The Queens' Tombs at Nimrud are a set of four tombs discovered by Muzahim Hussein at the site of what was once the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud. Once the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Nimrud (known also by its biblical name Calah and its ancient name Kalhu) was located on the East bank of the Tigris river, in what would be modern day Northern Iraq. Nimrud became the second capital of the Assyrian empire during the ninth century BCE, under Assurnasirpal II.Spurrier, Tracy L. “Finding Hama: On the Identification of a Forgotten Queen Buried in the Nimrud Tombs.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 76, no. 1 (2017): 153. .Hussein, Muzahim Mahmoud, Mark Altaweel, McGuire Gibson, and Donny George Youkana. Nimrud: The Queens' Tombs. Baghdad: Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, 2016. Assurnasirpal II expanded the city and built one of the most significant architectural achievements at Nimrud, the Northwest Palace––bētānu in Assyrian. The palace was the first of many built by Neo-Assyrian rulers, and it became a template for later palaces. During an excavation of the Northwest Palace in 1988, the Queen's Tombs were discovered under the Southern, domestic wing. All four tombs discovered within the palace were built during the ninth and eighth centuries and were primarily constructed of the mudbrick, baked brick, and limestone ––materials commonly used in Mesopotamian architecture.Gus W. Van Beek, “Arches and Vaults in the Ancient Near East,” Scientific American 257, no. 1 (1987): p. 96, . The architecture of the tombs as well as the Northwest Palace within which they are housed provide historical insight into the Assyrian Empire's building techniques. The most notable items found within the queens' tombs included hundreds of pieces of fine jewelry, pottery, clothing, and tablets. These objects crafted by Neo-Assyrian artists would later allow archaeologists to build on their understanding of Neo-Assyrian goldsmithing techniques.Bahrani, Zainab. “Book Reviews”Review of Nimrud: The Queens' Tombs, . Columbia University, n.d. Each tomb was built in advance of a queen's death and construction began as early as the 9th century under Assurnasirpal II and continued under Shalmaneser III.
Discovery and excavations
Northwest Palace
Excavations at Nimrud began in the 1840s, when explorer Austen Henry Layard first uncovered the city's remains. Throughout the 1940s and 50s, British archaeologist Max Mallowan led excavations of the ancient city, sponsored by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq.Mallowan, M. E. L. “The Excavations at Nimrud (Kalḫu), 1956.” Iraq 19, no. 1 (1957): 1. . Through his excavations, Mallowan greatly contributed to mapping the topography of the ancient city. Mallowan's excavations included the southern section of the Northwest Palace where, in 1951, he discovered the so-called “Harem Quarters” underneath room DD. He found an Iron Age, eighth century B.C.E, coffin containing a woman. Mallowan, however, did not search underneath the baked brick pavement flooring of the Southern Section of the Palace.
Discovery of The Queens' tombs
In the late 1980s the Iraqi Department of Antiquities started excavating the Northwest palace of King Assurnasirpal II at Nimrud and discovered four tombs of Neo-Assyrian royal women. In the same general area Mallowan discovered the burial, Muzahim Mahmoud Hussein and his team noticed parts of the brick floor in the Southern Section were sticking up at odd angles. The flooring was removed, which led to the discovery of Tomb I, the first of a total of four sealed tombs uncovered by Hussein located within and underneath the Northwest Palace. The tombs not only housed the bodies of various royal women of the Neo-Assyrian Empire––identified by inscriptions, stamps, and adornment, but contained priceless artifacts such as jewelry, decorations, and ceramics that provided new insight into Assyrian culture and craftsmanship.
Obstacles
Since the discovery, there have been continuous obstacles in the discernment, recording and preservation of data and information from the Queens’ Tombs. Some of the difficulties were due to the age of the find. The burials were disturbed and looted in antiquity, so the original dress and arrangement of bodies and objects is lost. For example, in Tomb II, a second queen was laid on top of the first about 20–50 years later, and this displaced the original position of the first queen and her belongings. As well, in Tomb III, the main coffin was found empty except a bone fragment and one bead, but three other coffins with partial skeletons were found in the antechamber. The unusual arrangement of the coffins and the lack of a body or objects in the main burial suggests that the tomb was looted and possibly rearranged in antiquity.
Archaeologists meticulously excavated Tombs I and IV. But due to security issues, they were forced to hastily dig Tombs II and III. For example, information regarding dimensions, findspots, photographs, and detailed descriptions were sometimes left out of the record. Additionally, these objects now reside in an unknown repository in Iraq, so this information cannot be recovered. In addition to the rushed excavation, archeologists also faced budget cuts, lack of supplies, and insufficient funding due to the outbreak of Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and its subsequent sanctions. These adversities continued with the Gulf Wars.
