REL 433 - Biblical Archaeology
Course Notes
Asshur
The ancient Assyrian city of Asshur in Iraq may soon be under water. A dam being built at Makhoul, 28 miles south of Ashur, will flood the lower portions of the site on the western bank of the Tigris River, and rising water tables may undermine the rest of the city.
The remains at the 160-acre site include massive, second-millennium B.C. fortifications, ziggurats, palaces, royal tombs and residential quarters. Ancient Asshur also had at least four major temples, including a temple of the sex and war goddess Ishtar (third millennium B.C.) and a temple dedicated to the local god, the eponymous Asshur, who in the Neo-Assyrian period (early first millennium B.C.) became the chief Assyrian deity.
During the early second millennium, or Old Assyrian period, Asshur was an independent city-state enjoying trade relations with various Syrian, Mesopotamian and Anatolian peoples. By the tenth century B.C., it had become the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which eventually controlled a vast territory from Persia to the Levant. The Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.) relocated the capital north of Asshur at Kalhu (modern Nimrud), and later Assyrian kings built capitals at Dur-Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad) and Nineveh. Asshur remained the religious center of the empire, however, until it was destroyed by an army of allied Medes and Babylonians in 614 B.C.
The first excavations at Asshur were conducted by the British lawyer-explorer-archaeologist Austen Henry Layard in the 1840s - though Layard put most of his efforts into digs at Kalhu and Nineveh. The site was systematically excavated in the early 20th century by Walter Andrae of the German Oriental Society, who determined the basic layout of the ancient city. Andrae's excavation reports, however, were not published until the 1960s.
In the late 1980s, two German expeditions returned to Asshur. However, the Gulf War and the ensuing embargo stopped all archaeological activity at the site. In the late 1990s Iraqi archaeologists resumed work at Asshur, and in 2000 a German expedition headed by Peter A. Miglus of the University of Halle began excavating the site.
According to a member of the German team, Arnulf Hausleiter of Berlin's Freie Universität, the current excavations are especially concerned with the domestic architecture of the ancient city.
Copyright © 1999 Shirley J. Rollinson, all Rights Reserved
