South Kurdistan · Bashur · Ancient Mesopotamia
Khinis Reliefs (Bavian)
Where Sennacherib's great canal began: kings and gods carved into the cliffs above a mountain gorge.
- Period
- c. 690 BC
- Place
- Near Atrush, Duhok province
- Region
- South Kurdistan · Bashur
- Age
- Ancient Mesopotamia
At the mouth of the Gomel gorge, where water was diverted into the canal that fed Nineveh and crossed the Jerwan aqueduct, the Assyrians carved the rock face itself. The largest panel shows the king before the gods; smaller niches with the royal figure line the cliff, and a huge carved block lies broken in the stream.
It is architecture at the scale of the landscape: a mountain marked as the source of a city's life.
Chosen and introduced by Aram Mizuri, architect in Erbil