Region | Diyarbakır Province, Turkey |
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Coordinates | 38°31′47″N40°32′51″E / 38.52972°N 40.54750°E |
The so-called Tigris tunnel is a cave approximately 50 miles north of Diyarbakır in Turkey. It has a length of about 750 m (2,461 ft). The Berkilin Cay flows through this cave. It forms a source of the Tigris, but not the main one, although the exit was long believed to be this. In fact the spring is near Bingöl not far away from the Tigris tunnel. In its vicinity there are several archaeological monuments, three Assyrian Empire and Neo-Assyrian rock reliefs and five inscriptions. [1]
Best preserved are the rock reliefs of Tiglath-Pileser I and Shalmaneser III that are carved into the wall of the Tigris tunnel. Their production in 852 BC is shown in the relief of the bronze door bands of the Balawat Gates, now in the British Museum. [2] Above the Tunnel there is a natural rock arch that is connected to the tunnel by a stairway created by the Urartians. Above the exit of the Tunnel there are further caves. The biggest of them bears a badly preserved relief and inscription of Shalmaneser III. [3]
Nineveh, also known in early modern times as Kouyunjik, was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located in the modern-day city of Mosul in northern Iraq. It is located on the eastern bank of the Tigris River and was the capital and largest city of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as well as the largest city in the world for several decades. Today, it is a common name for the half of Mosul that lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris, and the country's Nineveh Governorate takes its name from it.
Shalmaneser III was king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Ashurnasirpal II in 859 BC to his own death in 824 BC.
Shalmaneser V was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Tiglath-Pileser III in 727 BC to his deposition and death in 722 BC. Though Shalmaneser V's brief reign is poorly known from contemporary sources, he remains known for the conquest of Samaria and the fall of the Kingdom of Israel, though the conclusion of that campaign is sometimes attributed to his successor, Sargon II, instead.
Nimrud is an ancient Assyrian city located in Iraq, 30 kilometres (20 mi) south of the city of Mosul, and 5 kilometres (3 mi) south of the village of Selamiyah, in the Nineveh Plains in Upper Mesopotamia. It was a major Assyrian city between approximately 1350 BC and 610 BC. The city is located in a strategic position 10 kilometres (6 mi) north of the point that the river Tigris meets its tributary the Great Zab. The city covered an area of 360 hectares. The ruins of the city were found within one kilometre (1,100 yd) of the modern-day Assyrian village of Noomanea in Nineveh Governorate, Iraq.
The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III is a black limestone Neo-Assyrian sculpture with many scenes in bas-relief and inscriptions. It comes from Nimrud, in northern Iraq, and commemorates the deeds of King Shalmaneser III. It is on display at the British Museum in London, and several other museums have cast replicas.
Carchemish, also spelled Karkemish, was an important ancient capital in the northern part of the region of Syria. At times during its history the city was independent, but it was also part of the Mitanni, Hittite and Neo-Assyrian Empires. Today it is on the frontier between Turkey and Syria.
Ashur-nasir-pal II was king of Assyria from 883 to 859 BC. Ashurnasirpal II succeeded his father, Tukulti-Ninurta II. His son and successor was Shalmaneser III and his queen was Mullissu-mukannišat-Ninua.
Sam'al, is an archaeological site located in the Anti-Taurus Mountains of modern Turkey's Gaziantep Province. During its time under the control of the Neo-Assyrian Empire it was called, by them, Sam'al. It was founded at least as far back as the Early Bronze Age and thrived between 3000 and 2000 BC, and on the highest part of the upper mound was found a walled citadel of the Middle Bronze Age. New excavations revealed a monumental complex in the Middle Bronze Age II, and another structure that was destroyed in the mid to late 17th century BC, maybe by Hititte king Hattusili I. This event was recently radiocarbon-dated to sometime between 1632 and 1610 BC, during the late Middle Bronze Age II. The site was thought to have been abandoned during the Hittite and Mitanni periods, but excavations in 2021 season showed evidence of occupation during the Late Bronze Age in Hittite times. It flourished again in the Iron Age, initially under Luwian-speaking Neo-Hittites, and by 920 B.C. had become a kingdom. In the 9th and 8th century BC it came under control of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and by the 7th century BC had become a directly ruled Assyrian province.
Balawat is an archaeological site of the ancient Assyrian city of Imgur-Enlil, and modern village in Nineveh Province (Iraq). It lies 25 kilometres (16 mi) southeast from the city of Mosul and 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) to the south of the modern Assyrian town of Bakhdida.
