Umma
Umma ( ; in modern Dhi Qar Province in Iraq, formerly also called Gishban) was an ancient city in Sumer. There is some scholarly debate about the Sumerian and Akkadian names for this site. Traditionally, Umma was identified with Tell Jokha. More recently it has been suggested that it was located at Umm al-Aqarib, less than to its northwest or was even the name of both cities. One or both were the leading city of the Early Dynastic kingdom of Gišša, with the most recent excavators putting forth that Umm al-Aqarib was prominent in EDIII but Jokha rose to preeminence later. History In the early Sumerian text Inanna's descent to the netherworld, Inanna dissuades demons from the netherworld from taking Shara, patron of Umma, who was living in squalor. They eventually take Dumuzid king of Uruk instead, who lived in palatial opulence. Best known for its long frontier conflict with Lagash, as reported by Entemena, the city reached its zenith , under the rule of Lugal-Zage-Si who also controlled Ur and Uruk. Under the Ur III dynasty, Umma became an important provincial center. Most of the over 30,000 tablets recovered from the site are administrative and economic texts from that time. They permit an excellent insight into affairs in Umma. The Umma calendar of Shulgi () is the immediate predecessor of the later Babylonian calendar, and indirectly of the post-exilic Hebrew calendar. Umma appears to have been abandoned after the Middle Bronze Age. Archaeology The site of Tell Jokha was visited by William Loftus in 1854 and John Punnett Peters of the University of Pennsylvania in 1885. In the early 1900s, many illegally excavated Umma tablets from the Third Dynasty of Ur began to appear on the antiquities market. From 1999 to 2002 Jokha was worked by an Iraqi team, recovering a number of tablets and bullae from the Early Dynastic, Sargonic, Ur III, and Old Babylonian periods. In 2017, the Slovak Archaeological and Historical Institute began excavations at Tell Jokha. The site of Umm al-Aqarib (located at 45.80°E longitude and 31.60°N latitude) covers about 5 square kilometers and is made up of 21 mounds the largest of which is 20 meters above the level of the plain. The location was first visited by John Punnett Peters in the 1800s. It was excavated for a total of 7 seasons in 1999–2002 and 2008–2010 by Iraqi archaeologists under difficult conditions. At Umm al-Aqarib, archaeologists uncovered levels from the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2900–2300 BC), including several monumental buildings, one of them variously identified as a temple or palace. The site of Tell Shmet also lies nearby, around 10 kilometers to the northwest of Umma and within visual distance of Zabala. It was part of the Umma province. The site measures 990 by 720 meters (712,800 square meters). The main Sargonic and Ur III remains of the site were destroyed by a Ministry of Agriculture program to plant trees so as to prevent sand dunes. In response to looting which began in