Iron Age · 604–562 BC · Kish (Tell Al-Uhaimir), Babil Governorate, Iraq
Clay cylinders record Nebuchadnezzar II's rebuilding of the Kish ziggurat in Iraq
Handed over in 2013 after being found on the surface of the mound and now published in the journal Iraq, the near-identical texts are the first foundation inscriptions for the king's work there.
Peer-reviewed paper
Kish (Tell Al-Uhaimir), Iraq Two inscribed clay cylinders from Kish in central Iraq record how King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon restored the city's ziggurat. He reigned from 604 to 562 BC. The cylinders are the first foundation text known to document his work on the monument. Until now, his involvement had been inferred only from bricks stamped with his name.
Ahmed Ali Jawad and Hussein Fleih Al-Ammari have published the cylinders in the journal Iraq. Two local residents found them on the surface of Tell Al-Uhaimir, the mound that holds the ruins of the Kish ziggurat. In December 2013 they handed the cylinders to Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.
The Iraq Museum in Baghdad registered the cylinders as IM.227410 and IM.227488. The researchers call them Kz-1 and Kz-2.
Both are solid cylinders of fired clay inscribed in cuneiform. This is the usual form of Neo-Babylonian foundation documents. Such texts were normally placed in or near major buildings. They commemorated the work and dedicated it to the gods.
Kz-1 is 15.1 cm long and the better preserved. Kz-2 measures 14.5 cm, and its first three lines are damaged. The two texts are almost identical. Their small differences in spelling are of the kind that different scribes produced.
What the king says he did
The inscription is set out in two columns. It opens with the king's titles: "Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, whom Marduk, Enlil of the Gods, called by name to rule over all the lands." It then turns to the ziggurat, which it names É.U6.NIR.KI.TUŠ.MAH, "House, Tower-Temple, Exalted Dwelling".
A ziggurat is a stepped mudbrick tower that served as a raised platform for sacred space. This one was dedicated to the war god Zababa and the goddess Ishtar. They were the patron deities of Kish.
According to the text, a "king of the past" built the tower and a "former king" restored it. Then it decayed again: "its walls had bulged… and rain showers carried away its brickwork." Nebuchadnezzar says that Zababa and Ishtar themselves "had urged my heart" to renovate it.
He reorganised the brickwork and rebuilt the collapsed sections. He completed the structure and raised its superstructure. Then he made its exterior shine "like the light of day". The text ends with a prayer to the two deities for long life, victory over his enemies and blessing on his reign.
The cylinders give no dates and no technical details of the building work. Their wording is ceremonial rather than administrative, and much of it is formulaic. Phrases such as "I made it as beautiful as the starry sky" and "I gave it reverent care" also appear in other contexts.
Set beside other royal inscriptions of the period, the text shows that the king's scribes adapted stock phrases to each project. In this case they adapted them to the sanctuary of Zababa and Ishtar at Kish.
The text matches the excavated tower
The account fits what excavators found in the ground. Ernest Mackay worked at Kish in the 1920s. He identified four construction phases in the ziggurat, the last of them Nebuchadnezzar's.
Inscriptions of three kings, Nebuchadnezzar among them, have been recovered at Tell Al-Uhaimir. This agrees with the cylinders' reference to two earlier builders. The tower's original construction has been attributed to the age of Hammurabi, in the early second millennium BC.
Nebuchadnezzar II is best known for his building projects in Babylon itself. His reign there produced temples, fortifications and large-scale urban renewal. Kish was an older cult centre outside the capital.
In antiquity Kish had two parts. Kish proper lay to the west, where the ziggurat of Zababa stood. Hursagkalama lay to the east, at modern Tell Ingharra. There Nebuchadnezzar II also restored a large temple of Ishtar.
According to the paper, three ziggurats came to exist at Kish. The number is a measure of the city's religious and political standing from the Early Dynastic Period onwards.
Sources
- Clay Cylinders of the Builder-King of the Neo-Babylonian World Reveal the Restoration of the Kish Ziggurat (Arkeonews)
- Two cylinders found at the site of the Ziggurat of Kish bear an inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II that confirms the archaeological findings (La Brújula Verde)
- Inscribed clay cylinders reveal Nebuchadnezzar II’s restoration of the Kish Ziggurat (Archaeology News)
Paper: Jawad AA, Al-Ammari HF. Two inscribed cylinders of Nebuchadnezzar II from the ziggurat of Kish. Iraq. Published online 2025:1-11. doi:10.1017/irq.2025.10023
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