Dur-Kurigalzu

Dur-Kurigalzu¹, whose ruins are called Aqar Quf, is located at 33^o 21' north, 44^o 21' east, which is near Bagdad (Baghdad)². It was founded by Kurigalzu I³. By 1360 and still in 1200 BCE it was the third largest city in the world, and the largest in what is now Iraq, with an estimated population of 40 thousand.⁴ It fell to ruins when the Kassite Dynasty ended, although there was spotty use from the 9th to the 14th centuries CE.⁵

External References

Ziggurat of Dur-Kurigalzu (partly restored)

Footnotes

1. In Akkadian and Sumerian, the city name was written in Cuneiform. This cannot be rendered in most browsers although unicode for it exists.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dur-Kurigalzu, accessed 3/6/2010, states that the city is in Diyala Governorate, but states it is southwest of Bagdad. I think it likely it is in Bagdad Governorate.
3. George Roux, Ancient Iraq, 3rd ed. (Penguin Books, 1992, pg. 249. Others say it was founded by Kurigalzu II.
4. Tables of the World's Largest Cities, "1360 B.C." and "1200 B.C." tables, Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth, 2nd ed. (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987).
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dur-Kurigalzu, accessed 3/6/2010.