Sebetti temple (Kalhu)

Akkadian inscriptions of the ninth-century-BC Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883–859 BC) record that that ruler built (or rebuilt) temples to the deities Adad, Damkina, Ea-šarru, Enlil, Gula, Nabû, Ninurta, Sîn, Šala, and Šarrat-niphi, as well as to the Sebetti and Kidmuri; for example, see RIAo Ashurnasirpal II 030 lines 53–78a. Of those, only four have been positively identified during nineteenth- and twentieth-century excavations: the Kidmuri temple, the Nabû temple, the Ninurta temple, and the Šarrat-niphi temple.

The location of the Sebetti temple at Kalhu is not known. Julian Reade (2002: 194–195) suggests the following: "The House of the Sibitti is mentioned in Ashurnasirpal's final text and therefore presumably lay outside the temples already discussed, though perhaps not far from the House of Kidmuri, since texts link Sibitti and Kidmuri shrines, probably both at Dūr-Šarrukēn (Parpola 1987: 94) and at Nineveh (Kataja and Whiting 1995: 83-4)." This proposal cannot be confirmed from in-situ inscriptions and, therefore, must remain conjectural.