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The graduate students of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology are delighted to invite you to attend the 2024 C. Densmore Curtis Lecture by Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, Professor of Archaeology and Art History of Ancient Western Asia and Eastern Mediterranean World from the University of Udine, at 4:30 pm on Friday, November 15. The lecture will be held in Old Library 110 and on Zoom. The title of the lecture is Settlement, Irrigation, and Landscape Commemoration in the Core of the Assyrian Empire: Sennacherib’s Irrigation System in the Nineveh Hinterland and the Salvage of the Assyrian Faida Canal and its Rock-Reliefs (Iraq).

There will be tea prior to the lecture at 4 p.m. in the Quita Woodward Room, and a reception will follow the lecture on the Wyndham Terrace.

Lecture Abstract:

The Governorates of Duhok and Ninawa in northern Iraq host the most unique and monumental irrigation system ever built by the Assyrians in the core of their empire. Between 703 and c. 688 BCE, King Sennacherib created in four stages the "Northern Assyrian Irrigation System", a ramified network of canals to water Nineveh’s extensive hinterland and bring water to his ‘Palace without a Rival’ and royal parks on the citadel of Nineveh. The creation of this new waterscape greatly transformed the rural landscape of the Assyrian core region, determining a shift from extensive dry farming to an intensive, predictable, and high-yield cultivation system based on irrigation.

The talk presents the results of the work conducted since 2012 by the Land of Nineveh Archaeological Project of the Udine University on the "Northern Assyrian Irrigation System", with a particular focus on the newly discovered Assyrian Faida canal and rock art complex. The investigation of this extraordinary and extremely endangered archaeological site was launched in 2019 and has led to the exploration of an irrigation canal that is at least 10 km long and cut into the limestone bedrock of the Chiya Daka hill range. Thirteen monumental, sculpted rock panels carved along the canal’s eastern bank were brought to light, representing an Assyrian ruler depicted at both ends of each panel, framing the cult statues of seven deities standing on pedestals shaped like striding animals.