Assur

About

Aššur, also known as Ashur and Qal'at Sherqat, was the capital of the Middle Assyrian Empire for a time, of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–609 BC) and a semi-independent state during the Parthian Empire between the 2nd century BC and mid 3rd century AD. The remains of the city lie on the western bank of the Tigris River, north of the confluence with its tributary, the Little Zab, in what is now Iraq, more precisely in the al-Shirqat District of the Saladin Governorate. Assur lies 65 kilometres (40 mi) south of the site of Kalhu (the biblical Calah, Nimrud) and 100 km (60 mi) south of Nineveh. Occupation of the city itself continued for approximately 3,000 years, from the Early Dynastic Period to the mid-3rd century AD, when the city was sacked by the Sasanian Empire, after which it was sparsely populated until the massacres of Assyrian Christians conducted by Tamurlane in the 14th century AD after which the remaining population relocated to the countryside. The site is a World Heritage Site and was added to that organization's list of sites in danger in 2003 as a result of a proposed dam, which would flood some of the site. The city lies on a south facing mountain spur with a triangular layout. The northern, higher, area held public buildings including the palace and temples of Ashur, Anu, Adad, Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar.

Assur was briefly excavated by Austen Henry Layard and Hormuzd Rassam, in the 1800s while working at Nineveh. Rassam worked there in the 1850s and 1870s, though rarely present in person. Regular exploration of Assur began in 1898 by German archaeologists. Excavations began in 1900 by Friedrich Delitzsch, and were continued in 1903–1914 by a team from the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft led initially by Robert Koldewey and later by Walter Andrae. Working 12 months a year, mainly in the northern public area, they excavated the Anu, Adad, Sin, Shamash, Ishtar, Nabu, and Assur temples along with the Assur/Enlil ziggurat and the Old Palace. Additionally, the city's double city was also cleared. More than 16,000 clay tablets with cuneiform texts were discovered and are held at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Several thousand shell, stone, glass and ceramic beads were encountered at a deep level with two of the beads being much later determined to be Baltic amber. About 700 worked and unworked bone and ivory objects also found. These excavations were thinly published at the time due to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and later efforts have been made to correct that. Because of the large construction overburden from later periods a full stratigraphy was only possible at the site of the Ishtar temple in the Nabu district. Eight primary construction/occupation levels were determined for the Ishtar temple (A–H). The most recent layers (A–C), called "later temples", began with the oldest built by Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207). The oldest levels (D–H) began with the earliest in the Early Dynastic period. The excavator believed that there was an occupational hiatus in level F during which no temple existed. Iraqi archaeologists worked at Assur intermittently after 1979, primarily doing restoration work and room clearing but some excavation activity continued. Parthian graves were excavated and an octagonal prism of Tiglath-pileser, and 52 Neo-Assyrian period tablets were found. More recently, Assur was excavated by Barthel Hrouda for LMU Munich and the Bavarian Ministry of Culture in 1990. The team worked in the west-central part of the site about 120 meters south of the Nabu Temple. During the same period, in 1988 and 1989, the site was being worked by R. Dittmann on behalf of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In 2000–2001 the site was excavated by Peter A. Miglus. Excavation at the site resumed in 2023 by the Assur Excavation Project led by Professor Karen Radner and a team of Iraqi and European colleagues. Work continued in 2024. In 2023, after a drone survey, a caesium total field magnetometer survey of the mostly Parthian New Town area of Assur on the east side of the city. Data from a small, 2 hectare, magnetometry survey done in the central area of Assur was merged in. A trial electrical resistivity tomography test was conducted and also eight core samples were taken. In 2024 Iraqi and European archaeologists took four core samples in the deepest layers below the foundation of the Ishtar temple showing that it was built on a thick layer of pure sand, standard practice in Southern Mesopotamia but rare in later temples built at Assur. They retrieved one charcoal sample at the earliest point which was found to have a radiocarbon date of 2896–2702 BC (calibration method used IntCal20). The early excavators had dated the founding of the Ishtar temple to early in the 3rd millennium BC but later work had revised that to the Early Dynastic III period (2600–2350 BC). Work continued in 2025 and finds included 8 fragments with cuneiform text.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.