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Background

Shuruppak or Shuruppag (Sumerian: "The Healing Place"), modern Tell Fara, was an ancient Sumerian city situated about 35 miles south of Nippur on the banks of the Euphrates in Iraq's Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate. Shuruppak was dedicated to Ninlil.  Ninlil was the generic term for the Created – that which was the creation in its totality.

Excavations there in the first half of the 20th century uncovered three levels of habitation extending in time from the late prehistoric period to the 3rd dynasty of Ur (c. 2112-2004 BC). The earliest excavated levels at Shuruppak date to the Jemdet Nasr period of 3000 BCE and before this.  The most distinctive finds were ruins of well-built houses, along with cuneiform tablets with administrative records and lists of words, indicating a highly developed society already in being toward the end of the 4th millennium BC.

The site extends about a kilometer from north to south. The total area is about 120 hectares, with about 35 hectares of the mound being above the 3 meter contour. 

Shuruppak and the Flood

sumerian flood tablet

Shuruppak was celebrated in Sumerian legend as the scene of the Deluge, which destroyed all humanity except one survivor, Ziusudra. In the Epic of Gilgamesh,  Utanapishtim (also Uta-na'ishtim), son of Ubara-Tutu, is noted to be king of Shuruppak. The names Ziusudra and Atrahasis is also associated with him.

The Sumerian King List reads
After kingship came down from heaven .... the kingship was taken to Shuruppak. In Shuruppak, Ubara-Tutu became king; he ruled for 5 sars and 1 ner. In 5 cities 8 kings; they ruled for 241,200 years. Then the flood swept over.

Of especial note, is that there is archaeological evidence of a flood in Shuruppak. Polychrome pottery from a destruction level below the flood deposit has been dated to the Jemdet Nasr period.

Furthermore, excavations in Iraq have revealed evidence of localized flooding not only at Shuruppak  but also various other Sumerian cities. A layer of riverine sediments, radiocarbon dated to about 2900 BC, interrupts the continuity of settlement, extending as far north as the city of Kish, which took over hegemony after the flood. Other sites, such as Ur, Kish, Uruk, Lagash, and Ninevah, all present evidence of flooding. However, this evidence comes from different time periods.

“It may have been a localised event caused through the damming of the Kurun through the spread of dunes, flooding into the Tigris, and simultaneous heavy rainfall in the Nineveh region, spilling across into the Euphrates. In Israel, there is no such evidence of a widespread flood.”

But, given the similarities in the Mesopotamian flood story and the Biblical account, it would seem that they have a common origin in the memories of the Shuruppak account.

Another hypothesis is that a meteor or comet crashed into the Indian Ocean around 3000–2800 BC, created the 30-kilometre (19 mi) undersea Burckle Crater, and generated a giant tsunami that flooded coastal lands.  We have an observation that supports this – see Nineveh - Tablet of the asteroid strike on the 29th of June 3123 BC

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After a brief survey by Hermann Volrath Hilprecht in 1900, it was first excavated in 1902 by Robert Koldewey and Friedrich Delitzsch of the German Oriental Society for 8 months. Among other finds, hundreds of pre-Sargonic tablets were collected which ended up in the Berlin Museum and the Istanbul Museum. In March and April 1931 a joint team of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the University of Pennsylvania excavated Shuruppak for a further six week season with Schmidt as director and with epigraphist Samuel Noah Kramer. The excavation recovered 87 tablets and fragments, mostly from pre-Sargonic times, biconvex, and unbaked. In 1973, a three-day surface survey of the site was conducted by Harriet P. Martin. Consisting mainly of pottery shard collection, the survey confirmed that Shuruppak dates at least as early as the Jemdet Nasr period, expanded greatly in the Early Dynastic period and was also an element of the Akkadian Empire and the Third Dynasty of Ur.