Ezida: The Temple of Nabu

Extract

The complex of buildings described in this article lies on the east side of the citadel of Nimrud, close to the south-east corner. It is bounded on the east by the citadel wall, on the north by the street leading up from the gate of Shalmaneser III, and on the west by a second street dividing it from the Burnt Palace (Pl. I). A building on its southern side, in the angle of the fortifications, was investigated by Layard, who refers to it on his plan as “The Palace of the Grandson of Esarhaddon”; his excavations were hampered by the presence of a considerable post-Assyrian cemetery and he exposed only a small part of the uppermost of the sequence of buildings on this site. Our investigations have so far touched only the outer face of its north wall, which fronted on the south wing of the Nabu Temple, but this has sufficed to show that the site was continuously occupied throughout the life of the Nabu Temple, although the buildings upon it had no connection with the Temple area; hence it is of importance only as a limiting factor in the layout of the Temple itself. It is, however, clear that the south-east corner was always, with the exception of the Ziggurrat, the highest point in the citadel, and the considerable slope, represented by a drop of some five metres in ground level from the southern boundary of the site to the street of Shalmaneser III on the north, undoubtedly influenced successive architects in planning its development.