Mesopotamian Archaeology: An introduction to the archaeology of Mesopotamia and AssyriaHandcock, Percy S. P. (Percy Stuart Peache)
History
Mesopotamian Archaeology: An introduction to the archaeology of Mesopotamia and Assyria
Handcock, Percy S. P. (Percy Stuart Peache)
Iraq -- Antiquities
The southern court measures over ninety feet in length and about
thirty-seven feet in breadth, and is surrounded by rooms on its
southern, eastern and northern sides, while on the northern side it is
connected with the northern court. But it is on the western side of this
southern court that the main temple rooms are located. Thanks to the
excellent state of preservation in which the brickwork foundation of the
walls was found, the excavators were able to determine the ground-plan
of two parallel series of rooms, to each of which access from the court
was gained by an entrance-gate provided with a tower; both the northern
and southern series of rooms contained first of all a broad room which
communicated with a long room, at the extreme end of which was a recess
for the statue of the god. The recess at the end of the long room in the
northern series is so well preserved that the general plan of its
reconstruction is quite certain. The limestone paved pedestal in the
recess was ascended by a small double flight of low steps, the steps
being similarly paved with limestone and numbering four. All these rooms
including the southern and western corridors and the southern court were
paved with brickwork, some of the bricks bearing the building
inscription of Sin-shar-ish-kun, and the bricks in both the southern and
the northern broad rooms were inscribed “temple of Nebo,” thereby
proving that this whole part of the building belonged to the temple of
that god, and that his temple was thus double in character.
Sin-shar-ishkun had evidently not been above utilizing the building
materials of his predecessors, for one of the door-sockets bears the
name of Ashur-naṣir-pal, while among other inscribed objects discovered
were fragments of hollow terra-cotta cylinders and prisms as well as
clay cones bearing an inscription of Sin-shar-ishkun. The ground-plan of
the southern division of this temple of Nebo corresponds in all
essential particulars to that of the normal Assyrian temple, of which
the outstanding characteristics—apart from the ziggurat—were the
broad-room, the hall with a recess for the god’s statue, a group of
surrounding rooms and a corridor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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