Archaeology
The city was excavated in 1878 by archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam. The site was again excavated by Max Mallowan for the British School of Archaeology in Iraq in 1956. A surface survey was conducted by D. J. Tucker in 1989 for the British Museum. The town walls enclosed an area of around 64 hectares. Aside from temples and palace buildings, the most important artifacts discovered there were the so-called Balawat gates. The gates measured about 20 feet in height and belonged to the temple of Mamu, the god of dreams. These were made up of 13 bronze bands attached through nails to two wooden gates of the palace. The bronze bands depict a sacrifice and war scenes from the campaigns of the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (859-824 BC), and were the first depictions of landscape elements (such as trees and mountains) in Assyrian art. The Balawat gates are now on display at the British Museum in London. Two small sections of the Shalmaneser bronze door bands are at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
Read more about this topic: Balawat