(Texts: All Artifacts, Color Coding, & Writings in Bold Type With Italics Inside Parenthesis, are Added by Editor R. Brown, not the Authors, Translators, or Publishers!)

(gods in blue …mixed-breed demigods in teal…)

‘CALAH I RESTORED.

A TEMPLE OF MY LADY I ESTABLISHED THERE.

THIS TEMPLE DEDICATED TO THE GODS AND SUBLIME,

WHICH WILL ENDURE FOREVER,

I WILL DECORATE SPLENDIDLY.’

PART OF THE ‘STANDARD INSCRIPTION’ FROM THE ROYAL PALACE IN CALAH, MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE

MS in Assyrian on basalt stone, Nimrod (Calah), Assyria, 883-859 BC, 1 plaque, 43×26 cm, single column, (43×23 cm), 10 lines in display cuneiform script. Complete standard inscription: ca. 50×225 cm (ca. 45×215), 21 long lines with friezes over and below (both ca. 70×225 cm).

Context: Most of the reliefs and inscriptions are in British Museum and Louvre. Further holdings in New York Historical Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University.

Commentary: From the East Wing of the Palace, room I. The site of the temple is mentioned in Genesis 10:11-12:

‘Out of that land went forth Assur,

and builded Nineveh, and the city of Rehoboth,

and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah,

the same is a great city’.

Genesis 10:1-12 mentions that the builder of Calah was Nimrod, son of Cush, son of Ham, son of Noah. The ‘standard inscription’ is a 22-line text that records Assurnasirpal’s victories, his greatness and describes the building of his palace at Calah. The inscription exists in many variants, all of which come from the slabs lining the walls of the palace.

The version presented here is recorded by Y. Le Gac: Les incriptions d’Ashur-nasir-pal II, roi d’Assyrie. Paris 1908, p. 187. What makes the present inscription of interest, is that it includes a detailed description of the very palace that it adorned, and that Calah is directly referred to in Genesis 10:11-12.