The city was of such importance that it appeared on toponym lists in the funerary temple of the Egyptian pharaoh, Amenophis III (c. 1351 BC) at Kom el-Hettan".

Because of Aqar Quf's easy accessibility and close proximity to the city of Baghdad, it has been one of Iraq's most visited and best-known sites.

Up until recently (mostly between the 9th and 14th centuries AD), there have been smaller occupations at parts of Aqar Quf, with areas of the site being used for burials and for Arab settlement.

[7] The Ziggurat of Dur-Kurigalzu, built in the early 14th century BC by Kurigalzu I, is located in the city's western area and is devoted to the chief Babylonian God Enlil, who Sumerians believed to govern over wind, air, earth, and storm.

[5][2] The ziggurat's base measures 69m x 67m and it was constructed of large, well-tempered liben with many stamped baked bricks incorporated into the structure, bearing the name of Kurigalzu and his dedication of the temple E-U-GAL to Enlil.

An axial flight of steps was discovered running outwards from the center of the side of the ziggurat towards the temple-complex and was built of solid kiln-baked brick set in bitumen.

[17] Aqar Quf (referred to then as Akerkuf, Agger Koof, or Akar-kuf) was visited and examined in 1837 by Francis Rawdon Chesney.

[24][25] A baked brick pavement (T5) around two kilometers northwest of Tell al-Abyad was found to be covered with hundreds of broken terracotta figurines dedicated to the god Gula.

In the early 1960s and from 1968 to 1975 the Iraqi Directorate-General of Antiquities continued to do some excavation around the ziggurat as part of a restoration project under Saddam Hussein[27][28][29][30][31][32] The three excavated areas are the mound of Aqar Quf (including the ziggurat and large temple), a public building (approximately 100 metres (330 ft) to the west), and Tell al-Abyad where a large palace was partially uncovered (about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) to the south-west).

[33] As part of a temple restoration a pottery jar was found containing 220 Islamic silver dirhem coins from the Ilkhanid period.

[35][36] Another area within Dur-Kurigalzu, Tell Abu Shijar, was excavated by Iraqi archaeologists in 1992, 1993, and 2001 finding mainly late Kassite and lesser Parthian/Sassanian remains.

Painted plaster wall fragments, similar to those found at Tell al-Abyad, were recovered as well as a worn cylinder seal and thirteen cuneiform clay tablets.

The highest concentration of this wall painting type can be found in Unit H sector on Level II named also 'PaintedPalace', dating to the reign of Kaštiliaš IV.

The entire complex mostly has liben walls that are thickly covered with plaster and may bear traces of fire, which are thought to reflect attempts in destroying the site in the past.

Inside this temple is a small staircase that leads up to an altar, subsidiary courts, and a room that appears to be the kitchen where a raised rectangular compartment was excavated and assumed to be an oven.

The ziggurat suffered damage as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq when the site was abandoned and looted during the security breakdown and chaos that followed the U.S. military's overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Little is left of the modern administration building, museum, event stage, and restaurant that once served the picnickers and students who visited the site before the war.

Since mid-2008, local officials have drafted plans to rebuild the historic site, but support from the Iraq Ministry of History and Ruins has not materialized.

[46] The site of Tell Basmaya lies about seven kilometers southeast of modern Baghdad at the Tigris-Diyala river junction and just to the northeast of ancient Dur-Kurigalzu.

[47] It was worked for two seasons from 2013 to 2014 by a Iraqi Board of Antiquities and Heritage, led by Taha K. Abod, in a program of rescue archaeology before the area was developed.