Narrative art is art that tells a story, either as a moment in an ongoing story or as a sequence of events unfolding over time. Some of the earliest evidence of human art suggests that people told stories with pictures. Although there are some common features to all narrative art, different cultures have developed idiosyncratic ways to discern narrative action from pictures.
The Department of the Middle East, numbering some 330,000 works, forms a significant part of the collections of the British Museum, and the world's largest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities outside Iraq. The collections represent the civilisations of the ancient Near East and its adjacent areas.
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew to dominate the ancient Near East throughout much of the 8th and 7th centuries BC, becoming the largest empire in history up to that point. Because of its geopolitical dominance and ideology based in world domination, the Neo-Assyrian Empire is by many researchers regarded to have been the first world empire in history. It influenced other empires of the ancient world culturally, governmentally, and militarily, including the Babylonians, the Achaemenids, and the Seleucids. At its height, the empire was the strongest military power in the world and ruled over all of Mesopotamia, the Levant and Egypt, as well as parts of Anatolia, Arabia and modern-day Iran and Armenia.
The art of Mesopotamia has survived in the record from early hunter-gatherer societies on to the Bronze Age cultures of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. These empires were later replaced in the Iron Age by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires. Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia brought significant cultural developments, including the oldest examples of writing.
Kummuh was an Iron Age Neo-Hittite kingdom located on the west bank of the Upper Euphrates within the eastern loop of the river between Melid and Carchemish. Assyrian sources refer to both the land and its capital city by the same name. The city is identified with the classical-period Samosata, which has now been flooded under the waters of a newly built dam. Urartian sources refer to it as Kummaha. The name is also attested in at least one local royal inscription dating to the 8th century BCE. Other places that are mentioned in historical sources as lying within Kummuh are lands of Kištan and Halpi, and cities of Wita, Halpa, Parala, Sukiti and Sarita(?). Kummuh bordered the kingdoms of Melid to the north, Gurgum to the west and Carchemish to the south, while to the east it faced Assyria and later Urartu.
Tegarama was a city in Anatolia during the Bronze Age. It is often identified with Gürün and biblical Togarmah.
The Balawat Gates are three sets of decorated bronze bands that had adorned the main doors of several buildings at Balawat, dating to the reigns of Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III. Their extensive use of narrative art depicting the exploits of Assyrian kings has cemented their position as some of the most important surviving works of art of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, comparable to the extensive Assyrian palace reliefs. When the Neo-Assyrian Empire fell in 614-612 BC, Balawat was destroyed. The wooden elements of the gates decomposed, leaving only the bronze bands. The remains of two sets of gates can be found in the British Museum's collection, those from the Temple of Mamu are housed in the Mosul Museum. Small sections of the Shalmaneser bronze door bands are also in the Louvre Museum at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore and in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums.
The White Obelisk is a large stone monolith found at the ancient Assyrian settlement of Nineveh, northern Iraq. Excavated by the British archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam in 1853, it is one of only two intact obelisks to survive from the Assyrian empire, the other being the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III. Both are now preserved in the British Museum. The White Obelisk dates to the beginning of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and has been variously ascribed to the reigns of Ashurnasirpal I, Tiglath-Pileser II or Ashurnasirpal II.
A rock relief or rock-cut relief is a relief sculpture carved on solid or "living rock" such as a cliff, rather than a detached piece of stone. They are a category of rock art, and sometimes found as part of, or in conjunction with, rock-cut architecture. However, they tend to be omitted in most works on rock art, which concentrate on engravings and paintings by prehistoric peoples. A few such works exploit the natural contours of the rock and use them to define an image, but they do not amount to man-made reliefs. Rock reliefs have been made in many cultures throughout human history, and were especially important in the art of the ancient Near East. Rock reliefs are generally fairly large, as they need to be in order to have an impact in the open air. Most of those discussed here have figures that are over life-size, and in many the figures are multiples of life-size.
Assyrian sculpture is the sculpture of the ancient Assyrian states, especially the Neo-Assyrian Empire of 911 to 612 BC, which was centered around the city of Assur in Mesopotamia which at its height, ruled over all of Mesopotamia, the Levant and Egypt, as well as portions of Anatolia, Arabia and modern-day Iran and Armenia. It forms a phase of the art of Mesopotamia, differing in particular because of its much greater use of stone and gypsum alabaster for large sculpture.