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Nimrud

(Redirected from Calah)
This article is about an (ancient) city in Iraq.
If this is not what you were looking for, you might want to try Nimrod or even NiMUD.

Nimrud is a city in Iraq, some 30 km southeast of Mosul on the river Tigris.

Nimrud has been identified as the site of the biblical city of Calah. It was founded by Assyrian king Shalmaneser I in the 13th century BC and gained fame when king Ashurnasirpal II made it the capital of Assyria and had a large palace and temples built on the site of the earlier city that had long fallen into ruins. He held a grand opening ceremony with festivities and an opulent banquet in 879 BC, described in an inscription on a stele discovered during archeological excavations. The palace, restored as a site museum, is one of only two preserved Assyrian palaces in the world, the other being Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh.

Calah was the capital until around 710 BC when first Khorsabad and then Nineveh became the capital. It remained a major centre, though, until the city was completely destroyed in 612 BC when Assyria succumbed under the invasion of the Medes and the Babylonians.

Archeology

A stele from Nimrud
A stele from Nimrud

The ancient sites at Nimrud were first investigated by Austen Henry Layard, who at first mis-identified the site as being Nineveh, from 1845 to 1851. Subsequent major excavations were headed by Max Mallowan (1949 - 1957) and David Oates (1958 - 1962).

needs a description of the ancient site: palace, temples, the fort, ...

The "Treasure of Nimrud" unearthed in these excavations is a spectacular collection of 613 pieces of gold jewellery and precious stones. It has survived the confusions and looting after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 in a bank vault, where it had been put away for 12 years and was "rediscovered" on June 5, 2003.

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Last updated: 08-16-2005 14:22:03