Mesopotamian Archaeology / An introduction to the archaeology of Mesopotamia and Assyria

by Percy S. P. Handcock

The temple of Anu-Adad was founded by Ashur-resh-ishi (circ. 1140 B.C.). It consisted of a rectangular terrace to which access was gained by a doorway flanked by towers: beneath the terrace there were a number of rooms. The two temple-towers were separated from each other by a long passage, on each side of which were four small rooms surrounding a large chamber in the middle, which may well have been the sanctuary. One of these large chambers was dedicated to Anu, and the other to Adad. The two temple-towers were according to Andrae four-staged ziggurats, and no doubt upon the topmost storey there was a shrine, as in the temple of Belus at Babylon. Many of the bricks composing the towers were inscribed as was nearly always the case. Tiglath-Pileser I (1100 B.C.) the son and successor of Ashur-resh-ishi had occasion to repair or rebuild this temple, and he records that he raised its towers to heaven and made firm its battlements with baked brick.[64] His account reads as follows:—

“In the beginning of my government Anu and Adad, the great gods, my lords, who love my priestly dignity, demanded of me the restoration of this their sacred dwelling. I made bricks, and I cleared the ground, until I reached the artificial flat terrace upon which the old temple had been built. I laid its foundation upon the solid rock and incased the whole place with brick like a fireplace, overlaid on it a layer of fifty bricks in depth, and built upon this the foundations of the Temple of Anu and Adad of large square stones. I built it from foundation to roof larger and grander than before, and erected also two great temple towers, fitting ornaments of their great divinities. The splendid temple, a brilliant and magnificent dwelling, the habitation of their joys, the house for their delight, shining as bright as the stars on heaven’s firmament and richly decorated with ornaments through the skill of my artists, I planned, devised and thought out, built and completed. I made its interior brilliant like the dome of the heavens; decorated its walls, like the splendour of the rising stars, and made it grand with resplendent brilliancy. I reared its temple towers to heaven and completed its roof with burned brick; located therein the upper terrace containing the chambers of their great divinities; and led into its interior Anu and Adad, the great gods, and made them dwell in this their lofty home, thus gladdening the heart of their great divinities. I also cleared the site of the treasure-house of Adad, my lord, which the same Shamshi-Adad, priest of Ashur, son of Ishme-Dagan, likewise priest of Ashur, had built and which had fallen into decay and ruins, and rebuilt it from foundation to roof with burned brick, making it more beautiful and much firmer than before. I slaughtered clean animals therein as a sacrifice to Adad, my lord.”

This same king, with the prescience characteristic of Assyrian monarchs, prays that, in the event of the building falling into disrepair, a future king may restore them, and he further begs that such king may anoint his own inscribed tablets and his foundation-cylinders with oil. His prayer was justified by after events, for in Shalmaneser II’s (860-825 B.C.) time, the temple had already suffered from the effects of time and climate, and that king consequently rebuilt it throughout. Shalmaneser’s reconstruction was not so aspiring in its dimensions as that of Ashur-resh-ishi, the original founder of the temple. He erected two temple-towers (cf. Fig. [7]) parallel to those of his predecessor, differing however from those of Ashur-resh-ishi, according to Andrae, in being panelled instead of plain, as was the case with the ziggurat (the so-called “Observatory”) at Khorsabad and the ziggurat of Belus at Babylon. But Shalmaneser was not the last king to whom was accorded the privilege of repairing this ancient fane: Sargon 722-705( B.C.) the successor of Shalmaneser IV, and the immediate predecessor of Sennacherib, also found occasion to devote himself to this work of piety, and in the courtyard of Shalmaneser II, the pavement-tiles nearly all bear the name of Sargon, a permanent testimony to his sense of religious obligation in this matter. The unique feature about this temple is its double ownership.

Fig. 7. (After Andrae, Der Anu-Adad Tempel, Tafel IX.)

Another temple recently excavated at Ashur by Koldewey and Andrae, is the temple erected by Sin-shar-ishkun in honour of the god Nebo. Sin-shar-ishkun was the last king of Assyria and reigned about 615 B.C. This temple, which comprised a considerable number of rooms of various shapes and sizes, was separated into two main divisions, both of which consisted in a group of apartments leading into a main court, the two courts being connected with each other. Access to the temple from outside was gained through a door and vestibule leading into the northern court, though possibly the southern court with which the latter is connected at one time had a similar entrance.

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.

The most famous temple at Ashur was that of the god Ashur himself, but unfortunately it is badly preserved, and is consequently of less archæological importance than the Anu-Adad temple or the temple of Nebo. One point of interest about the ancient temple of Ashur, is that the rooms appear to have been broad rather than long. In the oldest part of the building, an alabaster block[65] bearing an inscription of twenty-four lines written in archaic characters was discovered. The characters somewhat resemble those found in Irishum’s inscriptions and are similar to the characters used in early Babylonian inscriptions, while like them, they read longitudinally and not laterally, but the lines run from left to right instead of from right to left, and in this they resemble a few inscriptions found at Tellô.[66] This alabaster block is possibly the oldest Assyrian inscription as yet brought to light. In the fore-court of this same temple, some fragments of a diorite sculpture with small figures similar to those of the Khammurabi period were found.