A Companion to Assyria

by Eckart Frahm

  Dur‐Šarrukin is the most fully‐excavated and most completely published late Assyrian capital. The plan of the city was roughly square, with the corners oriented toward the cardinal points (Figure 23.4). The city walls were some 7 kilometers in circuit, averaged 12 meters in height, and enclosed an area of about 275 hectares. There were seven gates in the city wall, one on the northwest side and two on each of the other three sides. The citadel, which occupied some 23 hectares, was on the northwest wall, separated from the remainder of the city by its own enclosure wall with two gates (Place and Thomas 1867–70: I, 11–18, 153–204, III, pls. 2, 8–18; Loud and Altman 1938: 18, pls. 67–70).

  Figure 23.4 Dur‐Šarrukin (modern Khorsabad), city plan; adapted by the author from Loud 1938: pl. 69.

  Source: Reproduced with permission of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

  The largest structure in the city was the palace, straddling the city wall at the northwest side of the citadel on a terrace that measured roughly 315 × 195 meters and averaged 7.5 meters high (Figure 23.5). This is the only late Assyrian palace to be completely excavated. The palace plan may be divided into three major sections, each of which was built around a large courtyard. Surrounding the outer court were numerous small rooms and courts that were apparently devoted to palace administration. These rooms were either undecorated or decorated with paint. To the northwest and southwest of the throne‐room court were the royal reception suites, including the principal and secondary throne rooms, and the royal apartments. This was apparently the only part of the palace in which the rooms and courtyards were decorated with wall reliefs, the subjects of which were military campaigns, banquets, hunts, processions, and apotropaic deities. Around the third court at the south corner of the palace were the palace temples, dedicated to the gods Sîn, Adad, Šamaš, Ninurta, Ea, and Ningal. Their facades were decorated with dadoes of glazed bricks painted with symbolic images. Behind the temple complex was a ziggurat, the lowest four stages of which were painted white, black, red, and blue. On a terrace just beyond the west corner of the palace was a free‐standing structure (Monument x), possibly Sargon’s bīt hilāni (Botta and Flandin 1849–50; Place and Thomas 1867–70: I, 19–151, III, pls. 3–7, 18bis–39; Loud, Frankfort, and Jacobsen 1936; Reade 2008: 13–30).

  Figure 23.5 Dur‐Šarrukin (modern Khorsabad), plan of the palace of Sargon II.

  Source: Place 1867–70: vol. 3, pl. 3.

  Five further buildings were excavated inside the citadel wall (Figure 23.6). The largest of these, at the east corner, was designated Residence L. Inscribed thresholds identified it as the residence of Sîn‐aḫu‐uṣur, “the grand vizier, full brother of Sargon.” An outer court provided access to the throne room suite, which was decorated with wall paintings and inscribed stone thresholds, but no wall reliefs. Behind this suite was the central court, from which opened residential suites. The most unusual architectural feature of Residence L was a portico nearly 40 meters in length along the outer wall of a subsidiary courtyard on the southeast side of the building. The function of this portico, which is unique in late Assyrian architecture, is unknown. At the southwest side of the citadel were buildings designated H, J, K, and M. Residence K had the same basic arrangement of courtyards and reception suites as L, but was somewhat smaller and simpler. Its most notable feature was a large wall painting fallen from the southwest wall of its principal reception room. Residences J and M, only partially excavated, were similar in plan to K, but smaller, and were originally decorated with wall paintings (Loud and Altman 1938: 65–72, 81–6).

  Figure 23.6 Dur‐Šarrukin (modern Khorsabad), plan of the citadel.

  Source: Loud 1938: pl. 70; reproduced with permission of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

  Building H, the temple of Nabû, is the largest and most elaborate temple excavated at Dur‐Šarrukin. Located atop a platform some three to six meters above the other buildings in the lower citadel area, it was connected directly to the palace terrace by a ramp or stairway running across an arched bridge. The shrines and associated courtyards were on the northwest side of the temple. The gate chamber, at the northeast end, opened into the outer court. On the opposite wall were two major doorways, the one on the left leading into a small shrine and that on the right, decorated with a glazed brick dado, leading into the inner court. On the far side of this court were a second pair of doors, the right again leading into a small shrine and the left, again decorated with a glazed brick dado, opening into the main shrine. Inscriptions on the thresholds and stairs of the two inner shrines identify both as being dedicated to Nabû. On the northwest sides of both courtyards were archive chambers fitted with rows of pigeonholes for tablet storage (Loud and Altman 1938: 56–64).

