Shaduppum (modern Tell Harmal) is situated in what is now a southern suburb of Baghdad. It was a small walled Babylonian city which was occupied around 1800 BC and was the administrative centre of a district of the Kingdom of Eshnunna during the period preceding Hammurabi's conquest.
Although it is only a small city, much interesting archaeological material has been discovered there. Its ancient name means 'place of writing' and it seems to have been specifically a centre for priests and scribes.
Important tablets in cuneiform ('wedge-shaped') writing have been found there, which include literary, legal, scientific and economic documents, as well as a famous Babylonian mathematical text which anticipated the theorem of Pythagoras.
The town was heavily fortified and surrounded by a massive brick wall with buttressing towers. The main street had two temples on either side, each guarded by life-size terracotta lions. Shops, private houses, smaller shrines and administrative buildings have also been excavated.
