Qasr Shemamok (also Qasr Shamamuk and earlier Kasr of Shomamok) is an ancient Near East archaeological site about 30 kilometers south of modern Erbil (ancient Arbela, possibly ancient Urbilum) in Erbil Governorate, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq on the west bank of the Shiwazor river. It is about 25 kilometers from the ancient site of Nimrud. Remains at the site date mainly to the Hurrian, Middle Assyrian, Neo-Assyrian, Parthian, and Sassanian times. Under the Assyrians, it was named Kilizu (or Kakzu or even Kilizi) and was a provincial capital. It is not far from the ancient sites of Kurd Qaburstan (possibly ancient Qabra), Tell Halawa, Tell Aliawa, and Tell Baqrta (which reached 80 hectares in the Early Bronze Age).Konstantinos Kopanias, Claudia Beuger, John MacGinnis, and Jason Ur, "The Tell Baqrta Project in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq", In The Provincial Archaeology of the Assyrian Empire, edited by John MacGinnis, Dirk Wicke, and Tina Greenfield, Pp. 117-128. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2016
Archaeology The main tell is about 20 hectares in area and rises about 30 meters above the plain. It is cut by a gully on the northeast, which it thought to be the position of the ancient gate. A lower town, today almost completely under irrigated cultivation, extends to the south of the tell and covers about 50 hectares. The area inside the Neo-Assyrian period city wall is about 50 hectares. The area outside the main site also shows signs of occupation. The southernmost part of the site lies under a modern village. There are bomb craters on the top of the tell, in the Area A-West excavation area, from the 2003 invasion of Iraq.Calini, Ilaria, Jean-Jacques Herr, and Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault, "Craters at Qasr Shemamok (Kurdistan, Iraq)", Archéologie des Conflits / Archéologie en Conflit, pp. 225-248, 2017
The site, then known as Kasr of Shomamok, was visited by Austen H. Layard in 1850, noting it was surrounded by an embankment and was divided into two parts by a ravine or ancient watercourse. He reported that a local sheik had been excavating at the site and "had opened several deep trenches and tunnels in the mound, and had discovered chambers, some with walls of plain sundried bricks, others paneled round the lower part with slabs of reddish limestone, about 3 or 4 feet high. He had also found inscribed bricks, with an inscription declaring that Sennacherib had here built a city, or rather palace. Layard examined a high point about two miles from Shemamok, which appeared to have been topped by a "castle" of Sennacherib. Austen H. Layard, "Discoveries among the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; with travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the desert: being the result of a second expedition undertaken for the Trustees of the British museum", New York, Harper & brothers, 1853Grayson, A. K. and Novotny, J., "The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704–681 BC), Part 2", The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 3/2, Winona Lake, 2014
In 1933 an Italian team led by Giuseppe Furlani excavated in Qasr Shemamok, at the tell and the lower town.Furlani, "Un’inscrizione di Sennacheribbo d’Assiria trovata a Kakzu", in Rendiconti dell’Accademia dei Lincei, serie VI. X., pp. 475–478, 1935Furlani, Giuseppe, "Sarcofagi partici di Kakzu", Iraq 1, pp.90–94, 1934Furlani, Giuseppe, "Kakzu", Archiv fûr Orientforschung 9, pp. 74–75, 1934 They dated the city wall to the Neo-Assyrian period and confirmed the identification as ancient Kilizu/Kilizi/Kakzu based on Neo-Assyrian brick inscriptions. A large Middle Assyrian, Neo-Assyrian, and Parthian necropolis found west of the mound, 42 burials in all, was excavated. Martini, Annarita, "The Glazed Parthian Sarcophagi of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze: Rites and the Use of the “Bathtub Coffins", In Gremium. Studies in History, Culture and Politics 15, pp. 55–70, 2021Anastasio, Stefano, Giovanni Conti, and Laura Ulivieri (eds.), "La collezione orientale del Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze, Volume I: I materiali di Qasr Shamamuk", Rome: Aracne Editrice (Studi mesopotamici 3), 2012 Excavation finds, including, cylinder seals, bead, pottery vases, iron objects, terracotta figurines and two large sarcophagi were divided between the Archaeological Museum of Florence and the Baghdad Museum. The status of the latter objects is unclear.Furlani, Giuseppe, "Kakzu-Qaṣr Šemāmok", Rivista Degli Studi Orientali, vol. 15, no. 2/3, pp. 119–42, 1934Anastasio, Stefano, "The Italian Archaeological Expedition to Qasr Shamamuk-Kilizu, Iraq, 1933. Notes on the Excavation Finds at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad", Ash-sharq: Bulletin of the Ancient Near East–Archaeological, Historical and Societal Studies 1.2, pp. 275-286, 2017Anastasio, S., "La collezione fiorentina dei materiali di Qasr Shamamuk/Kilizu (Iraq)", in Egeo, Cipro, Siria e Mesopotamia. Dal collezionismo allo scavo archeologico. In onore di Paolo Emilio Pecorella, Edited by M. C. Guidotti, F. Lo Schiavo and R. Pierobon Benoit. Livorno: Sillabe, pp. 216–229, 2007
