Wikipedia
Nimrud (; ) is the Arabic and Aramaic name for an ancient Assyrian city, located south of the city of Mosul, and south of the village of Selamiyah , in the Nineveh plains in northern Mesopotamia. It was a major Assyrian city between approximately 1250 BC and 610 BC. The city is located in a strategic position north of the point that the river Tigris meets its tributary the Great Zab. The city covered an area of . The ruins of the city were found within of the modern-day Assyrian village of Noomanea in Nineveh Province, Iraq. This is some southeast of Mosul.
Archaeological excavations at the site began in 1845, and were conducted at intervals between then and 1879, and then from 1949 onwards. Many important pieces were discovered, with most being moved to museums in Iraq and abroad. In 2013 the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council funded the "Nimrud Project", directed by Eleanor Robson, whose aims were to write the history of the city in ancient and modern times, to identify and record the dispersal history of artefacts from Nimrud, distributed amongst at least 76 museums worldwide (including 36 in the United States and 13 in the United Kingdom).
Archeologists believe that the city was given the name Nimrud in modern times after the Biblical Nimrod, a legendary hunting hero. The city was identified as the Biblical city of Calah (Hebrew Kelah (כלח), Greek Khalakh (χαλαχ)), also written Kalhu, first referred to alongside Nimrod in Genesis 10, by Henry Rawlinson in 1850 on the basis of a possible interpretation of the city's cuneiform proper name as "Levekh".
In 2015, the terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) announced its intention to destroy the site because of its "un-Islamic" nature. In March 2015, the Iraqi government reported that ISIL had used bulldozers to destroy excavated remains of the city. A video released in the same month showed a lamassu statue in the city being attacked by a terrorist with a sledgehammer. Another video posted online by the group in April 2015 showed the site being destroyed by bulldozers and explosives.
Nimrud is an ancient city in modern Iraq.
Nimrud may also refer to:
- Nimrud, Iran, a village in Iran