The religious center of Sumer, seat of its leading deity, Enlil. Nippur was the home of one of the great academies of Sumer, it also housed a library which most of the literary tablets excavated to date come from its scribal quarters, Among them was the flood story, inscribe in cuneiform was a story of a man and his family surviving a catastrophic flood by receiving advanced warning from their God. The large growth of the city occurred under the rule of Ur III Dynasty (2100 BC), and also at the time when the Assyrians, dominated Babylonia (c. 750-612 BC). The choice of Nippor as the seat of one of the few early Christian bishops, lasting until the city's final abandonment around AD 800, was probably an echo of its place at the center of Mesopotamian religion.
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