Near East Kingdoms

Dur-Sharrukin (City) (Northern Mesopotamia)

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The city states of Sumer formed one of the first great civilisations in human history (see feature link). This Near Eastern civilisation emerged a little way ahead of that of Africa's ancient Egypt, and up to a millennium before that of the Indus Valley culture.

It developed out of the end of the Pottery Neolithic across the Fertile Crescent, a period which had seen Neolithic Farmer practices spread far and wide across the Near East and beyond. Southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and the western edge of Iran) was subjected to permanent settlement, initially in the form of pastoralists but soon as farmers too.

Sumer faded and ended by about 2004 BC, and Mesopotamia's history during the second millennium BC was chequered, with some key low points and one of several short dark age periods to end it. The early first millennium BC found a series of small cities and minor states across central northern Mesopotamia, all of which were threatened by Assyria's renewed empire-building activities.

Dur-Sharrukin (more accurately Dūr-Šarrukīn) literally was the 'fortress of Sargon'. Now Khorsabad in northern Iraq, this was an Assyrian capital which was built by Sargon II in the late eighth century BC. Founded around 717 BC and completed in 706 BC this massive, rectangular walled city was abandoned shortly after Sargon’s death in battle in 705 BC.

It is famous for its extensive, palace-centred architecture and winged bull (Lamassu) sculptures. Sargon's brand new capital was modelled on the general layout of Babylon, but his son and successor, Sennacherib, made Nineveh the principal administrative centre for Assyria, twenty-four kilometres to the south.

The construction of Dur-Sharrukin is recorded in Assyrian royal inscriptions and royal correspondence. According to an Akkadian text on numerous clay cylinders, Sargon states that he built his new capital on the site of a town called Maganuba 'which was situated like a tower at the foot of Mount Muṣri, a mountain [which rose] above the spring and [on] the outskirts of Nineveh'.

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(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, Gwendolyn Leick (Penguin Books, 2001), from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC, John Heywood (Barnes & Noble, 2000), from The Ancient Near East, c.3000-330 BC, Amélie Kuhrt (Routledge, 2000, Vol I & II), from Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, Michael Road (Facts on File, 2000), from Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Enrico Ascalone (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1, University of California Press, 2007), from The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, S Lloyd (Revised Ed, London, 1984), from History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC, Marc van der Mieroop (Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 2007), and from External Links: Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, and Dur-Sharrukin (Pleiades), and Khorsabad (French Ministry of Culture, in French), and Excavations At Khorsabad (Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa, University of Chicago).)

722 - 705 BC

King of Assyria. Killed trying to regain Tabal.

c.717 BC

Assyria under the rule of Sargon II places one of its own people on the throne of Carchemish. At about the same time Sargon founds what is intended to be a brand new capital at the fortress city of Dur-Sharrukin, not far from Nineveh.

While southern Mesopotamia flourished during the third millennium BC, it took longer for the same effect to be felt in northern Mesopotamia, with the first larger cities and city states only really emerging towards the end of the millennium (click or tap on map to view full sized)

Sargon states that he builds his new capital on the site of a town called Maganuba 'which was situated like a tower at the foot of Mount Muṣri, a mountain [which rose] above the spring'.

In that same inscription, the Assyrian king states that he 'reimbursed the owners [of expropriated fields] with silver and bronze, the price for the [expropriated] fields of that town being in accordance with the [original] purchase documents [for those fields].'

706 - 705 BC

The new Assyria capital at Dur-Sharrukin is completed in 706 BC. Sargon dies on the battlefield in 705 BC while attempting to reconquer Tabal. Not only does the attempt fail but Sargon's body cannot be recovered for burial, hinting at a potentially disastrous defeat.

Sargon's new capital of Dur-Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad in northern Iraq) was built on an artificial earthen terrace with a stone support wall about ten metres in height which was accessible by means of a wide ramp

His new capital is abandoned by his son. Because much of it has not been finished, or perhaps even inhabited, and because it is abandoned in a leisurely manner, there are few occupation remains, but the architecture remains impressive enough and survives for almost three thousand years before it is discovered by archaeologists.