The difficulties with preserving objects found in the tombs did not end with excavation. Important objects found in the Queen's Tombs were kept in a vault of Baghdad's central bank. Unfortunately, the bank was bombed twice while the objects were in its care. It was bombed first at the start of 1991 and again during the American invasion in 2003. Miraculously, the vault survived both bombings, but the flooding caused by the second bombing irreparably damaged many of the objects. In addition, the more mundane objects from the excavations, which were kept at the Iraq Museum and the Mosul Museum, were looted during the war and the whereabouts of many of these items remain unknown.
From April 10–12, 2003, the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH), which is located in the same complex as and administers the Iraq National Museum, was looted. This incident was a grievous destruction of institutional and cultural memory, in addition, to the unimaginable loss of many archeological finds. Looters destroyed equipment and objects before burning records, during an attempt to set the building on fire. In the aftermath of the looting, programs such as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funded the reconstruction of destroyed information and manuscripts. One of the projects they funded led to the republication of the original manuscript on the Queen's Tombs written by Hussein. The original report had been printed in a discolored and inadequate format due to the lack of access to printing resources caused by the sanctions in 2000. The reprint allowed for the addition of new information, past corrections along with further detail, and drawings.
Modern looting and trafficking continue to pose a serious threat to the preservation and safekeeping of the site and its objects. In 2010, Christie's New York, a prominent private auction house, withdrew a pair of earrings that were for sale when it was discovered that they were a trafficked part of the archeological finds from Nimrud's royal tombs.
Reception
The discovery of the tombs originally received substantial coverage, including a full-color spread in Time Magazine, but the attention drifted with the Gulf Wars on the horizon. Additionally, the original reports were largely in Arabic and local to Iraq, which limited Western access to them due to an international embargo. Thus, the queens’ tombs have received limited academic attention.
The Nimrud Tombs are “one of the most important archaeological finds of the second half of the twentieth century,” but the chaos of war and the language barrier has resulted in the tombs often being overlooked and underappreciated in the West.
The tombs
Overview
The Tombs were built under the residential wing of the Northwest palace by Assurnasirpal II and his son Shalmaneser III prior to the queens’ deaths. As of January 2018, the tombs were the only discovered Neo-Assyrian royal burial complete with burial dress and objects of interment, so the find was crucial for understanding Neo-Assyrian royal burial procedures. Similar vaulted tombs and burial sites for both royals and the public were similarly found beneath residences in Ashur, Til Barsip, and other locations in Nimrud. These other sites also displayed the practice of providing the dead with objects and adornment that reflected wealth and status.
The tombs themselves were made primarily of various types of brick, including mud-brick and baked brick. The tombs were vaulted, and the vaults themselves were made out of baked brick. Stone and marble slabs sealed off the tombs.
The discovery of the Queen's Tombs and their excavation gives unique and valuable insight into the burial rituals of the royal Neo-Assyrians as well as Neo-Assyrian domestic life, social structure, physical health, and daily life.
The four tombs were filled with personal items, many of which were made from precious materials and came from foreign regions further to the west. Such foreign objects may have been obtained or brought by the queens as “a part of their bridal wealth.” These far-flung artifacts show the extent of the empire's power and the importance of strategic royal marriages.
The details as to which specific queens were buried where, as well as their names, are somewhat unclear. The limited information on this subject has resulted in many contradictory claims. However, there is some evidence to suggest the names of certain women and the bodies they likely belonged to. Additionally, the site and its inscriptions add dynastic women, previously left out of the historical record.
The women buried in the tombs have been identified to likely be:
Mullissu-Mu- kannishat-Ninua, wife of Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883–859 BCE), whose tomb is located in Room 57 Yabaʾ, the wife of Tiglath Pileser III (r. 744–727 BCE) Banitu, wife of Shalmaneser V (r. 726–722 BCE) Atalya, wife of Sar- gon II, (r. 721–705 BCE) Hama, the young wife of Shalmaneser IV (r. 782–773 BCE), whose magnificent gold stamp seal was found in Tomb III
The tombs found at Nimrud are commonly referred to as the “Queens’ Tombs”, but it is likely that these royal Assyrian women were not regarded as queens in the way of its modern definition. The Akkadian word for king is šarru, hence the word for queen would be šarratu. Yet, šarratu was only reserved for goddesses, as the Assyrian queens were not equal co-rulers with their spouses. Royal Assyrian women, typically the wives of kings, were instead referred to as sēgallu, or “woman of the palace.” The Neo-Assyrians queens were not chief consorts, instead they had a domestic role in the court as “rulers of the domestic realm.” This distinction is why they were buried under the floors of the bētānu in their palace and not next to the kings in Assur––they ruled the domestic parts of the palace both while alive and in death. While this role differed from the role of the kings, it was nonetheless incredibly important in the court.
Tomb I