Eshnunna

   An important Mesopotamian city situated on the Diyala River, a tributary of the Tigris, about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of modern Baghdad. Eshnunna (modern Tell Asmar) was inhabited by Sumerians as early as the fourth millennium B.c.Its period of greatest prosperity and influence, however, was between about 2000 and 1800 B.c., when it was the capital of a small, independent kingdom called Warum. Eshnunna eventually fell to the armies of the Babylonian king Hammurabi in about 1763 b.c.

   Many revealing archaeological discoveries have been made at the site of Esh-nunna. The principal excavations took place in the 1930s, sponsored by Chicago's oriental Institute and led by excavator Henri Frankfort. The diggers uncovered a temple that may have honored Abu, a vegetation god. Under the floor stones, Frankfort and archaeologist Seton Lloyd discovered a cache of gypsum and alabaster figurines depicting some gods and their human worshippers. The faces feature abnormally large, round eyes. The ruins of a palace were also found at Eshnunna. Buried beneath its floor the excavators found exquisite artifacts of silver and lapis lazuli, children's toys, and seal stones with engraved images of elephants and other motifs suggesting that Eshnunnian merchants traded with the people of faraway India.

   See also: Hammurabi; sculpture; Sumerians