Balawat (Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܠܒܬܐ, beṯ lbete) is a historical location in Ninawa Governorate, Iraq, 25 km (16 mi) southeast from the city of Mosul and 4 km (2.5 mi) to the south of the modern Assyrian town of Bakhdida. It was the site of the ancient Neo-Assyrian city of Imgur-Enlil. The meaning of Imgur-Enlil is "Enlil agreed".
Note that there was also a wall in ancient Babylon named Imgur-Enlil. [1]
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The city of Imgur-Enlil was founded by the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (884-859 BC). It lay 10 km (6.2 mi) up the Derrah river from the Tigris, where the city of Kalhu (see Nimrud) was situated. Imgur-Enlil lay between the city of Nineveh and the province of Arrapha in the southeast along the royal Assyrian road. Ashurnasirpal II had already transferred the capital from Assur to Kalhu, and the foundation of Imgur-Enlil may have been a further step to knit up the Neo-Assyrian empire. Construction at the site continued under Ashurnasirpal II's son Shalmaneser III. The city existed for about two centuries but was, like all Assyrian cities, sacked and destroyed by the Medes and Babylonians at the fall of the Assyrian empire 614-609 BC.
The city was excavated in 1878 by archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam. [2] [3] The site was again excavated by Max Mallowan for the British School of Archaeology in Iraq in 1956. [4] A surface survey was conducted by D. J. Tucker in 1989 for the British Museum. The town walls enclosed an area of around 64 hectares. Aside from temples and palace buildings, the most important artifacts discovered there were the so-called Balawat gates. The gates measured about 20 feet in height and belonged to the temple of Mamu, the god of dreams. These were made up of 13 bronze bands attached through nails to two wooden gates of the palace. The bronze bands depict a sacrifice and war scenes from the campaigns of the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (859-824 BC), and were the first depictions of landscape elements (such as trees and mountains) in Assyrian art. [5] The Balawat gates are now on display at the British Museum in London. Two small sections of the Shalmaneser bronze door bands are at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore.
In November 2004, the village had roads constructed by the United States Army, which connected the village to the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrod and the village of Bakhdida (Al Hamdaniyah.) The project was dubbed "Ninewa Village Roads Project" and was funded by the U.S. government. The contract to build the roads was given to the Ashour General Construction Contracting Company and cost $1,120,000[6].
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