A magnificent palace erected in Nineveh by the Assyrian king Sennacherib (reigned 704-1681 B. C.). The structure had more than eighty rooms, many of which were lined with detailed stone relief sculptures showing the king’s military victories. one panel has been of particular interest to modern historians, especially biblical scholars, because it depicts the Assyrian siege of the Hebrew town of Lachish, an event mentioned in the Old Testament (2 Kings 18.12-14). The palace also featured huge roofing beams and vertical columns made of cedar imported from Syria, as described by Sennacherib himself in one of the inscriptions found at the site:
Beams of cedar, the product of mount Amanus [in northern Syria], which they [Sennacherib’s loggers] dragged with difficulty out of these distant mountains, I stretched across their roofs. Great door-leaves of cypress, whose odor is pleasant as they are opened and closed, I bound with a band of shining copper and set them up in their doors. A portico [porch] patterned after a Hittite palace. . . I constructed inside for my lordly pleasure.
Some of the smaller upright columns in the palace were fashioned of solid bronze.
Meanwhile, most of the structure’s many entrances were guarded by carved stone bulls weighing some 43 tons (39t) each. The palace was surrounded by parks in which several orchards were planted; to keep them well supplied with water from the nearby river, the king had a large canal built.
Sennacherib’s great palace was wrecked in 612 B. C. during the horrific destruction of Nineveh by the Medes and the Babylonians. The ruins steadily faded from view under a great mound of debris until British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard brought parts of them back into the light in the 1840s. In the twentieth century the palace underwent more excavations under the guidance of L. W. King of the British Museum and later by several Iraqi teams. In the 1980s American scholar John M. Russell visited the site and recorded its layout in great detail. He also documented the unfortunate decay and recent looting of precious sculptures from the palace and recommended that excavators rebury such sites when they are finished studying them in order to keep them safe.
See Also: Cedars of Lebanon; Layard, Austen Henry; Nineveh; palaces
World History
