 | Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort | NCF | The excavation area abbreviation NCF refers to the Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort excavated in seasons 10 and 11. This building was located at the west corner of the temenos where it meets the ziggurat terrace and turns to the south. Publication UE9 refers to this specific structure as the West Corner Fort, built by Nebuchadnezzar at the corner of his temenos wall. An earlier fortification had been uncovered in season 3, which Woolley called the Bastion of Warad Sin. This structure sits at the north corner of the ziggurat terrace, approximately mid-way along the northwest temenos wall and may have functioned as a kind of sally port gate. It was sometimes called the north corner fort in early seasons but artifacts were not catalogued with this abbreviation in those seasons. Any artifacts from the Warad Sin building were likely catalogued instead with the abbreviation PDW. Nebuchadnezzar's Corner Fort may also have been defensive, but it contained in its later phase a large mixing basin filled with bitumen. In the time of Nabonidus it may well have been in use in repairing the ziggurat.
Woolley dug beneath the Nebuchadnezzar Corner Fort, still using the abbreviation NCF, and uncovered what he believed was a temple or shrine. | (none) |
| NNCF | This area lies beyond (north/northwest of) Nebuchadnezzar's corner fort (NCF) at the west corner of the temenos wall. In seasons 10 and 11 the area was somewhat systematically excavated, initially creating a shallow trench from the northwest terrace and temenos wall almost to the city wall some 100 meters away. According to the 1932 reports, it was "enlarged into a regular excavation covering the area of a number of houses," and this expansion was continued in season 11. Excavations were taken through Persian (mostly surface) level down only a small depth to relatively well preserved house remains of the late Kassite and Neo-Babylonian periods. Many of the houses had graves under their floors. Woolley did not map or record the houses or graves, saying in his Antiquaries Journal report for 1932 (p.390): "They produced no objects of importance, but the graves did yield a certain number of glazed vases, beads and seals."
Publication does not do justice to the extent of this excavation area. Only XNCF, a smaller excavation of domestic space along the NW temenos is published in UE8 and that in only a few paragraphs. | (none) |