Proposed location of the Gula temple

The Gula temple at Kalhu has not yet been identified. The proposed location of the building is based on Reade 2002: 137 fig. 2, 191–193. This proposal cannot be confirmed from in-situ inscriptions and, therefore, must remain conjectural.

On the suggested location of the temple, Reade (2002: 193) states: "Both Layard's and Mallowan's plans, on which we are obliged to rely, indicate that the northeastern corner of the court on to which the Šarrat Nipḫi shrine faced was quite close to the shrine door. Other sides of this court are available for the House of Gula, or it could have been in yet another court to the east. Since Ashurnasirpal's temple lists constitute the only solid evidence for a House of Gula at Kalah (otherwise there is the uncertain reference to É ^dgu-la ša ṣe-e-[ri]: Parpola 1999:8 2), and since she is absent from the tākultu list, unless in the broken section at its end, it looks as if the plan to establish a major cult for this goddess was abandoned after his death. This agrees with a statement by Mallowan (1952: 3-4; 1966: 92), who was excavating an area "almost abutting" on the east end of the Šarrat Nipḫi shrine, that he found two rooms one of which was "probably a temple ... In the two chambers unearthed it was seen that the place had been stripped of its contents and packed with mud and mud-brick in antiquity; wall-lines and doorways were difficult to trace owing to the havoc wrought by plunderers in the nineteenth century."A small-scale plan, cf. Fig. 23, only seems to indicate walls which Mallowan did identify, and the one find recorded from the area was an Ashurnasirpal brick (ND 1129). An abortive Gula Court is therefore provisionally suggested in Fig. 2."