Nippur Expedition

The Nippur Expedition investigates one of Mesopotamia’s most important and long-lived cities: the sacred center of Enlil, a place whose temples, neighborhoods, public buildings, tablets, and artifacts preserve more than 6,000 years of urban history. ISAC began excavations at Nippur in 1948, building on earlier American work at the site and developing one of the longest-running ISAC archaeological projects in the Middle East. The expedition has explored Nippur’s religious quarter, residential and administrative districts, city walls, and later occupations, combining artifacts, texts, architecture, environmental evidence, mapping, and digital data to reconstruct ancient life. Renewed fieldwork since 2019 continues this legacy through new excavation, survey, topographic mapping, and GIS documentation.