A Re-appraisal of the Identification of the Ziggurat on Assurbanipal’s Relief in Nineveh

The Assyrian royal reports are among the major sources of geographical history of western Iran and partially deal with the Elam region and its historical happenings. Among the Assyria kings, Assurbanipal’s accounts of his military campaigns furnish the largest dataset on the events of the Neo-Elamite period. The 19th-century excavations at Assurbanipal’s palace in Nineveh recovered a stone relief depicting a five-story ziggurat. In the reports of his military campaigns, Assurbanipal speaks of the ziggurat of Susa and its demolition and transferring of its bronze horns to Assyria. Yet, despite the extensive excavations at the archaeological site of Susa, no evidence of a related structure or such an incident have so far been reported. The present paper explores the form of this ziggurat and evaluates its original location drawing on the historical evidence and archaeological data, and at the same time reviews the existing positions on its location. Our results suggest that the ziggurat on the relief at Assurbanipal’s palace in Nineveh presumably represents the ziggurat of Choga Zanbil.