ISAIAH
The Gospel To Israel

Ancient Khorsabad

Situated 20 kilometres northeast of Mosul in Iraq Khorsabad was a very short-lived capital of Assyria.
		Khorsabad takes its name from a modern Iraqi village that stands on the ruins of an ancient city called Dur-Sharrukin ("Fort Sargon").
		Dur-Sharrukin was constructed as a new capital city to replace Nimrud by the Assyrian king Sargon II shortly after he came to the throne in 721 B.C. The city had not been completed when Sargon died in 705 B.C.
		His son and successor, Sennacherib, moved the capital to the old established city of Nineveh, about 15 miles to the south, and Dur-Sharrukin appears to have been largely abandoned.
Many of the stone reliefs and cuneiform inscriptions excavated by Botta in the last century are are now in the Louvre.

Khorsabad was the first Mesopotamian site excavated (in the mid 1840s by a French expedition directed by Paul Emile Botta). The Oriental Institute conducted excavations here in 1929 - 1934. Major architectural finds include the palace of Sargon II and the smaller palaces of his major officials as well as the temple of Nabu.
	The alabaster reliefs in the palace of Sargon revealed just how fierce the warriors of ancient Assyria were who plundered Samaria. In 1932 the Oriental Institute in Chicago also discovered a king list from the palace of Sargon in Khorsabad that reveals a list of Assyrian rulers.

	In the year 1843 Paul Emile Botta began excavating the site and uncovered the palace of Sargon II (722-705 B.C.). The whole palace area along with the accompanying buildings was about 25 acres, about 1/30th of the entire city.
	Inside the palace Botta uncovered reception halls with their winged animals, sculptures, bas-reliefs, and many other artifacts with inscriptions everywhere. All of this gave a peculiar insight into the advanced level of art that existed in ancient Assyria.
	The wall-carvings revealed scenes from everyday life, the practices of religion, and the military campaigns (victories) of the Assyrian king who had conquered and deported the Northern Kingdom of Israel.