Nimrud
Nimrud is an ancient Assyrian city located in Iraq, south of the city of Mosul, and south of the village of Selamiyah, in the Nineveh Plains in Upper Mesopotamia. It was a major Assyrian city between approximately 1350 BC and 610 BC. The city is located in a strategic position north of where the river Tigris meets its tributary the Great Zab. The city covered an area of. The ruins of the city were found within of the modern-day Assyrian village of Noomanea in Nineveh Governorate, Iraq.
By 800 BCE, the city of Nimrud had expanded to a population of approximately 75,000, establishing it as the most populous urban center in the world at that time.
The name Nimrud was recorded as the local name by Carsten Niebuhr in the mid-18th century. In the mid 19th century, biblical archaeologists proposed the Assyrian name Kalḫu, based on a description of the travels of Nimrod in Genesis 10.
Archaeological excavations at the site began in 1845, and were conducted at intervals between then and 1879, and then from 1949 onwards. Many important pieces were discovered, with most being moved to museums in Iraq and abroad. In 2013, the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council funded the "Nimrud Project", directed by Eleanor Robson, whose aims were to write the history of the city in ancient and modern times, to identify and record the dispersal history of artefacts from Nimrud, distributed amongst at least 76 museums worldwide.
In 2015, the terrorist organization Islamic State announced its intention to destroy the site because of its "un-Islamic" Assyrian nature. In March 2015, the Iraqi government reported that Islamic State had used bulldozers to destroy excavated remains of the city. Several videos released by ISIL showed the work in progress. In November 2016, Iraqi forces retook the site, and later visitors also confirmed that around 90% of the excavated portion of city had been completely destroyed. The ruins of Nimrud have remained guarded by Iraqi forces ever since. Reconstruction work is in progress.
History
Situated on a major commercial path connecting Ashur and Nineveh, Calah occupied a strategically advantageous position. Its origins were in a trading settlement established under Shalmaneser I, but over time the site had fallen into disrepair. When Ashurnasirpal II selected it as his new capital, he cleared the accumulated ruins of its collapsed defenses and began building an entirely new city, including a royal palace designed to surpass all those of earlier Assyrian rulers.Calah served as the imperial capital from 879 to 706 BCE, when Sargon II shifted the seat of government to his newly founded city, Dur-Sharrukin. While Assyrian kings continued to be buried in Ashur, their queens were interred at Calah. Excavations have revealed royal tombs belonging to the queens of Ashurnasirpal II, Tiglath-Pileser III, Shalmaneser V, Sargon II, and others.
The site became widely known as “Nimrud” after 19th- and early 20th-century archaeologists mistakenly identified it with the city associated with the biblical figure Nimrod in the Book of Genesis.
In addition to enormous city walls 7.5 kilometers long, palaces, temples, royal offices and various residential buildings, Ashurnasirpal also established botanical gardens, filled with foreign plants brought back from his wide-ranging campaigns, and a zoo, perhaps the first large zoo ever constructed. Ashurnasirpal's inscriptions offer no motive for changing the capital. Various explanations have been proposed by modern scholars, including that he might have gotten disenchanted with Assur since there was little room left in the ancient capital to leave a mark, the important position of Nimrud in regard to local trade networks, that Nimrud was more centrally located in the empire, or that Ashurnasirpal hoped for greater independence from the influential great families of Assur.
A grand opening ceremony with festivities and an opulent banquet in 864 BC is described in an inscribed stele discovered during archeological excavations. To celebrate the completion of his work in Nimrud in 864 BC, Ashurnasirpal hosted a grand celebration, which some scholars have described as perhaps the greatest party in world history; the event hosted 69,574 guests, including 16,000 citizens of the new capital and 5,000 foreign dignitaries, and lasted for ten days. Among the food and beverage used, Ashurnasirpal's inscriptions record 10,000 pigeons, 10,000 jugs of beer, and 10,000 skins of wine, among countless other items.
King Ashurnasirpal's son Shalmaneser III continued where his father had left off. At Nimrud he built a palace that far surpassed his father's. It was twice the size and it covered an area of about and included more than 200 rooms. He built the monument known as the Great Ziggurat, and an associated temple.
Nimrud remained the capital of the Assyrian Empire during the reigns of Shamshi-Adad V, Adad-nirari III, Queen Semiramis, Adad-nirari III, Shalmaneser IV, Ashur-dan III, Ashur-nirari V, Tiglath-Pileser III and Shalmaneser V. Tiglath-Pileser III in particular, conducted major building works in the city, as well as introducing Eastern Aramaic as the lingua franca of the empire, whose dialects still endure among the Christian Assyrians of the region today.
