town or village

Calah

Today Nimrud

Lifetime: … – c. 612 BC

Kalhu (Nimrud), long a royal city of Assyria, was sacked by the Medes and Babylonians in the fall of the empire (614–612 BC); only a village later stood on the ruins.

Events

c. 879 BCAshurnasirpal II makes Calah (Kalhu) the capital of Assyria

History

Calah, the Assyrian Kalhu, is the mound of Nimrud on the east bank of the Tigris, about 30 km south of Mosul and some 10 km above the point where the Great Zab flows in. Ashurnasirpal II records that Shalmaneser I, king of Assyria in the thirteenth century BC, had built the city and that it had fallen into ruin. Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC) rebuilt it as his capital, with temples, a wall and the great North-West Palace; at its dedication, his Banquet Stele says, he fed 69,574 guests for ten days, among them envoys from Tyre and Sidon.

Genesis names Calah among the cities built in Assyria, alongside Nineveh, Rehoboth and Resen; it is the only place where the Bible mentions it. The city also touches the history of Israel and Judah. Here stood the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, found by Layard in 1846: one of its reliefs shows the tribute of Jehu of Israel, whom the caption calls son of Omri, in 841 BC; the man bowing before the Assyrian king is either Jehu himself or his envoy. Tiglath-pileser III, who carried off the people of Galilee and to whom Ahaz of Judah sent silver and gold, also built a palace here.

Calah remained the main royal city until Sargon II moved the court to his new capital Dur-Sharrukin about 706 BC. It was sacked when the Medes and Babylonians destroyed Assyria at the end of the seventh century BC. In 401 BC Xenophon's Greeks passed a great deserted city on the Tigris which he called Larissa, usually identified with Nimrud. Layard dug here from 1845, and British expeditions under Max Mallowan and David Oates from 1949 uncovered palaces, archives of letters and a great hoard of carved ivories.

Scripture: Gen 10:11–12; 2 Kgs 9:1–13; 2 Kgs 15:29; 2 Kgs 16:7–8

Sources

Ashurnasirpal II, Standard Inscription (RIMA 2, A.0.101.23; Shalmaneser I as the builder of Kalhu)
Ashurnasirpal II, Banquet Stele (RIMA 2, A.0.101.30) lines 140b-150
Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III (British Museum), epigraph on Jehu's tribute
Xenophon, Anabasis 3.4.7-9 (Larissa)
A. H. Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains (1849)
M. E. L. Mallowan, Nimrud and Its Remains (1966)
J. Oates and D. Oates, Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed (2001)

Checked against its sources; not yet read by a historian.

Verses (2)

Gen 10:11: Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah,
Gen 10:12: And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.

King James Version