South Kurdistan · Bashur · Ancient Mesopotamia
Jerwan Aqueduct
One of the oldest aqueducts in the world — a stone bridge for water, built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib to carry mountain streams to Nineveh.
- Period
- c. 690 BC
- Place
- Near Shekhan, Duhok province
- Region
- South Kurdistan · Bashur
- Age
- Ancient Mesopotamia
Sennacherib's engineers cut a canal through the hills from the Zagros foothills toward his capital. Where it crossed a valley at Jerwan they raised an aqueduct about 280 metres long, made of an estimated two million cut limestone blocks, with pointed arches for the stream below.
Inscriptions on the stones name the king and the work. Nearly four centuries before the Romans began building theirs, this is engineering as architecture: water carried on a bridge across the landscape.
Chosen and introduced by Aram Mizuri, architect in Erbil