FRAGMENTS OF THE THIRD MILLENNIUM BC FROM NIGIN By DAVIDE NADALI AND LORENZO VERDERAME The ancient city of Nigin in the State of Lagash is largely attested in the epigraphic sources of the rulers of the First Dynasty of Lagash. Conversely, the archaeological evidence of the Early Dynastic Period is so far very scanty and limited. This paper presents a small group of documents to be dated to the Early Dynastic Period IIIb that were found out of context, but that nevertheless point to a phase of occupation of Nigin in the third millennium BC and are coherent with the information we already know about history of the city and the State of Lagash. Introduction Historical documentation of the third millennium BC occupation of the ancient city of Nigin, modern Tell Zurghul, in the ancient State of Lagash is attested thanks to the large amount of data provided by cuneiform sources of the rulers of the First Dynasty of Lagash. 1 However, recent excavations at the site by the Italian archaeological expedition of Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Perugia have so far yielded little archaeologically stratified evidence of the third millennium BC phases of Nigin: 2 in particular, no stratified and contextualised evidence of the mid- and second half of the third millennium BC (corresponding, in Mesopotamian terms, to the Early Dynastic Period IIIa–b) has been clearly and extensively identified. Indeed, the only third millennium occupational levels hitherto excavated date from the very beginning of the millennium: in Area A, a multi-functional building shows a quite extensive and well-preserved phase dated to the Jemdet Nasr Period and a phase (not fully investigated yet and partially covering the old levels) dated to the Early Dynastic I. 3 Another operation in Area A (trench 1), at the time of the first season of excavation in 2015, also yielded archaeologically stratified materials dating from the Early Dynastic Period (with pottery samples actually fitting in with the repertoire of the Early Dynastic Period III): 4 however, this context is mainly the result of accumulation levels with materials that have been dragged from more northerly areas by heavy winter rain. Next to the pottery collected in the strata, that is in fact the widest archaeological evidence of the third millennium occupation of Nigin as verified in the field, other types of artefacts also point to the phase of the Early Dynastic Period at Nigin: two fragmentary pieces of sculpture, a broken cylinder seal, and four fragments of inscribed bricks. Not only are these iconographic and epigraphic documents fragmentary and incomplete, but they come from non-stratified or disturbed contexts and for this reason they provide indirect information (via the analysis of the iconography and the content of the stamped text) on the occupation at Nigin during the Early Dynastic Period. All bricks and the fragment of a relief plaque were collected in the fill (stratum 812) of the large squared sounding that occupies the top of the small mound B; 5 the small piece of statue and the Davide Nadali is author of the introduction and the section on the visual evidence; Lorenzo Verderame is author of the section on the analysis of written documents; both jointly wrote the conclusion. 1 For the royal inscriptions of the First Dynasty of Lagash see Cooper 1986, Steible 1982a, Frayne 2008; for the building activities in Nigin see Selz 1995; Heimpel 1998: 156; Edzard 2000; for the epigraphic evidence from Nigin see Verderame 2020. On the Early Dynastic rulers of the ancient State of Lagash, see Sallaberger and Schrakamp 2015: 67–84. 2 For a general overview of the recent results at Tell Zurghul, ancient Nigin, see Nadali and Polcaro (eds.) 2020. 3 On Area A, see Nadali and Polcaro 2020: 280–283 and Polcaro 2020. 4 Pizzimenti 2020. 5 The area of the small mound B (named Áble by locals) was already investigated by Robert Koldewey in 1887 during his expedition in the region of Lagash (Koldewey 1887): Koldewey certainly operated a sounding on the south-eastern side on the mound that is still visible (Suchgraben E: on the reconstruction of Koldewey’ s exploration see Huh 2008: 245–246, 752, Abb. 55). While the sounding on the side is clear and sure, the origin of the regular square sounding on the top of the mound is unclear: it is presumably also the result of Koldewey’ s exploration (Koldewey 1887: 428), but the reason for the fill (made up, beyond the materials that are here presented, of yellowish baked bricks – some of them with stamped marks, and stones) is really enigmatic: the materials seem to have been accumulated from elsewhere to fill the sounding; therefore, the Early Dynastic materials, so far found therein, originally had another context. It is moreover unclear when this operation occurred. IRAQ (2021) 83 105–118 Doi:10.1017/irq.2021.10 105 Iraq LXXXIII (2021) © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2021