Balawat (Imgur Enlil): The Site and Its Buildings

Abstract

The discovery at Balawat of the famous Bronze Gates of Assurnaṣirpal II and Shalmaneser III by Hormuzd Rassam in 1878 was a landmark in the history of Assyrian art, but provoked little curiosity about the history and character of the site itself. This was due in part to the pronouncement of Wallis Budge, who visited the site in 1889 and later declared, “From every point of view it seemed unlikely that Shalmaneser would have set up such a wonderful monument as the ‘Gates’ in an out-of-way place like Tell Balawat … there is no room on the mound for a temple, still less for a temple and palace, however small… Mr. H. Rassam may have obtained from Tell Balawat the plates and the coffer, etc., which he sent home, but if he did the natives must have taken them there”. Hilprecht, writing in 1903, accepted Rassam's statement without question, although he soundly condemned both the morality and the method of his excavations. But Budge's authority created a doubt that lingered long among scholars who were not field archaeologists. The 3rd. edition of the British Museum Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities (1922) refers to the gates as “said to have been found at Tell Balawat”. A visit to the mound in 1942 by Professor Seton Lloyd, then Adviser to the Directorate General of Antiquities in Iraq, convinced him of the truth of Rassam's account, but it was not until 1956 that Professor Mallowan sought direct confirmation by excavation.