Dar-shukkin in northern Iraq is a 2,700-year-old settlement from the ancient Assyrian capital of Khorsabad. At this site, archaeologists have conducted an exhaustive magnetic survey using a sophisticated magnetometer, and with the assistance of this technology they found the remains of a massive villa (with 127 rooms, double the size of the White House), royal gardens, the city’s water gate, and five large buildings that would have been used for various purposes.
Buried deep underground, the archaeologists underwent extremely tough conditions to conduct this survey. The magnetometer is a device that detects buried structures by mapping subtle changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, reports a press release by AGU, and that makes it an incredibly useful tool for archaeologists seeking to find hidden structures that have been lost for centuries.
- Sennacherib's Prisms Reveal the Glorious Reign of an Assyrian King
- Is the Assyrian Nimrud lens the oldest telescope in the world?
Excavating the Earth: Finding Khorsabad
Jörg Fassbinder, a geophysicist from Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and the lead author of the study, presented the results of this research at the 2024 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting. Fassbinder noted, “Every day we discovered something new… all of this was found with no excavation. Excavation is very expensive, so the archaeologists wanted to know in detail what they could expect to achieve by digging. The survey saved time and money. It's a necessary tool before starting any excavation."
- The Powerful Assyrians, Rulers of Empires
- The Lost City of Dur-Sharrukin – The Capital That Never Was
1853 excavation of the gate of Sargon's palace. (Public Domain)
The team that carried out this survey painstakingly hand-carried the 33-pound magnetometer across the site, avoiding the use of vehicles or drones that could attract unwanted attention.
The structures that were uncovered were constructed during the reign of King Sargon, the ruler of Assyria from 721 BC to 705 BC. His untimely death in 705 BC left the new city’s future uncertain, even before the occupants had moved in.
His successor, Sennacherib, abandoned the project, shifting the empire’s focus to Nineveh. For over two millennia, Khorsabad lay forgotten until French and American expeditions in the 19th and 20th centuries began to uncover its splendor, including iconic Lamassu statues—the winged bulls with human heads now housed in the Louvre.
In 2015, looters associated with the Islamic State ransacked the site, and archaeological work could only resume in 2017. Despite these challenges, Fassbinder’s team managed to survey 2.79 million square feet (259,199.48 square meters) —a fraction of the 1.7-square-kilometer site (0.656374 square miles)—in just seven days!
The new finds challenge the notion that Khorsabad was never developed much beyond its initial building spree in the 8th century BC. Until recently, scholars believed Khorsabad had been little more than a palace complex surrounded by a barren expanse. Fassbinder’s discoveries, however, reveal a bustling urban landscape extending beyond the palace walls, suggesting a vibrant capital teeming with activity.
A human-headed winged bull known as a lamassu from Dur-Sharrukin. Neo-Assyrian Period, ca. 721–705 BC (Trjames /CC BY-SA 3.0)
Remote Mapping: A Spooky Reveal
The research team coducted a small excavation, with a small test trench, that confirmed a very substantial building with 13-foot (3.962 meter) thick walls made out of mud brick appearing up to four feet high (1.219 meters). The data was visualized and converted to grayscale images – and ghostly and ethereal outlines emerged out of structures 6-10 feet (2-3 meters) below the ground. Fassbinder describes this as “an X-ray of features beneath the ground.”
"The remote mapping work that Fassbinder and his team have done is extremely important. The magnetometer creates a more comprehensive reconstruction than traditional test trenches, and it does not cause any damage to the site," Sarah Melville, a historian who specializes in the Neo-Assyrian Empire who was not involved in the Khorsabad survey, told Live Science via email.
The rediscovery of Dur-Sharrukin raises new questions about life in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, such as, who were the inhabitants of these newly identified structures? How did they interact with the monumental spaces dominated by the king? And what do these findings reveal about the socio-political dynamics of the time?
Archaeologists will now excavate the structures detected by Fassbinder’s team, assess above-ground damage, and make the first geophysical survey of buried remains at the site of Khorsabad, where Dur-Sharrukin is located, states The Jerusalem Post. They expect to uncover some fascinating finds, which will reveal truths about the Assyrian culture that have remained buried and hidden for more than 2,700 years.
Top image: What Sargon's Royal Palace at Khorsabad may have looked like. Source: Erica Guilane-Nachez/Adobe Stock
By Sahir Pandey
References
Bassi, M. 2024. Ancient Assyrian capital that's been abandoned for 2,700 years revealed in new magnetic survey. Available at: https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/ancient-assyrian-capital-thats-been-abandoned-for-2-700-years-revealed-in-new-magnetic-survey.
Georgiou, A. 2024. Secrets of Abandoned 2,700-Year-Old City Revealed by New Discovery. Available at: https://www.newsweek.com/secrets-abandoned-2700-year-old-city-revealed-new-discovery-1997599.
