South-west palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh
The South-West Palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh (also: South-West Palace ) was the palace of the Assyrian king Sîn-aḫḫe-eriba (Sennacherib) ( New Assyrian Akkadian : Sin-achche-eriba ) in Nineveh , Iraq . The construction period is between 705 and 694 BC. The palace was located at the southwestern end of the citadel of Nineveh, from which the south-west part of the name comes.
The palace was considered particularly magnificent and sublime, especially since it extended over a floor plan of 914 × 440 cubits (approx. 500 × 240 meters). The city wall was 25 meters high. The palace towered over the city wall by more than 20 meters. During excavations around 120 rooms were uncovered, another 100 rooms have not yet been uncovered. Lined up in a row, the stone reliefs of the palace are over three kilometers long.
Palace history
Palace building
The Assyrian Empire had been gradually expanded in the decades before the palace was built and extended over the territories between Persia and Egypt . Because of his campaigns lasting several years, Sennacherib had countless prisoners of war , most of whom came from Babylonia , southern Turkey and Palestine , after battles against Elam were fruitless on the other hand. With the forced help of the prisoners, he was able to implement his project of establishing his personal great power center in Nineveh. The prisoners worked in the quarries along the Tigris , dug canal systems to supply water to the Nineveh Gardens and built a completely new city wall. The new palace was to be the climax of Sennacherib's efforts. He was guided by the example of his father Sargon , who had set his monument with his manor Dur Šarrukin . However, since Sennacherib saw a bad omen in continuing to use the palace of his murdered father, he chose Nineveh as his new seat. He also wanted to significantly enlarge the dimensions of the palace.
Excavations in Nineveh provided information about the palace construction, because cuneiform writings on clay tablets confirm the archaeological theories. Records exist seamlessly over the entire construction period from 702–693 BC. Chr.
A predecessor, hollowed out and ruined by floods, gave way to the new south-west palace. The area was first drained. A foundation made of limestone blocks was set in order to get the spring floods that will continue to come under control . A platform made of sun-dried mud bricks was built over it, mixed with straw and thus guaranteed excellent heat and cold insulation . In addition, this material was granted an exceptionally long shelf life.
The records (cuneiform writings) indicated in 697 BC BC from the fact that the system was about 385 × 212 meters and 180 brick layers high (about 22 meters). Estimates result in the processing of 107 million bricks. Another enlargement between 697 and 693 BC Chr. Then led to a building area of 503 × 242 meters.
Architecture and attributes
In front of the palace were the city and citadel gates. There were a plurality of outside palace courtyards. These were lined with commercial buildings, administrative buildings, quarters for the royal palace guard and storerooms. In the center of the complex on today's hill of ruins there was an Ishtar temple . The throne room was in the courtyard. Here the king held his audiences . Sennacherib called his palace, " Palace beyond compare ". " I have built a palace for my Majesty from gold , silver , bronze, carnelian , breccia , alabaster, ivory, ebony , valuable woods from the Orient, the wood of boxwood , cedar, cypress, juniper, sandalwood and oak from Sindu ". The palace was an almost endless series of halls, banquet halls, sun courtyards, corridors and inner chambers.
The palace, over 45 meters high, had three main gates with portals supported by large columns. The respective column base was made of bronze and showed striding lions. The technique of their production had to deviate from the traditionally used lost wax process , because the size of the lion figures no longer allowed that. Instead, the liquid metals were poured into molds and cooled. Other pillars were made of the Lebanon cedar wood that was brought in . Inlays , gold and silver plating adorned the cedar pillars. Aeolian capitals perched on the pillars. Crenellations made of rows of bright blue glazed bricks towered above it . The facade featured animals with human heads and alabaster wings , insignia of security. Bulls and sphinxes were placed at the gates. The ceiling beams are said to have been lightened so much that they shone “like day”; All around fittings of silver and copper, presumably in the form of friezes.
Downfall and rediscovery
The south-west palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh was the center of Assyrian rule for over fifty years. 612 BC The palace was looted and fell victim to the flames. The platform and brick walls were preserved. In 1849 the Briton Henry Layard began to continue the excavation opposite Mosul and found the remains of the huge palaces of Nineveh at the first groundbreaking on Tell Kujundschik . The foundation walls are still buried under rubble. Most of the finds have gone to the British Museum , a few to the Metropolitan Museum of Art .
As early as the early 1990s, the Assyriologist and cuneiform writing expert Stephanie Dalley from the University of Oxford put forward arguments in favor of the interpretation that the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis were the palace garden of the Assyrian King Sennacherib , who lived around 100 years before the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II. had lived. This palace garden in Nineveh on the Tigris was said to have been built for Sennacherib's wife Tašmetu-Šarrat .
See also
literature
- Chris Scarre : The Seventy Wonders of the World: The Most Mysterious Structures of Mankind and How They Were Constructed. 3. Edition. Frederking & Thaler, 2006, ISBN 3-89405-524-3 .
- Friedrich Schipper: Between Euphrates and Tigris: Austrian research on the ancient Orient. LIT Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-8257-8 .
- AH Layard: A second series of the monuments of Nineveh. John Murray, 1853.
- AH Layard: The Monuments of Nineveh; from drawings made on the spot. John Murray, 1849.
- John Malcolm Russell: From Nineveh to New York: The Strange Story of the Assyrian Reliefs in the Metropolitan Museum & the Hidden Masterpiece at Canford School. Yale University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-300-06459-4 .
Remarks
- ↑ See D. Ussishkin, Biblical Lachish - A Tale of Construction, Destruction, Excavation and Restauration, Jerusalem 1994, p. 327.
- ↑ Cf. JM Russel, Ninive, in: From Babylon to Jerusalem - The world of the ancient oriental royal cities, Volume 1, ed. W. Seipel et al. A. Wieczorek, Milan 1999, p. 123.
- ↑ a b Scarre: The Seventy Wonders of the World. 2006, p. 159.
- ↑ Scarre: The Seventy Wonders of the World. 2006, p. 160.
- ^ Nineveh - Jonas' unloved travel destination