Episode
The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of Dur-Sharrukin
- Podcast
- Oldest Stories
- Published
- Dec 17, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 2778
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/oldeststories/episodes/The-Rise-and-Fall-and-Rise-Again-of-Dur-Sharrukin-e3cftk7
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/oldest-stories-518066/episodes/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-again-of-dur-sharrukin/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/oldest-stories-518066/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-again-of-dur-sharrukin.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Apologies for my voice and the lack of graphics. Been sick again and barely got this out today. Episode 179 examines the founding, construction, abandonment, and rediscovery of Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad), the short-lived royal capital built by Sargon II of Assyria in the late eighth century BCE. The narrative begins with the history of early Mesopotamian excavation through the career of Paul-Émile Botta, whose 1843–1844 work near Mosul and Khorsabad helped inaugurate Assyriology and introduced Europe to monumental Assyrian palace architecture, relief sculpture, and royal inscriptions. The episode follows Botta’s unusual path into Near Eastern exploration, placing his expeditionary background within wider nineteenth-century networks of travel, collecting, and emerging archaeological method, and contrasts the French discoveries at Khorsabad with the subsequent British excavations associated with Austen Henry Layard at Kalhu and Nineveh. From this modern historiographical prelude, the episode turns back to 717 BCE and reconstructs Dur-Sharrukin as an ideological and administrative project of empire. It discusses the city’s location, scale, labor regime, deportee settlement, and the programmatic symbolism of a purpose-built capital dedicated to the “true king.” Particular attention is given to the citadel complex—palace, temples, and ziggurat—alongside the logistical systems required to sustain rapid construction, long-distance procurement of materials, and the production of large-scale court art such as lamassu guardians and carved orthostats. The episode also engages changing archaeological interpretations of the site, including how later excavations and recent geophysical survey have revised older claims that the city was never fully completed or inhabited by demonstrati…