Irisaĝrig
ancient city in Iraq
Irisaĝrig (iri-saĝ-rig₇ki), also Urusagrig, Iri-Saĝrig, and in the Akkadian language Al-Šarrākī "City of the (Divine) Donors", was an ancient Near East city in Iraq whose location is not known with certainty but is currently thought to be at the site of Tell al-Wilayah, on the ancient Mama-šarrat canal off the Tigris river, near the ancient site of Kesh, Tulul al-Baqarat. The city was occupied during the Early Dynastic, Akkadian, Ur III, and early Old Babylonian periods. While cuneiform tablets from the city had appeared from time to time, the flood of artifacts entering the private market from looting which followed the 2003 war in Iraq included a large number from Irisaĝrig. This spurred interest by archaeologists in finding the site. The city became of popular interest because of the Hobby Lobby smuggling scandal which resulted in a large number of Irisaĝrig artifacts and cuneiform tablets being repatriated to Iraq without being recorded and published first. While there were a number of significant temples in the city, the titular deity is not known though the Isin-Larsa period literary composition Lament for Eridu names the goddess Aruru in that role. It has also been suggested that there were temples of Ashgi and Alla. There is known to have been a temple of Ninisina and one of Nergal of Eresh in Irisagrig in the Ur III period, at least back to the reign of Shu-Suen and Amar-Sin respectively, and continuing under the rule of Malgium. During the Ur III
period sacrifices and donations were made to Ninḫursaĝa of Irisaĝrig suggesting there was at least a shrine in Irisaĝrig. One researcher has suggested that another logogram for the city was e2-nu-zuḫ "City of Thieves".
“Irisaĝrig” enters the record as ancient city in Iraq. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Irisaĝrig, ancient and city can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Irisaĝrig” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Irisaĝrig, ancient and city provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q79115191. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Irisaĝrig” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.