Imgur-Enlil ( Enlil has agreed , modern name Balawat ) was on the trade route from Nineveh to Arrapḫa and Arbela , 27 kilometers southeast of today's Mosul and 16 kilometers northeast of Kal vonu . The name of the city is handed down on its stone tablet in the Mamu temple.
Imgur-Enlil was built and named by Aššur-nasir-apli II , but was settled earlier. Tucker mentions finds from the Halaf , Obed and Uruk periods as well as Central Assyrian pottery shards. The Tell measures 250 × 150 meters or 230 × 160 m according to Andreas Schachner and rises around 15 meters above the plain; the lower town was surrounded by a square fortification with a side length of 800 meters and occupies an area of 64 hectares. Imgur-Enlil's heyday was probably under Aššur-nasir-apli II, who received the tribute of Kudurru from Suḫû , and under Salmānu-ašarēd III. , both rulers built a palace here. Towards the end of the reign of Salmānu-ašared III. Imgur-Enlil joined the rebellion of the Aššur-danin-apli . Economic texts from the Mamu temple prove that the city also existed in the 7th century. With the fall of the Assyrian Empire, Imgur-Enlil was likely to have been taken over by the Medes and Babylonians between 612 BC. BC and 609 BC Chr. Destroyed. In the Hellenistic period , the Tell was repopulated.
Part of the bronze fittings of the gates of the palace of Salmānu-ašarēd III. in Imgur-Enlil (Balawat Gate C). Erection of a rock relief at the Tigris springs ; today in the British Museum
Temple and bronze gates
After decorated bronze sheets (bands N, O and P. after Unger 1920) appeared in the art trade in 1878, Hormuzd Rassam began excavations in Balawat in the winter of the same year. Parts of two bronze reliefs were found. Aššur-nasir-apli II had one made for his palace (gate A). The second, better preserved, was made for the palace of Salmānu-ašarēd III. (858-824) (Gate C), 13 of the 16 volumes are now in the British Museum in London , the rest in the Louvre , the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul and the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore . Max Mallowan carried out further excavations from 1956 to 1957. He exposed a temple of the god Mamu with a third bronze gate (gate B). A stone altar with an inscription for the dream god Mamu was also found. Aššur-nasir-apli II reported in the building inscription of the temple: I did this because I wanted to build a temple for the god Mamu, which is to be in the immediate vicinity (ina libit ekallija) of my royal palace . The Assyrian king had a statue of Mamu and doors made of cedar wood (the supports for the bronze reliefs) for the temple and his palace . They consisted of 20-25 cm thick vertical bars. From 1989 David Oates from the British Museum in Balawat was digging .
Each of the gates had eight bronze ribbons, the gate of Salmānu-ašarēd III. However, it had two registers (a and b), which are separated by rosettes and, at 7.3 m, was significantly larger than gates A and B. Gates with bronze fittings are also known from Kalḫu , Aššur , Dur-Šarrukin and Tell Haddad . They were probably made between 847 and 845 in the royal workshops in bīt mummê in Kalḫu. The ribbons from the gate of Salmānu-ašarēd are provided with explanatory inscriptions and almost completely preserved. Eckhard Unger presented a first reconstruction of the arrangement of the bands in 1912 and 1920. Recently, in 2007 , Andreas Schachner has dealt extensively with the fittings. Schachner sees the gates as "art in public space", which clearly distinguishes them from the orthostats inside the palace, which were only visible to a small, predominantly Assyrian elite. The bands are made of bronze (7.9–10% tin) and are chased and engraved. They were curved around the pivot posts of the doors, but were pressed flat after recovery or in the museum. The order of the tapes has not been established, and various reconstructions have been proposed.
Léonard W. King: Bronze Reliefs from the Gates of Shalmanezer, King of Assyria BC 860-825 . Longman's & Company, London 1915.
Eckhard Unger: The restoration of the bronze gate of Balawat . In: Communications from the German Archaeological Institute. Athenian Department. 45, 1920, pp. 1-105.
Julian Reade: Narrative composition in Assyrian Sculpture . In: Baghdader Mitteilungen 10, 1979, pp. 52-110.
John E. Curtis, Nigel Tallis (Eds.): The Balawat Gates of Ashurnasirpal II . British Museum Press, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-7141-1166-7 .
Andreas Schachner: Pictures of a world empire. Art and cultural history studies on the decorations of a gate from Balawat (Imgur-Enlil) from the time of Shalmaneser III, King of Assyria . Brepols, Turnhout 2007, ISBN 978-2-503-52437-5 ( Subartu . 20).
Individual evidence
↑ JE Curtis et al. a. (Ed.): The Balawat Gates of Ashurnasirpal II . British Museum Press, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-7141-1166-7 , pp. 7-22.
↑ a b c Andreas Schachner: Pictures of a world empire . Pp. 9-10.
^ DJ Tucker: Representations of Imgur-Enlil on the Balawat Gates . In: Iraq 56, 1994, p. 109.
↑ JE Curtis et al. a. (Ed.): The Balawat Gates of Ashurnasirpal II . British Museum Press, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-7141-1166-7 , p. 8.
↑ Andreas Schachner: Pictures of a world empire . P. 23.
↑ Eckhard Unger: The restoration of the bronze gate of Balawat . In: Communications from the German Archaeological Institute. Athenian Department . 45, 1920, p. 102.
↑ Andreas Schachner: Pictures of a world empire . P. 14.
↑ Andreas Schachner: Pictures of a world empire . Tab. 1.
↑ Andreas Schachner: Pictures of a world empire . P. 21.
↑ Andreas Schachner: Pictures of a world empire . P. 7.
