Enlil 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 temple of the god Enlil, according to some texts (for example, RIAo Ashurnasirpal II 028 v 7b–13a), was also dedicated to the god Ninurta, the tutelary deity of Kalhu. Scholarly generally think that this Enlil temple, if Ashurnasirpal actually built it, was located inside the Ninurta temple complex. Various proposals have been made about its location (for example, Room 1, Room 5 and Room 6), but none of the suggestions so far are deemed (from a modern point of view) to have been sufficient enough to have been a temple of one of Assyria’s most important gods. For further details, see Reade 2002.