However, in 706 BC Sargon II moved the capital of the empire to Dur Sharrukin, and after his death, Sennacherib moved it to Nineveh. It remained a major city and a royal residence until the city was largely destroyed during the Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire.
Later geographical writings
Ruins of a similarly located Assyrian city named "Larissa" were described by Xenophon in his Anabasis in the 5th century BC.A similar locality was described in the Middle Ages by a number of Arabic geographers including Yaqut al-Hamawi, Abu'l-Fida and Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi, using the name "Athur" near Selamiyah.
Archaeology
Early writings and debate over name
Nimrud
The name Nimrud in connection with the site in Western writings was first used in the travelogue of Carsten Niebuhr, who was in Mosul in March 1760. NiebuhrIn 1830, traveller James Silk Buckingham wrote of "two heaps called Nimrod-Tuppé and Shah-Tuppé... The Nimrod-Tuppé has a tradition attached to it, of a palace having been built there by Nimrod".
However, the name became the cause of significant debate amongst Assyriologists in the mid-nineteenth century, with much of the discussion focusing on the identification of four Biblical cities mentioned in Genesis 10: "From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, the city Rehoboth-Ir, Calah and Resen".
Larissa / Resen
The site was described in more detail by the British traveler Claudius James Rich in 1820, shortly before his death. Rich identified the site with the city of Larissa in Xenophon, and noted that the locals "generally believe this to have been Nimrod's own city; and one or two of the better informed with whom I conversed at Mousul said it was Al Athur or Ashur, from which the whole country was denominated."The site of Nimrud was visited by William Francis Ainsworth in 1837. Ainsworth, like Rich, identified the site with Larissa of Xenophon's Anabasis, concluding that Nimrud was the Biblical Resen on the basis of Bochart's identification of Larissa with Resen on etymological grounds.
Rehoboth
The site was subsequently visited by James Phillips Fletcher in 1843. Fletcher instead identified the site with Rehoboth on the basis that the city of Birtha described by Ptolemy and Ammianus Marcellinus has the same etymological meaning as Rehoboth in Hebrew.Ashur
mentioned that the Arabic geographers referred to it as Athur. British traveler Claudius James Rich mentions, "one or two of the better informed with whom I conversed at Mosul said it was Al Athur or Ashur, from which the whole country was denominated."Nineveh
Prior to 1850, Layard believed that the site of "Nimroud" was part of the wider region of "Nineveh", which also included the two mounds today identified as Nineveh-proper, and his excavation publications were thus labeled.Calah
identified the city with the Biblical Calah on the basis of a cuneiform reading of "Levekh" which he connected to the city following Ainsworth and Rich's connection of Xenophon's Larissa to the site.Excavations
Initial excavations at Nimrud were conducted by Austen Henry Layard, working from 1845 to 1847 and from 1849 until 1851. Following Layard's departure, the work was handed over to Hormuzd Rassam in 1853-54 and then William Loftus in 1854–55.After George Smith briefly worked the site in 1873 and Rassam returned there from 1877 to 1879, Nimrud was left untouched for almost 60 years.
A British School of Archaeology in Iraq team led by Max Mallowan resumed digging at Nimrud in 1949; these excavations resulted in the discovery of the 244 Nimrud Letters. The work continued until 1963 with David Oates becoming director in 1958 followed by Julian Orchard in 1963.
Subsequent work was by the Directorate of Antiquities of the Republic of Iraq, the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw directed by Janusz Meuszyński, Paolo Fiorina with the Centro Ricerche Archeologiche e Scavi di Torino who concentrated mainly on Fort Shalmaneser, and John Curtis. In 1974 to his untimely death in 1976 Janusz Meuszyński, the director of the Polish project, with the permission of the Iraqi excavation team, had the whole site documented on film—in slide film and black-and-white print film. Every relief that remained in situ, as well as the fallen, broken pieces that were distributed in the rooms across the site were photographed. Meuszyński also arranged with the architect of his project, Richard P. Sobolewski, to survey the site and record it in plan and in elevation. As a result, the entire relief compositions were reconstructed, taking into account the presumed location of the fragments that were scattered around the world.
Excavations revealed remarkable bas-reliefs, ivories, and sculptures. A statue of Ashurnasirpal II was found in an excellent state of preservation, as were colossal winged man-headed lions weighing to each guarding the palace entrance. The large number of inscriptions dealing with king Ashurnasirpal II provide more details about him and his reign than are known for any other ruler of this epoch. The palaces of Ashurnasirpal II, Shalmaneser III, and Tiglath-Pileser III have been located. Portions of the site have been also been identified as temples to Ninurta and Enlil, a building assigned to Nabu, the god of writing and the arts, and as extensive fortifications.
In 1988, the Iraqi Department of Antiquities discovered four queens' tombs at the site.