1 New Light on Dilbat: Kassite Building Activities on the Uraš Temple “E-Ibbi-Anum” in Tell al- Deylam Haider Almamori and Alexa Bartelmus 1 Abstract Recent excavations by the Department of Archaeology of the University of Babylon (Iraq) have brought to light the ruins of a temple at Tell al-Deylam, about 30 km south of Babylon. Thanks to a number of inscribed bricks it can securely be identified as “E-Ibbi-Anum”, the temple of Dilbat’s city god Uraš, which confirms earlier attempts to identify the site with that city. The Sumerian text of the inscriptions allows a secure dating of the building to the Kassite period, more precisely, the reign of a king named Kurigalzu (probably I). 1. Tell al-Deylam and its identification with ancient Dilbat Tell al-Deylam ( ﻼﻟﺪ ﺗﻞ ) 2 is a local name 3 of an archaeological site within Babil Governorate. It is located in the central plain between two branches of the modern Euphrates, the Shatt al-Hillah in the east and the al-Hindiya in the west, about 20 km to the south of the governorate’s capital Hillah and thus rather close to the ancient cities Babylon (20 km) and Borsippa (15 km) (32°17′44″N 44°27′58″E; see map 1). 1 We would like to thank Mary Frazer and Jean-Jacques Herr for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper. – Use of abbreviations follows Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie. 2 The name occurs in (esp. early) secondary literature with various spellings and pronunciations, including “Deylem”, “Daillum” and “Dulaim” (Armstrong 1992, 220). Occasionally, it has been confused with Dulaihim (e.g., Groneberg 1980, 51), a fourth/third-millennium tell to the southeast of Nippur (Armstrong 1992, 220). 3 The site received its modern name, Tell al-Deylam, because of a Muslim shrine on the western edge of the site that – according to belief of the local people – belonged to Muḥammad ibn Yaḥya al- Deylami, a grandson of Ali ibn Abi Ṭalib (the cousin of prophet Muḥammad). It was recorded as an archaeological site in the Al-Waqiah al-Iraqiya newspaper (no. 2283) in 1937.