page_title: Sennacherib
section_title: Construction of Nineveh
hierarchical_section_title: Sennacherib / Reign / Construction of Nineveh
caption_attribution_description: 日本語: 考古学者オースティン・ヘンリー・レヤードによるニネヴェの再現画
context_page_description: Sennacherib was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Sargon II in 705 BC to his own death in 681 BC. The second king of the Sargonid dynasty, Sennacherib is among the most famous of all Assyrian kings due to the role he played in the Old Testament of the Bible, which describes his campaign in the Levant. Other events of his reign which secured his legacy throughout the millennia following his death include his destruction of the city Babylon in 689 BC and his construction of the last great Assyrian capital, Nineveh.
  Although Sennacherib was one of the most powerful and wide-ranging of all the Assyrian kings, he faced considerable difficulty in controlling Babylonia, which formed the southern portion of his empire. Many of Sennacherib's Babylonian troubles stemmed from the Chaldean tribal chief Marduk-apla-iddina II, who had been Babylon's king until he was defeated by Sennacherib's father. Shortly after Sennacherib inherited the throne in 705 BC, Marduk-apla-iddina retook Babylon and allied with the Elamites.
context_section_description: After the final war with Babylon, Sennacherib seemingly spent the rest of his reign in peace, dedicating his time to improving his new capital at Nineveh rather than embarking on large military campaigns. Nineveh had been an important city in northern Mesopotamia for millennia. The oldest traces of human settlement at its location are from the 7th millennium BC, and from the 4th millennium BC and onwards it formed an important administrative center in the north. When Sennacherib made the city his new capital it experienced one of the most ambitious building projects in ancient history, being completely transformed from the somewhat neglected state the city had been in before his reign.
  The earliest inscriptions discussing the building project at Nineveh date to 702 BC and are about the construction of the Southwest Palace, a large residence constructed in the city's southwestern parts. Sennacherib called this palace the ekallu ša šānina la išu, the "Palace without Rival". During the construction process, a previous smaller palace was torn down, a stream of water which had been eroding parts of the palace mound was redirected and a terrace which the new palace was to stand on was erected and raised to the height of 160 layers of brick. Though many of these early inscriptions talk about the palace as if it was already completed, this was the standard way of writing about building projects in ancient Assyria. The Nineveh described in Sennacherib's earliest accounts of its construction was a city which at that point only existed in his imagination.
  By 700 BC the walls of the Southwest Palace's throne room were being constructed, followed shortly thereafter by the many reliefs that were to be displayed within it. After the reliefs were done, the final step in the construction of the palace was the erection of great colossal statues depicting bulls and lions, characteristic of Late Assyrian architecture. Though such statues in stone have been excavated at Nineveh, similar colossal statues mentioned in the inscriptions as being made of precious metals remain missing. The roof of the palace was constructed with cypress and cedar recovered from the mountains in the west and the palace was illuminated through multiple windows and decorated with silver and bronze pegs on the inside and glazed bricks on the outside. The full structure, going by the mound it was built on, measured 450 metres (1476 ft) long and 220 metres (722 ft) wide. An inscription on a stone lion in the quarter associated with Sennacherib's queen, Tashmetu-sharrat, contains hopes that the king and queen would both live long and healthy lives within the new palace. The text of the inscription reads:
  And for the queen Tashmetu-sharrat, my beloved wife, whose features Belet-ili has made more beautiful than all other women, I had a palace of love, joy and pleasure built. … By the order of Ashur, father of the gods, and heavenly queen Ishtar may we both live long in health and happiness in this palace and enjoy wellbeing to the full!
  Though probably conceived as a structure similar to the palace Sargon built at Dur-Sharrukin, Sennacherib's palace, and especially the artwork featured therein shows some differences. Though Sargon's reliefs usually show the king as close to other members of the Assyrian aristocracy, Sennacherib's art usually depicts the king towering above everyone else in his vicinity due to being mounted in a chariot. His reliefs show larger scenes, some almost from a birds-eye point of view. There are also examples of a more naturalistic approach in the art; where colossal statues of bulls from Sargon's palace depicts them with five legs so that four legs could be seen from either side and two from the front, Sennacherib's bulls all have four legs. Sennacherib constructed beautiful gardens at his new palace, importing various plants and herbs from throughout his empire and beyond. Cotton plants may have been imported from as far away as India. It has been suggested that the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient Worl
caption: 19th century reconstruction of Nineveh by British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard.
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