page_title: Kurigalzu I
section_title: Building works
hierarchical_section_title: Kurigalzu I / Building works
caption_attribution_description: English: The cuneiform inscriptions on this door socket mention the name of the Kassite king Kurikalzu. Kassite period, 14th century BCE. The Sulaymaniyah Museum, Iraq.
context_page_description: Kurigalzu I, usually inscribed ku-ri-gal-zu but also sometimes with the ᵐ or ᵈ determinative, the 17th king of the Kassite or 3rd dynasty that ruled over Babylon, was responsible for one of the most extensive and widespread building programs for which evidence has survived in Babylonia. The autobiography of Kurigalzu is one of the inscriptions which record that he was the son of Kadašman-Ḫarbe. Galzu, whose possible native pronunciation was gal-du or gal-šu, was the name by which the Kassites called themselves and Kurigalzu may mean Shepherd of the Kassites.
  He was separated from his namesake, Kurigalzu II, by around forty-five years and as it was not the custom to assign regnal numbers and they both had lengthy reigns, this makes it exceptionally difficult to distinguish for whom an inscription is intended. The later king is, however, better known for his military campaign against the Assyrians than any building work he may have undertaken. It is now thought, however, that it was he who was the Kurigalzu who conquered Susa and was perhaps instrumental in the ascendancy of the Igehalkid dynasty over Elam, ca. 1400 BC.
context_section_description: Kurigalzu’s construction efforts are attested to at no less than eleven Babylonian cities. He was responsible for rebuilding the Ningal Temple at Ur, incorporating fragments of the Ur-Nammu Stela in buildings on the ziggurat terrace, the Edublal-Maḫ of Sîn buildings, or “house for hanging up the exalted tablets”, and the building of the gateway.
  He was the first king to build a royal residence bearing his name, a new capital city founded over an older settlement and built around 1390 BC, named Dur-Kurigalzu, or 'fortress of Kurigalzu', in the far north of Babylonia (modern ‘Aqar Qūf). It was positioned to protect an important trade route that led east across the Iranian plateau to Afghanistan, the source of lapis lazuli. The 170-foot-high ziggurat of Enlil can still be seen on the western outskirts of Baghdad, with its reinforcing layers of reed matting and bitumen and the remains of three temples at its foot. Rawlinson first identified the site in 1861 from the brick inscriptions. Excavated in 1942–45 by Seton Lloyd and Taha Baqir, the city covered 225 hectares and included the Egal-kišarra, or “Palace of the Whole World”, a vast palatial and administrative complex.
  In an adoption contract which sternly warns the adoptee, “If [Il]i-ippašra says, ‘you are not my father’, they shall shave his head, bind him and sell him for silver,” the date formula used, “in the month of Šabatu, the 19th day, the year Kurigalzu, the king, built the Ekurigibara,” predates that which was introduced during the reign of Kadašman-Enlil I and that had become de rigueur by the later reign of Kurigalzu II. The Ekurigibara of Enlil was a temple in Nippur.
caption: Door socket from Dur-Kurikalzu
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