Dur-Sharrukin
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Coordinates: 36°30′34″N 43°13′46″E / 36.509537°N 43.229315°E
Dur-Sharrukin ("Fortress of Sargon"), present day Khorsabad, was the Assyrian capital in the time of Sargon II of Assyria. Khorsabad is a village in northern Iraq, 15 km northeast of Mosul, which is still today inhabited by Assyrians.
Sargon II ruled from 722-705 BCE. In 717, Sargon ordered the construction of a new palace-city at the foot of the Gebel Musri, just at the confluence of the Tigris and the Greater Zab rivers. The demands for timber and other materials and craftsmen, who came from as far as coastal Phoenicia, are documented in contemporary Assyrian letters. The debts of construction workers were nullified in order to attract a sufficient labour force. The land in the environs of the town was taken under cultivation, and olive groves were planted to increase Assyria's deficient oil-production. The great city was entirely built in the decade preceding 706 BC; after the unexpected death of Saergon, the capital was shifted 20 km south to Nineveh.
The town was of rectangular layout and measured 1760 * 1635 m. The enclosed area comprised 3 square kilometres, or 700 acres. The length of the walls was 16280 Assyrian units, which corresponded to the numerical value of Sargon's name. The city walls were massive and 157 towers protected its sides. Seven gates entered the city from all directions. A walled terrace contained temples and the royal palace. The main temples were dedicated to the gods Nabu, Shamash and Sin, while Adad, Ningal and Ninurta had smaller shrines. A temple tower, ziqqurat, was also constructed. The palace was adorned with sculptures and wall reliefs, and the gates were flanked with winged bulls shedu statues weighing up to 40 tons. Sargon supposedly lost at least one of these winged bulls in the river.
In addition to the great city, there was a royal hunting park and a garden that included "all the aromatic plants of Hatti[1] and the fruit-trees of every mountain", a "record of power and conquest", as Robin Lane Fox has observed.[2] Surviving correspondence mentions the moving of thousands of youing fruit treees,quinces and almonds, apples and medlars.[3]
"On the central canal of Sargon's garden stood a pillared pleasure-pavilion which looked up to a great topographic creation: a man-made Garden Mound. This Mound was planted with cedars and cypresses and was modelled after a foreign landscape, the Amanus mountains in north Syria, which had so amazed the Assyrian kings. In their flat palace-gardens they built a replica of what they had encountered."[4]
The court moved to Dur-Sharrukin in 706 BC, although it was not completely finished yet. Sargon was killed during a battle in 705. His son and successor Sennacherib abandoned the project, and relocated the capital with its administration to the city of Nineveh. The city was never completed and was finally abandoned a century later when the Assyrian empire fell. [5]
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[edit] Discovery
The site was first noticed by the French consul at Mosul, Paul-Émile Botta in 1843; Botta believed however that Khorsabad was the site of biblical Nineveh. The site was excavated in 1842-44 as well as in 1852-55, and artifacts from these excavations were brought to the Louvre in Paris after the discovery. The site of Khorsabad was excavated 1928-1935 by American archaeologists from the Oriental Institute in Chicago. The primary discoveries from Khorsabad are within the study of Assyrian art and architecture. Few other objects from the short-lived city were discovered.
[edit] Relocation of the Bulls
Paul Emile Botta and Victor Place attempted to move two 30-ton colossi to Paris from Khorsabad in 1853. In order to facilitate their shipment to Paris they were sawn in pieces, and the team still ran into problems. One of them fell into the Tigris, never to be retrieved. The other made it to Paris. A plaster replica was made to replace the lost one in 1957. [6]
In 1928 Eward Chiera unearthed a colossal bull estimated to weigh 40 tons in Khorsabad. This was split into three large fragments. The torso alone weighed about 20 tons. This was shipped to Chicago. It was too big to fit through some railroad tunnels and had to be rerouted from New York to Chicago via New Orleans. [7]
Descriptions of how these bulls were constructed and moved were found at the palace of Senacherib in Nineveh. [8]
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Hatti: in this context, all the areas to the west of the Euphrates controlled by Neo-Hittite kingdoms.
- ^ D.D. Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, vol II:242, quoted in Robin Lane Fox, Travelling Heroes in the Epic Age of Homer 2008, pp26f.
- ^ Lane Fox 2008:27; texts are in Luckenbill 1927:II.
- ^ Lane Fox 2008:27, noting D. Stronach, "The Garden as a political statement: some case-studies from the Near East in the first millennium BC", Bulletin of the Asia Institute 4 (1990:171-80). The garden mount first documented at Dur-Sharrukin was to have a long career in the history of gardening.
- ^ Mesopotamia: The Mighty Kings.
- ^ Mesopotamia: The Mighty Kings pp 112-113, 120-121.
- ^ Mesopotamia: The Mighty Kings pp 118-119
- ^ Mesopotamia: The Mighty Kings pp 114-115
[edit] Bibliography
- G. Loud and C.B. Altman: Khorsabad, University of Chicago Press 1936-38.
- Fuchs, A., Die Inschriften Sargons II. aus Khorsabad, Göttingen 1994.
- Caubet, A. ed. Khorsabad: le palais de Sargon II, roi d'Assyrie. 1995.
- Mesopotamia: The Mighty Kings (Time-Life Lost Civilizations series) 1995.
[edit] External links
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