Located about 15 kilometres from Mosul and covering more than 300 hectares, the site of Khorsabad corresponds to the ancient city of Dur-Sharrukin. The city was founded to the glory of Sargon II (721–705 BC), who built it from nothing in barely ten years.
Short-lived capital of the Assyrian Empire
Dur-Sharrukin was the capital only from the time of its official inauguration in 706 BC until the king's sudden death the following year. Sargon's son and successor, Sennacherib (705–681 BC), moved the capital to Nineveh. The construction of the city remained unfinished, although the city was still occupied, as evidenced by the presence of a governor. After some research at Nineveh, the French consul in Mosul, Paul-Émile Botta, explored the site of Khorsabad beginning in 1843. These pioneering excavations marked the beginning of the scientific rediscovery of the Assyrian past, which until then had been known mainly through indirect sources.
Botta’s successor, Victor Place, continued the work between 1852 and 1854. Between 1929 and 1935, the Oriental Institute of Chicago excavated the citadel and its palace. From 1957 onwards, excavations carried out by the Iraqi General Directorate of Antiquities explored, among other things, the Sibitti Temple, located in the lower city not far from the citadel. Several of the works kept in the Mosul Cultural Museum originate from the temple.
Several remarkable buildings
The Khorsabad site has a rectangular enclosure across which stands a fortified terrace, called the citadel by the first excavators. The citadel contains the royal palace of Sargon II, a vast building with some two hundred rooms and courtyards, as well as temples and residences of dignitaries. The site's enclosure wall — which included the lower town — has several gates as well as an arsenal, also straddling the fortification wall.
In one of the city's temples, several altars were discovered. Eight of these are now in the courtyard of the Mosul Cultural Museum, which may paradoxically have protected them during the occupation by Daesh. However, a ninth altar, which had been on display in the museum's entrance hall, remains untraceable.
Each altar is made of a block of limestone, all of them nearly identical in shape and size. A circular tray resting on the body of the altar ends in three feet in the shape of lion's paws. A cuneiform inscription in Assyrian on the edge of the tray indicates that the temple can be attributed to the Sibitti — Mesopotamian protective deities. In the courtyard of the same sanctuary, a complete incense burner was also found, which must have been used for offerings to the Sibitti. This incense burner, which was exhibited in the Assyrian Hall of the Mosul Cultural Museum, was partially destroyed, and its upper part could not be found in the rubble.