  The largest building outside the citadel was Palace F, the arsenal, straddling the southwest stretch of the city wall. Only its southwest side has been excavated, consisting of a throne room with a pair of bull colossi in its central door and a large throne dais at its southeast end, and subsidiary reception rooms. Three large buildings in the lower town, Place’s buildings G and H and Loud’s building Z, were partially excavated. All were evidently major structures, comparable in scale and quality to the residences on the citadel (Loud and Altman 1938: 75–9). If there were “ordinary” dwellings at Dur‐Šarrukin, none have yet been excavated. Also in the lower town, just inside the northwest city wall, a temple dedicated to the Sebetti was partially excavated by the Iraqi antiquities department. It contained fourteen inscribed stone offering tables in the cella and three tall stone incense stands in the courtyard (Safar 1957).

  At Nineveh, Sargon claims to have rebuilt the Nabû temple. The excavated remains consisted of a central courtyard measuring 31 by 24 meters surrounded by a solid mud brick platform three meters thick and of an irregular trapezoidal shape, its sides varying from 46 to 58 meters. It is uncertain whether Adad‐nirari III or Sargon II constructed this platform. The excavators were unable to trace any wall remains, but did identify four doorways, one on each side, the best preserved of which was on the northeast side (Thompson and Hutchinson 1929a; Thompson and Hamilton 1932: 103–4; Reade 1998–2001: 410).

  Sennacherib (704–681 BCE)

  Immediately following his accession to the throne, Sennacherib began rebuilding Nineveh on a grand scale with a new city wall, a huge new palace, an arsenal, temples, roads, bridges, and canals (Figure 23.7). He enclosed the city with a wall roughly 12 kilometers in circuit, encompassing an area of some 750 hectares. Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus were incorporated into the western stretch of the wall as the sites for the palace and arsenal respectively. The wall, which is still clearly visible around most of the city, was built in two levels, with a lower outer part, of mud brick faced with ashlar limestone topped with crenellations, projecting from a higher inner part of mud brick. Its total thickness was about 25 meters (Reade 1998–2001: 397–401).

  Figure 23.7 Nineveh, city plan, time of Sennacherib.

  Source: author.

  Gates were located on the lines of principal roads or to provide access to major structures inside and outside the walls. According to Sennacherib’s texts, the city wall was pierced by fourteen, fifteen, or eighteen gates, the number increasing from the earlier to the later texts. Most of these are still visible as large mounds projecting above and beyond the wall, and nine have been at least partially excavated. Only one – the Nergal gate on the north wall, where a well‐preserved Sennacherib human‐headed bull colossus was until recently still to be seen – is known to have been decorated with sculptures. Excavations at the Adad gate on the north wall and Halzi gate at the southeast corner revealed architectural alterations and human skeletons from the period of the final defense and fall of Nineveh (Grayson and Novotny 2012; Suleiman 1971b; Stronach 1997; Reade 1998–2001: 401–3). The restored Nergal, Adad, and Maški gates were completely demolished by ISIS from April to June 2016.

  The challenge of ensuring an adequate supply of irrigation water was met
through an aggressive program of canal construction that continued throughout the king’s reign. Sennacherib’s texts describe in detail the water system he built for Nineveh, and parts of it have been identified to the north of the city. Two dams on the Khosr river – at al‐Jileh and Shallalat, respectively some three and 13 kilometers upstream from Kuyunjik – probably belong to Sennacherib’s water system. The canal head near Bavian and the spectacular aqueduct at Jerwan both definitely belong to one of his canals, and the rock reliefs at Faida and Maltai, both attributed to Sennacherib, probably mark the courses of others (Grayson and Novotny 2012; Jacobsen and Lloyd 1935; Reade 1978; Reade 1998–2001: 404‐7; Ur 2005).

