Shuruppak, ancient Sumerian city located south of Nippur in what is now south-central Iraq and originally on the bank of the Euphrates River. Excavations there in the first half of the 20th century uncovered three levels of habitation extending in time from the late prehistoric period to the 3rd dynasty of Ur (c. 2112–2004 bc). The most distinctive finds were ruins of well-built houses, along with cuneiform tablets with administrative records and lists of words, indicating a highly developed society already in being toward the end of the 4th millennium bc.
Shuruppak was celebrated in Sumerian legend as the scene of the Deluge, which destroyed all humanity except one survivor, Ziusudra. He had been commanded by a protecting god to build an ark, in which he rode out the disaster, afterward re-creating man and living things upon the earth, and was himself endowed with eternal life. Ziusudra corresponds with Utnapishtim in the Gilgamesh epic and with the biblical Noah.