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Balawat (Imgur Enlil): The Site and its Buildings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

David Oates
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Extract

The discovery at Balawat of the famous Bronze Gates of Aššurnaṣirpal II and Shalmaneser III by Hormuzd Rassam in 1878 was a landmark in the history of Assyrian art, but provoked little curiosity about the history and character of the site itself. This was due in part to the pronouncement of Wallis Budge, who visited the site in 1889 and later declared, “From every point of view it seemed unlikely that Shalmaneser would have set up such a wonderful monument as the ‘Gates’ in an out-of-way place like Tell Balawat … there is no room on the mound for a temple, still less for a temple and palace, however small… Mr. H. Rassam may have obtained from Tell Balawat the plates and the coffer, etc., which he sent home, but if he did the natives must have taken them there”. Hilprecht, writing in 1903, accepted Rassam's statement without question, although he soundly condemned both the morality and the method of his excavations. But Budge's authority created a doubt that lingered long among scholars who were not field archaeologists. The 3rd. edition of the British Museum Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities (1922) refers to the gates as “said to have been found at Tell Balawat”. A visit to the mound in 1942 by Professor Seton Lloyd, then Adviser to the Directorate General of Antiquities in Iraq, convinced him of the truth of Rassam's account, but it was not until 1956 that Professor Mallowan sought direct confirmation by excavation.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 36 , Issue 1-2 , October 1974 , pp. 173 - 178
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1974

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References

1 Budge, E. A. Wallis, By Nile and Tigris (1913), II, 80Google Scholar. Rassam's own account of his discoveries appeared in Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 7 (1880–1882), 45 ff.Google Scholar, with a sketch plan between pp. 52–53; and Asshur and the Land of Nimrod (1897), 200 ffGoogle Scholar.

2 Hilprecht, H. V., Explorations in Bible lands during the Nineteenth Century (1903), 207–9Google Scholar.

3 Lloyd, S., Foundations in the Dust (1947), 169 ffGoogle Scholar.

4 Oates, D., Studies in the Ancient History of Northern Iraq (1968), 65Google Scholar.

5 Iraq 25 (1963), 99Google Scholar. I am indebted to Miss Parker and to Mr. Nicholas Postgate for discussion of this text.

6 ARAB I, § 506.

7 Hulin, P., Iraq 25 (1963), 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 ARAB I, § 452.

9 Oates, D., Studies, 54Google Scholar.

10 Kudurru's rebellion and defeat are recorded in the account of a campaign mounted from Nimrud in the sixth year, whereas in the second year Ilu-ibni was still governor of Suhi. I am grateful to Dr. Richard Barnett for making available to me a copy of the text of his article “More Balawat Gates: A Preliminary Report”, in Symbolae Biblicae et Mesopotamicae F.M.T. de Liagre Böhl Dedicatae (1973), and of the drawing by Miss Marjorie Howard from which my illustration (Plate XXVII) is taken.

11 Twenty Five Years of Mesopotamian Discovery (1957), 79Google Scholar.

12 Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 7 (1880–1882), 48Google Scholar.

13 MissParker, B. H., Iraq 25 (1963), 86 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Oates, D., Studies, 123Google Scholar.

15 ARAB I, § 538–9.

16 This division, with a temple or temples opening off an outer courtyard or open space, corresponds with the contemporary layout at Nimrud where the Ninurta, Ištar and possibly other shrines were clearly ranged around a rectangular space outside the North-West Palace. The arrangement was later formalized at Khorsabad.