Royal Assyrian building activities in the northwestern provincial center of Ḫarrān

The Assyrians actively engaged themselves in construction in the heartland and in the numerous provinces of the Empire. Textual sources (especially royal inscriptions and correspondence), as well as archaeological excavations, mention and sometimes document some of these building programs, for example, Sargon II’s transformation of the city Harhar into a provincial capital named after himself (Kar-Sharrukin), Sargon II’s construction of a palace at Carchemesh (as recorded in a newly published cylinder inscription), and Ashurbanipal’s rebuilding and expansion of the temple of the moon-god Sîn at Harran. This paper will present the available (textual) evidence for Assyrian building activities in Harran, an important cult and administrative center in the northwestern part of the Empire, and will attempt to contextualize the eighth- and seventh-century construction projects there by looking at building activities in other Assyrian provincial centers