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Updated: June 26, 2025
The town is, in fact, situated on "a spur of rock" thrown off from the Jebel Dlakiub, which, terminates at the edge of the ravine whereby Nineveh was protected on the south. Calah, too, was built on a number of "rocky undulations," and its western wall skirts the edge of "conglomerate" cliffs, which have been scarped by the hand of man.
"And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. "Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, "And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city." These statements have been confirmed by the architectural and other remains found in Mesopotamia.
Lastly, besides the regular and fixed festivals, the kings, and more especially the Assyrian rulers, did not hesitate to institute special festivals in memory of some event that contributed to their glory. Agumkakrimi instituted a festival upon restoring the statues of Marduk and Sarpanitum to Babylon, and Sargon does the same upon restoring the palace at Calah.
Accordingly the canal was extended northwards, partly by cutting and partly by tunnelling to the Ghazr Su at about two miles above its mouth, and a permanent supply was thenceforth obtained from that stream. The work may have been intended in part to supply Calah with mountain water; but the remains of dams and sluices along its course sufficiently show that it was a canal for irrigation also.
Calah, now Nimrud, was founded about B.C. 1300 by Shalmaneser I., and his son and successor Tiglath-Ninip threw off all disguise and marched boldly into Babylonia in the fifth year of his reign. Babylon was taken, the treasures of its temple sent to Assur, and Assyrian governors set over the country, while a special seal was made for the use of the conqueror.
The necks of these bosses are pierced with holes apparently to receive the chain of a hanging lamp, and are surrounded at their base with inscriptions of Assurnazirpal stating that they formed part of the decoration of a temple at Calah. The size of our engraving is slightly above that of the object itself. 1 Kings vi. 15; vii. 3. ZEPHANIAH ii. 14.
Calah, higher up the river, replaced Asshur in the thirteenth century B.C., only to be replaced in turn by Nineveh, a little further still upstream; and ultimately Assyria, though it had taken its name from the southern city, came to be consolidated round a north Mesopotamian capital into a power able to impose vassalage on Babylon and to send imperial raiders to the Mediterranean, and to the Great Lakes of Armenia.
Calah was very advantageously situated in a region of great fertility and of much natural strength, being protected on one side by the Tigris, and on the other by the Shor-Derreh torrent, while the Greater Zab further defended it at the distance of a few miles on the south and south-east, and the Khazr or Ghazr-Su on the north east.
When the setting sun lighted up the view with the gorgeous hues seen only under an eastern sky, Calah must have seemed to the traveller who beheld it for the first time like a vision from fairy-land.
Dur-Sargina is built by Sargon, not at Nineveh, but "near to Nineveh." Scripture, it must be remembered, similarly distinguishes Calah as a place separate from Nineveh, and so far from it that there was room for "a great city" between them.
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