In 2011, a University of Lyon and Harvard University team led by Olivier Rouault and Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault started working at the site, beginning with a surface survey. They then excavated a 68-meter-long by 5-meter-wide trench (Area A-East) beginning at the top of the tell (where several deposits of live machine gun ammunition were found) and bearing south through the lower town. A monumental ramp was encountered, constructed from baked bricks, some of which bore an inscription of the Neo-Assyrian ruler Sennacherib (705–681 BC). A clay nail of the Middle Assyrian ruler Arik-den-ili (c. 1317–1306 BC) was found. A second excavation, Area B, was later opened on the northeastern part of the site. Small finds included fragments of cuneiform tablets.Rouault, Olivier and Masetti-Rouault, Maria Grazia, "French Excavations in Qasr Shemamok-Kilizu (Iraqi Kurdistan): The First Mission (2011)", in Tradition and Innovation in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 57th Rencontre Assyriologique International at Rome, 4–8 July 2011, edited by Alfonso Archi, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, pp. 481-490, 2015 In the northern part of the tell a palace of Middle Assyrian ruler Adad-nirari I (c. 1305–1274 BC) was found with in situ inscribed floor bearing his name.Olivier Rouault et al, "Qasr Shemamok-Kilizu (Kurdistan d’Irak), la campagne de 2013", in Lionel Marti, Olivier Rouault, Aline Tenu (ed) Études Mésopotamiennes – Mesopotamian Studies: N°2 – 2022, pp. 177-252, 2023, Olivier Rouault et al, "Qasr Shemamok-Kilizu (Kurdistan d’Irak), la campagne de 2014", in Lionel Marti, Olivier Rouault, Aline Tenu (ed) Études Mésopotamiennes – Mesopotamian Studies: N°2 – 2022, pp. 253-349, 2023, Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault et al, "Qasr Shemamok-Kilizu (Kurdistan d’Irak), la campagnes de 2016", in Lionel Marti, Olivier Rouault, Aline Tenu (ed) Études Mésopotamiennes – Mesopotamian Studies: N°2 – 2022, pp. 350-447, 2023, Beneath that layer, in Area A-East, were found Hurrian cuneiform tablets and a foundation document of a Hurrian ruler.Masetti-Rouault, Maria Grazia, "Late Bronze and Iron Age Levels from Qasr Shemamok.: A First Evaluation of the Impact of the Assyrian Presence in the Region East of Calah", Proceedings of the 11th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East: Vol. 2: Field Reports. Islamic Archaeology, edited by Adelheid Otto et al., 1st ed., Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 253–64, 2020Masetti-Rouault, Maria Grazia, "A Summary of the 5th Campaign of the French Archaeological Mission at Qasr Shemamok (Kurdistan, Iraq), 21 September–19 October 2016", Ash-sharq: Bulletin of the Ancient Near East–Archaeological, Historical and Societal Studies 1.1, pp. 112-124, 2017
From 2012 to 2020 the Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey used satellite photographs, drone photogrammetry, and surface collection to establish occupation patterns at number of sites in the region, including Qasr Shemamok. Ur, Jason, et al., "The Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey: Preliminary Results, 2012–2020", Iraq 83, pp. 205-243, 2021 Surface finds and satellite image analysis suggests that there was a 30 hectare industrial area in a northern extension to the site. The survey identified a large number of archaeological sites in the area around Qasr Shemamok."Ur, Jason, et al., "Ancient cities and landscapes in the Kurdistan region of Iraq: The Erbil Plain Archaeological Survey 2012 season", Iraq, vol. 75, pp. 89–117, 2013"Jason Ur, "The Archaeological Renaissance in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq", Near Eastern Archaeology, vol. 80, no. 3, pp. 176–87, 2017 Ur, Jason, and J. F. Osborne, "The rural landscape of the Assyrian heartland: Recent results from Arbail and Kilizu provinces", The provincial archaeology of the Assyrian Empire, pp. 163-174, 2016Schwartz, Glenn M., et al., "Kurd Qaburstan on the Erbil plain: Field research 2016–2017", pp. 189-230, 2022
In 2015, a local turned a cuneiform tablet (QS04b), later termed the "Terjan tablet", into the Erbil Museum. Based on similar fragments found in the Late Bronze levels of the citadel, its provenance was determined to be Qasr Shemamok, dating to before the Middle Assyrian period. The tablet turned out to be a foundation tablet of the ruler Irišti-enni (a hybrid Akkadian-Hurrian name), son of Shir-enni, and marked the rebuilding of the city wall of Tu’e in the "land of Kunsihhe". It was dedicated to the storm god DINGIR.ISHKUR "who loves Tu’e". Later excavations found the earlier wall, measuring 9 meters in width and fronted by a ditch.Rouault, Olivier, Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault, and John MacGinnis, "Les inscriptions royales d’Irišti-enni à Qasr Shemamok", Études Mésopotamiennes–Mesopotamian Studies: N° 2–2022, pp. 448-467, 2023Parpola, S., "Assyrian Royal Ritual and Cultic Texts", State Archives of Assyria 20, Winona Lake, 2017Grazia Masetti-Rouault, Maria, "Changing gods at Qasr Shemamok: Local cults and the Assyrian Empire at the beginning of the Iron Age", Ancient Western Asia Beyond the Paradigm of Collapse and Regeneration (1200-900 BCE): Proceedings of the NYU-PSL International Colloquium, Paris Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, April 16–17, 2019, edited by Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault, Ilaria Calini, Robert Hawley and Lorenzo d’Alfonso, New York, USA: New York University Press, pp. 251-276, 2014
A shabti (Egyptian funerary statue) fragment of the 'king-mother' Udjashu from the Thirtieth Dynasty of Egypt was found at Qasr Shemamok.Leroy, Pauline and Devauchelle, Didier, "Un ouchebti de la mère royale Oudjachou trouvé à Shemamok", Revue d'Égyptologie, no. 69, pp. 259-261, 2019 A sikkatu (inscribed wall peg) of Assur-dan II (c. 934–912 BC) was found at the site.Grayson, A.K., "Assyrian Royal Inscriptions (ARI) II", RANE II, Wiesbaden, 1976
History