Ashurnasirpal II and the Northwest Palace at Nimrud

The Northwest Palace at Nimrud was the grand royal residence of Ashurnasirpal II, king of Assyria from 883 to 859 BC, who made the city of Kalhu, now Nimrud in northern Iraq, the new capital of his empire. Inaugurated around 879 BC, the palace was decorated with colossal winged guardians and hundreds of metres of carved stone reliefs. Its rediscovery in the 1840s introduced Assyrian art to the modern world, and its deliberate destruction in 2015 made headlines across the globe.

Background: Assyria’s revival

In the late 10th and early 9th centuries BC, Assyria, centred on the upper Tigris in northern Mesopotamia, was recovering from a long period of weakness. Ashurnasirpal II inherited a reviving kingdom from his father, Tukulti-Ninurta II, and spent much of his reign on almost annual military campaigns.

His armies marched into the mountains of the north and east and westwards across the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, where coastal cities paid him tribute. His inscriptions describe harsh treatment of rebels in graphic terms, and they formed part of a deliberate image of a king whom no one should resist.

A new capital at Kalhu

For centuries the religious and political centre of Assyria had been the city of Ashur. Ashurnasirpal chose instead to rebuild Kalhu, an older town on the east bank of the Tigris about 30 kilometres south of modern Mosul, which had been founded or enlarged by the 13th-century king Shalmaneser I.

The project was enormous. A new city wall about 7.5 kilometres long enclosed some 360 hectares. On a raised citadel in the south-west corner stood temples, a ziggurat and palaces. A canal from the Upper Zab River brought water to the city and to royal gardens planted with trees and plants gathered on the king’s campaigns. Thousands of deported people from conquered lands provided much of the labour and populated the new capital.

The Northwest Palace

The Northwest Palace, roughly 200 metres long and 120 metres wide, was the heart of the new city. It was organised around a large outer courtyard for official business, a throne room suite and an inner residential area.

The lower walls of the main rooms were lined with slabs of gypsum alabaster, often called “Mosul marble”, carved in low relief. They show the king hunting lions and bulls, leading his army, receiving tribute and performing rituals, accompanied by winged protective spirits holding buckets and cones. Across many slabs ran the same text, known as the Standard Inscription, listing the king’s titles and achievements.

In the throne room, the slab behind the king’s throne showed Ashurnasirpal twice, flanking a stylised sacred tree beneath a winged god in a disc, so that the living king, seated in front of it, became part of the image. The reliefs were not originally plain grey or white. Traces of black, red and other pigments show that details such as hair, eyes and sandals were once painted, and the upper walls carried painted plaster decoration.

At the main doorways stood pairs of lamassu, giant guardian figures with the bodies of bulls or lions, eagle wings and crowned human heads. Some are more than 3 metres tall. They were designed to impress visitors and to protect the palace from evil.

The great banquet

The palace’s completion was celebrated with a lavish feast described on the Banquet Stele, found in the palace in 1951. The king claims to have entertained 69,574 guests for ten days, including people of the land, foreign envoys and the inhabitants of Kalhu, and he lists vast quantities of food and drink. Historians treat the numbers with caution, but the text shows how royal building was used as propaganda.

Capital of an empire

Kalhu remained the main royal residence for about 170 years. Ashurnasirpal’s son Shalmaneser III built a huge arsenal on the edge of the city, now called Fort Shalmaneser, and set up the Black Obelisk recording tribute from foreign kings. Later rulers added palaces of their own until Sargon II moved the court to his new city, Dur-Sharrukin, in the late 8th century BC.

When the Assyrian Empire collapsed, Kalhu was sacked by the Medes and Babylonians in 614 and 612 BC, in the same wars that brought about the Fall of Nineveh.

Rediscovery and dispersal

In 1845 the British traveller Austen Henry Layard began digging at Nimrud. He soon uncovered the reliefs and lamassu of the Northwest Palace, and at first believed he had found Nineveh, as the title of his best-selling book Nineveh and Its Remains (1849) shows. Many slabs and several colossal lamassu were shipped to the British Museum, and other reliefs were sent or sold to museums and colleges in Europe and North America.

From 1949 to 1957 the British archaeologist Max Mallowan led new excavations, uncovering thousands of carved ivories. Between 1988 and 1990, Iraqi archaeologists found the intact tombs of several Assyrian queens beneath the palace, containing hundreds of pieces of gold jewellery, one of the great archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.

Key people

• Ashurnasirpal II (reigned 883–859 BC): The builder of the new capital. His palace art presents him as a warrior, hunter and priest-king under the protection of the gods.
• Shalmaneser III (reigned 859–824 BC): His son and successor, who continued building at Kalhu and campaigned widely in Syria and the Levant.
• Austen Henry Layard (1817–1894): The British excavator who first revealed the palace and made Assyrian art famous in Victorian Britain.
• Max Mallowan (1904–1978): Led the post-war British excavations. His wife, the crime novelist Agatha Christie, took part in the seasons at Nimrud, helping to clean and photograph the ivories.
• Muzahim Mahmud Hussein: The Iraqi archaeologist who led the excavation of the queens’ tombs between 1988 and 1990.

By the numbers

Destruction in 2015

In 2015 the group known as Islamic State, which then controlled the region, deliberately destroyed much of Nimrud. A video released in April 2015 showed militants using bulldozers, power tools and explosives on the Northwest Palace and its reliefs. The ziggurat was later levelled.

Iraqi forces retook Nimrud in November 2016. Since then, Iraqi archaeologists and international partners have documented the damage, gathered fragments and begun restoring parts of the palace.

Timeline

• 883 BC: Ashurnasirpal II becomes king of Assyria.
• c. 879 BC: The Northwest Palace at Kalhu is inaugurated with a great banquet.
• 859 BC: Death of Ashurnasirpal II; Shalmaneser III succeeds him.
• c. 706 BC: Sargon II moves the royal court to Dur-Sharrukin.
• 614–612 BC: Kalhu is sacked by the Medes and Babylonians.
• 1845–1851: Layard excavates the Northwest Palace.
• 1988–1990: The queens’ tombs are discovered beneath the palace.
• 2015: Islamic State destroys much of the site; Iraqi forces retake it in November 2016.

Why it matters

The Northwest Palace was a statement in stone of Assyria’s power, and its reliefs are among the finest surviving works of ancient Near Eastern art. Spread across museums worldwide, they have shaped how Europe and North America picture the ancient world. The site’s destruction in 2015 also made Nimrud a symbol of the threats facing cultural heritage in times of war.