  Sennacherib’s new palace, called the Southwest Palace by its excavator, was built in the oldest part of the city, along the southwest side of the large citadel mound of Kuyunjik, overlooking the junction of the Tigris and Khosr rivers (Figure 21.2). According to Sennacherib’s texts, his new “Palace Without Rival” was on the site of an old one, probably the Middle Assyrian palace. He demolished the old building and enlarged its site by constructing a new terrace 914 by 440 cubits (about 500 by 240 meters) in extent. The state apartments at the southwest end of the palace cover an area about 200 meters square and comprise some seventy rooms. The excavated area included a traditional throne‐room suite with its inner court and subsidiary reception suites, restored as a site museum by the Iraq State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage in the 1960s and demolished by ISIS in April–May 2016. The plan of the remainder of the state apartments is novel, with a second inner court, also surrounded by reception suites, and a group of rooms of uncertain plan facing the southwest terrace. In the western part of the excavated area was a reception suite with an inscribed pair of colossi that identify it as the residence of Sennacherib’s favorite queen. The rooms in or around major reception suites were decorated with wall reliefs, the subject of which was overwhelmingly scenes of conquest (Grayson and Novotny 2012; Layard 1849a and 1853a; Russell 1991 and 1998a; Reade 1998–2001: 411–16; Turner 2001 and 2003).

  It is clear from Sennacherib’s description of his palace that less than half of it has been excavated. Roughly 300 meters northeast of the state apartments is the so‐called Eastern Building. Inscribed bull colossi in this structure identify it as part of Sennacherib’s palace and it is about where the end of the main palace should be according to Sennacherib’s own accounts. King also reported scattered traces of Sennacherib construction in the area between the state apartments and the Eastern Building, and these must belong to the palace as well (Russell 1991: 78–88; Russell 1997: 299–301; Thompson and Hutchinson 1929b: 64–5).

  On Nebi Yunus, Sennacherib rebuilt the back palace or arsenal, which he says had been built by his ancestors and had fallen into disrepair. Sennacherib reports that he demolished the old structure and erected a much larger one, decorated with human‐headed bull gateway colossi of stone and statues of protective deities in bronze. Excavations at the east end of the mound by Mohammed Ali Mustafa exposed a monumental gateway and a number of inscribed bricks of Sennacherib, while construction work at the northwest corner revealed a row of relief slabs carved with a procession of grooms leading horses such as were also found in a descending passage on the west side of Sennacherib’s palace on Kuyunjik. These are presumably parts of the arsenal, the plan of which, however, is still very incomplete (Grayson and Novotny 2012; Turner 1970b; Scott and MacGinnis 1990, 72, pl. 13b).

  Sennacherib also rebuilt the Nergal temple at Tarbiṣu (modern Sherif Khan), about five kilometers north of Nineveh. The western part of this temple consisted of inner and outer courtyards, each surrounded by a single rank of small rooms. At the south side of the inner courtyard were the entrances to two shrines, the one at the east larger than that at the west. Both had the typical late Assyrian layout of a broad antechamber and long cult chamber (Suleiman 1971a; Miglus 2011–13).

  Sennacherib was one of the most active builders in Ashur during the Neo‐Assyrian period. Andrae attributed a massive semicircular stone bastion in front of the west gate to Sennacherib on the basis of the stonework. A text dating to Sennacherib’s reign lists thirteen city gates, though some of these may be two names for what is essentially the same gate (Andrae 1913: 51, Abb. 58, 68; George 1992: 177). Sennacherib was also responsible for the last major alteration to the Assur temple. At the north end of the southeast wall of the main temple block, directly opposite the end of the cella, he constructed a new court and entrance to the temple, thereby placing the entrance on the main axis of the cella (Haller and Andrae 1955: 69–73; Galter 1984).

  Following his conquest and destruction of Babylon, Sennacherib built a new akītu‐festival temple outside the wall some 200 meters northwest of the city. His texts that commemorate the event say that after it was completed, a part of this new temple was destroyed by fire and he rebuilt it. The excavators distinguished two phases of the building, both of which were the work of Sennacherib. The earlier phase, which presumably predates the fire, measured 55 × 60 meters and the later, which was built largely on the foundations of the earlier, measured 67 × 60 meters. Sennacherib says that the entire building was constructed of limestone, a very unusual building practice in Assyria. The plans of the two phases were quite similar. Both were built around a large central court with the entrance on one end and a wide cella opening off the other. The side walls seem to have been screened by shallow porticoes, or perhaps these “pillars” were actually pedestals for statues (Haller and Andrae 1955: 74–80; Miglus 1993).

  Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE)

  Esarhaddon carried out construction projects in all of Assyria’s traditional capitals, and focused more on renovating existing structures, rather than building new ones. At Nineveh, Esarhaddon says that he greatly enlarged the arsenal and decorated it with sculptures representing his victories over hostile regions, presumably referring to wall reliefs. These sculptures, if they were ever completed, have not yet been excavated. Excavations in 1990 by the Iraq State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage in a large courtyard of the arsenal exposed a monumental entrance facade decorated with bull colossi, beyond which is a large room—perhaps a throne room—paneled with stone slabs, apparently unsculptured. The facade is decorated with a pair of addorsed bull colossi with a lion‐clutching human in between and several doorways lined with bull colossi (Leichty 2011: 22–6, 33–5, 39‐41; Musa 1987–88; Scott and MacGinnis 1990: 71, pl. XIIIa; Reade 1998–2001: 419–20).

  Esarhaddon rebuilt the palace at Tarbiṣu as a residence for the crown prince. The palace plan combines traditional and novel features. The best‐preserved block of rooms consists of a courtyard with reception suites of typical late Assyrian plan on its east and west sides. On its south side, however, was the unusual feature of a broad stone staircase that led up to a columned porch or vestibule. This, the only unequivocal example of a North Syrian bīt hilāni to have been excavated in an Assyrian palace, seems to have functioned as a sort of grand entrance for a third reception suite, located directly behind the porch. An Esarhaddon foundation cylinder reports that the palace was intended for the crown prince, Assurbanipal (Leichty 2011: 176–7; Suleiman 1971a; Miglus 2011–13).

  At Kalḫu, Esarhaddon restored the arsenal and built a heavily‐fortified stone postern gate and retaining wall, much of it still well‐preserved, at its southwest corner. Inscriptions by the gate report that this wall and the terrace it supports are the foundation of Esarhaddon’s new residence in the arsenal. Atop this wall was a group of rooms, which must be this new residence (Leichty 2011: 164–5; Mallowan 1966: II, 464‐8; Russell 1999a: 146–9). Also at Kalḫu, Esarhaddon built a palace – Layard’s Southwest Palace – at the southwest corner of the citadel. Only a single group of rooms, covering an area of some 60 by 35 meters, was fully excavated. Their plan, as reconstructed by Turner, is atypical, consisting of two parallel long rooms with column bases in their side and end doorways, and beyond and parallel to these, a row of smaller rooms, the central of w
hich seems to be the focus of the suite. The function of this suite is unknown. The excavated part of the palace also included three monumental portals decorated with human‐headed winged lions and bulls (Barnett and Falkner 1962: 20–3; Turner 1970b: 201–2, pl. XLVd; Postgate and Reade 1976–80: 315).

  Assurbanipal (668–627 BCE)

  Assurbanipal focused his attention on Nineveh, apparently living for a time in Sennacherib’s palace, which he refurbished, decorating at least one room with his own wall reliefs (Barnett, Bleibtreu, and Turner 1998: 94–100). Assurbanipal’s major project at Nineveh, however, was the reconstruction of the crown prince’s palace, called the North Palace by its excavators, to the north of the Nabû temple on Kuyunjik. An area of some 135 by 120 meters was partially excavated, but this was only the central part of the palace, including an outer court, throne‐room suite, inner court with part of a typical reception suite on its northwest side, and a system of hallways that communicated with the outside. The rooms were decorated with wall reliefs that are among the finest surviving examples of Assyrian sculpture, including the famous lion hunts (Barnett 1976).

  In a foundation prism dated 649 BCE, Assurbanipal claims, like his father and grandfather, to have restored the Nineveh arsenal. In the course of excavations on the arsenal by the Iraq State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage, at least one wall slab with an Assurbanipal inscription on its back was discovered. Assurbanipal also worked on the major sanctuaries of Nineveh. He embellished the Ištar temple with gold and silver, enlarged the temple courtyard and repaved it with limestone slabs, restored the akītu‐festival temple of Ištar and decorated it with glazed bricks representing his triumphs over his enemies, and worked on the ziggurat. He also says that he decorated the Nabû temple with silver and gold, and enlarged its courtyard and paved it with stone. His pavement slabs were found outside both temples (Borger and Fuchs 1996: 206, 252, 254–5, 268–70, 291, 295; Russell 1999a: 154; Reade 2005: 381–2).