The ancient city of Ashur is located on the Tigris River in northern Mesopotamia in a specific geo-ecological zone, at the borderline between rain-fed and irrigation agriculture. The city dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. From the 14th to the 9th centuries BC it was the first capital of the Assyrian Empire, a city-state and trading platform of international importance. It also served as the religious capital of the Assyrians, associated with the god Ashur. The city was destroyed by the Babylonians, but revived during the Parthian period in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.

Brief synthesis The ancient city of Ashur is located on the Tigris River in northern Mesopotamia in a specific geo-ecological zone, at the borderline between rain-fed and irrigation agriculture. The site is surrounded to the east by the Tigris, to the north by a plain with a wadi (valley) corresponding to a former branch of the Tigris and to the west and south by hilly landscapes. The city dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. From the 14th to the 9th centuries BC, it was the first capital of the Assyrian Empire, a city-state and trading platform of international importance. It also served as the religious capital of the Assyrians, associated with the god Ashur. The city was destroyed by the Babylonians, but revived during the Parthian period in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The area of the entire archaeological site of Ashur (70 ha) includes temples, three ziggurats, palaces, graves and private houses within the city walls, as well as the area of the Assyrian New Year’s festival building to the north-west. In addition, a 100-ha buffer zone has been defined 500 m from the western and southern boundaries of the archaeological site. It gained its reputation because it was the city of the god Ashur, the national deity of the Assyrians. Before the Assyrians, that is from the first half of the 3rd millennium BC, the existence of substantial cultic buildings is attested. This means that the site was already a developed and organized urban system, the only one of this size known in the entire area. It was also the place where the Assyrian kings were crowned and buried. As one of the few archaeological multi-period sites in Assyria of its kind, the remains of its buildings and their furnishings have been extensively excavated. The architectural and artistic record is accompanied by a large corpus of cuneiform texts which attest a leading role of Ashur in religion and scholarship, especially during the Middle- and Neo-Assyrian periods. Within the framework of the other three…