Bad-tibira

The Second City

Eridu is where the Sumerian King List begins. Bad-tibira is where it goes next.

Bad-tibira is the second of the five pre-flood cities named in the Sumerian King List.

"Eridu fell and its kingship was taken to Bad-tibira."

Three rulers are recorded here. En-men-lu-ana ruled for 43,200 years. En-men-gal-ana ruled for 28,800 years. Dumuzid, the shepherd, ruled for 36,000 years. Together that is 108,000 years — thirty sar, in the Sumerian unit of 3,600.

That is worth pausing on. Of the 241,200 years the pre-flood section records, nearly half belong to this one city. Eridu, the city where kingship first landed, is assigned 64,800. Larak, Sippar, and Shuruppak together are assigned 68,400. Bad-tibira alone is assigned more than either group.

And yet the list says almost nothing about it. As at Eridu, there are no deeds, no battles, and no description of the city. There are three names, three numbers, and a transfer.

By the Numbers

• Kings: 3
• Years: 108,000
• In sar (units of 3,600): exactly 30
• Share of the 241,200-year pre-flood total: about 44.8%
• Average reign: 36,000 years

The Name: The City of the Metalworkers

The name of the city is the most informative thing the list gives us about it.

Bad-tibira is commonly interpreted as something like "Wall of the Copper-worker" or "Fortress of the Metalworkers." Bad is a wall or fortification. Tibira is associated with metalworking. The name has long been tied to the working of copper, though the exact nuances of the ancient name are debated.

Whatever the exact etymology, the traditional reading is striking because it associates the city with a craft rather than with a king or a divine title.

A City of Metal in a Land Without It

Here is an observation that is easy to miss. Southern Mesopotamia has almost no metal of its own.

The alluvial plain is mud, clay, reeds, and water. It has no stone worth the name and no copper ore. The metal itself had to be brought in from somewhere else. Later Sumerian texts record copper arriving from Magan, usually identified with the region of Oman. Such trade is well attested in the third millennium BC.

If the traditional reading of the name is correct, a city named for working copper implies a supply chain. Somebody was bringing raw material from a long way off to a walled place in the south, where it was worked into something else.

Copper working itself is far older than writing in this region, and the name does not date the city. What the traditional reading suggests is a role. If Eridu was the base, Bad-tibira may have been remembered as the workshop. That is the pattern the King List itself suggests: a roster of places, each assigned a function and a span of time.

What the Ground Says

Bad-tibira is generally identified with Tell al-Madineh (also spelled Tell al-Madain), in Dhi Qar Province in southern Iraq. The reason scholars believe this is a story in itself.

In the early twentieth century, inscribed clay cones of En-temena, a ruler of Lagash in the third millennium BC, appeared on the antiquities market. The text records that En-temena built the temple E-mush for the goddess Inanna and the god Lugal-E-mush. Other sources place E-mush, also called E-mush-kalama, in Bad-tibira. The dealer said the cones came from a place called Medain. In 1960 Vaughn Crawford published the argument that connected the inscription to the site.

That is a strong line of evidence, but not a clean one. Because some of this material entered scholarship through the antiquities market and not through controlled excavation, the identification is strong but not as archaeologically secure as that of cities such as Ur or Eridu.

The site has never been excavated on the scale of Eridu or Ur. Much of what is said about the city comes from texts rather than from the ground. This is a recurring problem with the cities of the King List. Decades of political instability have limited fieldwork in southern Iraq, and the evidence that could confirm or challenge the list is still in the earth.

It also means that Bad-tibira has a footing outside the King List. En-temena was a historical ruler, and his inscription treats E-mush as a real temple he built or restored. Whatever the pre-flood numbers mean, Bad-tibira was remembered and maintained as a real place in historical Sumer.

Bad-tibira Outside the King List

The King List is not the only document that knows this city. Bad-tibira turns up in three other kinds of source.

A royal inscription. En-temena’s cones, described above, name E-mush as a temple he built for Inanna and Lugal-E-mush.

A cult hymn. The Sumerian Temple Hymns include a hymn for Bad-tibira. It describes the shrine of E-mush as the bed-chamber of Inanna, and calls Dumuzid its sovereign and Inanna’s husband. It also says he built a house in the city’s precinct.

A work of literature. In Inana’s Descent to the Nether World, the goddess gives up her sanctuaries one by one before she goes down to the underworld. One of them is the E-mush-kalama in Bad-tibira.

So the city sits where four traditions meet: royal inscription, cult worship, literature, and the King List.

The Shepherd

The third ruler at Bad-tibira is Dumuzid, and the King List gives him something the others at the city do not have: a descriptor. He is a shepherd.

In a section that otherwise gives almost nothing but a name, a city, and a number, that single word stands out.

The same name belongs to the shepherd-god of Sumerian myth, the husband of Inanna who is taken into the underworld in her place. In later Akkadian tradition he is Tammuz. The King List also records a second Dumuzid, "the fisherman," far later, in the post-flood dynasty of Uruk.

Are the King List’s Dumuzid and the god of the myth the same person? The overlap is stronger than a shared name. The king, the cult, and the myth all point to the same city. A ruler remembered as a god is one explanation. A god who was given a place in the list is another. Scholars have argued about it for a long time, and the sources do not settle it.

What can be said is simple. The list records that a shepherd ruled at the city of the metalworkers. The temple hymn says the shepherd-god had his house in the same city.

"Three kings ruled for 108,000 years. Then Bad-tibira fell and its kingship was taken to Larak."

What Bad-tibira Asks

The text does not explain why Bad-tibira receives 108,000 years, nor why so little narrative accompanies so large a share of the chronology. It simply preserves the city, three rulers, and the numbers.

Its name points to metalworking in a land without metal. Its third king is called a shepherd, and shares his name with a god worshipped there. And the mound where it probably stood has barely been opened.

What was Bad-tibira remembered for — and what remains beneath Tell al-Madineh?