In the Mesopotamian city of Nineive, the kings of the Assyrian empire resided for centuries. Now archaeologists have made an exciting find in the ruins of the northern royal palace of Nineive: they discovered fragments of a monumental relief that shows the king Assurbanipal together with high Assyrian deities – it is the first known representation of this high -ranking Assyrian gods in general.
The city of Nineive was one of the most important cities in Mesopotamia in early antiquity, and under King Sanherib it even became the capital of the Assyrian Empire from around 700 BC. Monumental palace systems, a huge, kilometer -long city wall and a sophisticated water management system testified to the importance of this royal city. Even in the Old Testament of the Bible, NINIVE is mentioned several times. However, a large part of the magnificent buildings were destroyed by Babylonier and Meder in 612 BC when the city was conquered. Today the ruins are ninives in the urban area of the Iraqi city of Mossul.
Archaeologists from the Heidelberg University around Aaron Schmitt have been carrying out excavations since 2018. One focus of the excavations is in the remains of the north palace. This was built around 648 BC by the Assyrian king Assurbanipal and was once northwest of the Ischtar Temple of Nineive. It is estimated that this royal palace once took an area of at least 125 by 250 meters. So far, however, part of the ruins have been researched and excavated.
A king and the highest deities
Now Aaron Schmitt and his team in the north Palace of Nineive have made an exciting discovery: in an earth -filled pit in the anteroom of the throne room, they discovered large parts of a monumental relief. The originally five and a half meter long and three meter high stone slab was once prominently visible in a wall niche opposite the main entrance to the throne room – and thus in a central place in the palace. When the archaeologists evaluated the relief parts obtained on the fragments and virtually, there was a spectacular picture: The monumental relief shows the Assyrian king Assurbanipal together with two of the highest deities of all of all of all.
The king forms the central figure and is flanked by God Assur and Ischtar, the city goddess of Nineive. This relief is a real rarity: “There are no representation of the great deities among the numerous relief representations of Assyrian palaces that we know,” reports Schmitt. Fish spirits who donate the gods and the ruler of the gods and life, as well as a support figure with raised arms, are also on the relief-it may be a scorpion man, as the archaeologists explain. “These figures suggest that a huge winged sun disk was originally attached above the relief,” explains Schmitt.
Overlooked in previous excavations
The site of the once twelve tons of stone relief and the position of the fragments indicate that the fragments were deliberately buried. The earth pit was probably created in the Hellenistic period in the third or second century BC. “The fact that the fragments were buried is certainly with one reason why the British archaeologists didn’t find them a little more than a hundred years ago,” assumes Schmitt. Because the first parts of the north Palace were excavated by British archaeologists in the 19th century.
In consultation with the state ancient ancient administration of Iraq, it is planned to place the relief back at the original location in the medium term and make it accessible to the public. At the same time, the archaeologists want to examine the motifs of the relief and the find context on the basis of the data collected on site in the coming months. The results are then to be published in a specialist publication.
Source: Heidelberg University