Calah

Calah (kā`lə) or Kalakh (kä`läkh), ancient city of Assyria, S of Nineveh and therefore S of present Mosul, Iraq. Known as Calah in the Bible, it is the same as the ancient Nimrud, named after a legendary Assyrian hunting hero. Calah emerged as a famous city when Ashurnasirpal II chose (c.880 B.C.) the site for his capital. Excavations carried on since the mid-19th cent. have revealed remarkable bas-reliefs, ivories, and sculptures. Also discovered were the palaces of Ashurnasirpal II, Shalmaneser III, and Tiglathpileser III. Calah continued to be a royal residence even after Nineveh became the political capital. The famous black obelisk of Shalmaneser III was discovered in Calah by A. H. Layard in 1846.

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Calah

 modern Nimrud

Ancient city, Assyria. Lying south of modern Mosul, Iraq, it was founded in the 13th century BC by Shalmaneser I. It remained unimportant until the 9th century BC, when Ashurnasirpal II made it the capital of Assyria. It was the site of a religious building founded in 798 BC by Queen Sammu-remat (Semiramis of Greek legend). Excavations there have yielded thousands of carved ivories from the 9th–8th centuries BC.

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Calah 

(also Kalhu), one of the largest cities of Assyria; founded by King Shalmaneser I in the first half of the 13th century B.C. Located on the left bank of the Tigris River (now the archaeological site of Nimrud, near the city of Nimrud in Iraq).

Calah was the capital of Assyria from the 13th to the 11th century B.C. and in the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. At the end of the seventh century B.C. it was destroyed by the Midianites and the Babylonians. The ruins of Calah were excavated by the British archaeologist A. H. Layard from 1845 to 1851 and by an expedition from the British School of Archaeology in Iraq from 1949 to 1963. A citadel was unearthed along with temples, a ziggurat, the obelisk of Shalmaneser III, and palaces (the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, which has reliefs and sculptures in the round, and the unfinished palace of Esarhaddon). Small ivory sculptures dating from about 715 B.C. have been found, as well as a large number of cuneiform documents. Some reliefs from the palace of King Ashurnasirpal are housed in the Hermitage.

REFERENCES

Golenishchev, V. S. Opisanie assiriiskikh pamiatnikov. St. Petersburg, 1897.
Mallowan, M. E. L. “The Excavations at Nimrud (Kalhu).’Vra^, 1958, vol. 20, part 2, pp. 101-08.
Mallowan, M. E. L. Nimrud and Its Remains, vols. 1-2. [London, 1966.]