This Ancient Abandoned City’s Secrets Are Finally Being Uncovered
Long ago, an ancient city known as Dur-Sharrukin briefly served as the capital for one of the most powerful empires in the old world. The settlement is located in the modern village of Khorsabad in northern Iraq.
It was constructed during the rule of King Sargon II. He reigned over the Assyrian empire from 721 B.C. until he died in 705 B.C. Sargon had the city built to be the empire’s new capital, but he was killed in battle. Shortly after his death, his son and successor moved the capital to the settlement of Nineveh.
In the following decades, Dur-Sharrukin was gradually abandoned. Now, a research team has conducted an investigation into the site, revealing evidence of buildings and infrastructure within the city’s walls. The walls surround an area of more than one square mile.
Dur-Sharrukin was never fully completed, but the new findings suggest that more construction had taken place than originally thought. In recent years, research at Dur-Sharrukin has been stalled due to conflict.
Members of the Islamic State (IS) destroyed some sections of the ancient city in 2015. Then, fighting broke out in the area between Kurdish and IS soldiers.
In 2022, a team led by Jörg Fassbinder of Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich, Germany, was able to use a high-resolution magnetometer to map about seven percent of the city.
The device can detect magnetic properties in different types of soil, rock, and other materials. This approach allowed the archaeologists to spot hidden features beneath the ground without performing any invasive procedures.
They carried the 33-pound magnetometer system by hand and walked in long, straight lines to cover a total area of 2.79 million square feet, which took them a week to do.
After gathering the magnetic data, they generated grayscale images of the site and saw the outlines of previously unknown structures.
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The structures included five large monumental buildings. One of them appeared to be a villa with 127 rooms that is twice the size of the White House. There were other interesting features as well, like palace gardens.
“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,” said Fassbinder.
In one area of the site, the research team dug a small test trench and confirmed the presence of a building with walls made of mud brick. The walls were 13 feet thick and up to four feet high.
Further investigation is required to identify the features at the site with more accuracy, but the work so far has already offered plenty of new information on this ancient city’s development.
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