Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T02:04:00.292Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Bird's-eye View of Opis and Seleucia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Clark Hopkins
Clark Hopkins*
Affiliation:
Director of the Michigan Excavations at Seleucia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1927 Professor Waterman of the University of Michigan undertook a special study of Babylonian topography for the purpose of locating the site of Opis (Babylonian Upi, Upa) the older Sumerian Akshak, capital of one of the oldest kingdoms in Mesopotamia. The general location of Opis is well defined by the inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar at Wadi Brissa and Nahr el-Kelb, who states that for the defence of Babylon he built a wall from Sippar on the Euphrates to ‘ above ’ Opis on the Tigris, a distance of five beru, about twenty miles. Since with the help of this brick-faced earth wall he fashioned great bodies of water ‘ like the sea ’, twenty beru in length (probably in circumference), it is clear that a watercourse formed part of this system of defence. Xenophon mentions Opis as located above the modern Bagdad, but Strabo clearly places it in the district of the later Seleucia, stating2 that the Tigris was navigable as far as Opis and Seleucia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 13 , Issue 52 , December 1939 , pp. 440 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1939

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Leroy, Waterman Preliminary Report upon the Excavations at Tel Umar, Irak, University of Michigan Press, 1931, pp.1 ff.Google Scholar

2 XVI, I, 9.

3 II, I, 26.

4 VI, 5, 89.

5 V, 17, 5.

6 ANTIQUITY 1929, 3, 434–51, ‘The German Excavations at Ctesiphon’, by Oscar, Reuther. Google Scholar

7 XXIV, 2, 7.

8 ANTIQUITY, 1929, 3, 439.Google Scholar

9 XVI, 2, 5.

10 Luckenbil, D.D. PAncient Records ofAssyrM and Babylonia, Chicago, 1927, pp.309.Google Scholar