kabaru Canal in Nippur's immediate neighbourhood.
The self-same moon that looks so peacefully down smiled on the midnight tryst in Nippur's scented groves or Babylon's hanging gardens; the same stars that now fret Heaven's black vault with astral fire winked and blinked 11,000 years ago while the sandaled feet of youth, on polished cedar floors, beat out the rhythmic passion of its blood.
When he has climbed its summit he enjoys an uninterrupted view over desert and swamp. The cause of Nippur's present desolation is to be traced to the change in the bed of the Euphrates, which now lies far to the west. But in antiquity the stream flowed through the centre of the city, along the dry bed of the Shatt en-Nîl, which divides the mounds into an eastern and a western group.
Nippur's god lays claim to being the one who established 'order' in the universe. His authority could only be threatened if he were robbed of the tablets which symbolize absolute control over the course of affairs. Zu boldly attempts this: His eyes saw the mark of rulership, The crown of his sovereignty, the garment of his divinity. Zu saw the divine tablets of fate.
For when the hegemony passed from the first Post-diluvian "kingdom" to the second, it went not to Erech but to the shrine Eanna, which gave its name to the second "kingdom"; and the city itself was apparently not founded before the reign of Enmerkar, the second occupant of the throne, who is the first to be given the title "King of Erech". This conclusion with regard to Erech incidentally disposes of the arguments for Nippur's Antediluvian rank in primitive Sumerian tradition, which have been founded on the order of the cities mentioned at the beginning of the later Sumerian myth of Creation.
The remote date of Nippur's foundation as a city and cult-centre is attested by the fact that the pavement laid by Narâm-Sin in the south-eastern temple-court lies thirty feet above virgin soil, while only thirty-six feet of superimposed débris represent the succeeding millennia of occupation down to Sassanian and early Arab times.
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