Dur-Sargina was not the Windsor or Versailles of Assyria--a place to which the sovereign could retire for country air and amusements from the bustle and heat of the metropolis.
It was: as we have said, a town, and a town of considerable size, being very little lees than half as large as Nineveh itself.

It is true that it possessed the advantage of a nearer vicinity to the mountains than Nineveh: and had Sargon been, like several of his predecessors, a mighty hunter, we might have supposed that the greater facility of obtaining sport in the woods and valleys of the Zagros chain formed the attraction which led him to prefer the region where he built his town to the banks of the Tigris.

But all the evidence that we possess seems to show that this monarch was destitute of any love for the chase; and seemingly we must attribute his change of abode either to mere caprice, or to a desire to be near the mountains for the sake of cooler water, purer air, and more varied scenery.

It is no doubt true, as M.Oppert observes, that the royal palace at Nineveh was at this time in a ruinous state; but it could not have been more difficult or more expensive to repair it than to construct a new palace, a new mound, and a new town, on a fresh site.
Previously to the construction of the Khorsabad palace, Sargon resided at Caleb.

He there repaired and renovated the great palace of Asshur-izir-pal, which had been allowed to fall to decay.