Professional Documents
Culture Documents
(Height:38.5cm)
• Around 694 B.C.E., mixed annalistic,
summary and building accounts were inscribed
on the palace’s gateway colossi, with five
military campaigns and a palace length of 700
cubits in 694 updated to six military
campaigns and a palace length of 914 cubits in
the following year.
Bull Colossi
Bull Colossi
• Large numbers produced for
city gates, palace, and
armory
• Sennacherib’s largest were
about 20 ft square and forty
or fifty tons
• Commemorated in palace
inscriptions, and in
extensive reliefs showing
the quarrying and transport
of the stone for their
construction
Quarrying and iron
tools
Moving
colossi
Stone and Quarries
• Unlike Lower Mesopotamia, there is an abundance of stone in
Upper Mesopotamia, thus, the landscape supported extensive
stone construction
• Tastiate “across the Tigris” for white limestone, used in
colossi construction; floating colossi across the Tigris only
possible during spring floods: Sennacherib accounts in detail
as his predecessors source for this stone
• Limestone quarry known near Bavian, at the head of Aqueduct
Sennacherib completed in 691.
• Bavian quarry may be the new quarry on the east bank of the
Tigris that Sennacherib opened, “near Nineveh, in the district
of Balatai”, replacing Tastiate as source of white limestone for
colossi construction: assumed to be about 35 Kilometers
upriver of modern Mosul
Bavian (Balatai) Quarry
• May be the quarry on the
east bank of the Tigris
that Sennacherib opened,
“near Nineveh, in the
district of Balatai”,
replacing Tastiate as
source of white
limestone for colossi
construction: assumed to
be about 35 Kilometers
upriver of modern Mosul
Distant Quarries
• Stone from Mt. Nipur, (Judi Dagh) near modern Cizre, Turkey
—Sennacherib’s fifth campaign (697 B.C.E.) with a surface
like grains of “mottled barley”
• Stone from Kapridargila, “on the border of Til-Barsip”, to the
west, possibly “close-grained magnesian limestone” in room
LIII
• Gishnugallu stone from Mt. Ammanana, possibly Anti-
Lebanon range NW of Damascus. Presumably precious high-
quality alabaster traditionally used for inlaying weapons, but
found in sufficient quantities by Sennacherib to construct
colossi with.
Judi Dagh quarry relief
Water
• “citadel unit always located laterally along the
city wall overlooking the river” (Barbanes)
• Possible high level aqueduct to Eastern
Terrace
Many Gardens and Orchards
• Agricultural
• Horticultural
• King’s Pleasure gardens
• Botanical
• Zoological
• Medical
• Sacred
• Watered by aqueducts
“Above the city and below the city I laid out
parks. The wealth of the mountain and all
lands, all the herbs of the land of Hatti, myrrh
plants, among which fruitfulness was greater
than their natural habitat, all kinds of
mountain-vines, all fruits of all lands, herbs
and fruit bearing trees I set out for my
subjects” -Sennacherib
“Hanging Gardens of Babylon”