Nineveh (Hastings' Dictionary)

In Gn 10" it is stated (according to the better transla- tion) that Nimrod (wh. see) or some other Baby- lonian ‘went forth’ out of Chaldwa and founded Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir (2édit-wri in Assyrian, ‘the streets or public places of the city’). A similar tradition is indicated in Mic 5°. The native monuments show that the tradition is correct, and that Nineveh was once included within the boundaries of the Babylonian empire (cf. art. ASSYRIA in vol. i. p.

1805, and Driver in Hogarth’s Authority and Archeology, p. 29f.) In fact it seems to have taken its name from the Babylonian city of Ninf on the Euphrates, which i.e. Merodach, ἡ Fried. Delitzsch, Weltschipfungsepos, pp. 106, 107, lines 96-104, revised by comparison with the original text. 1 One of the meanings of the Heb. Ws, the root of gayid, is to lay snares’ or ‘nets.’ Cf. also the name of Zidon.

§ It is noteworthy that Babylonia is called ‘the land of Nim- rod’ in Mic 56,—whether because he was an early king of the country, or because, as Merodach, he was the chief divinity, is uncertain. If the latter, it would be a parallel to the expression people of Chemosh’ in Nu 21% and Jer 49%. NINEVEH is mentioned by Diodorns (ii. 3. iT); ay from Ctesias. The name of Nineveh is written Ninud and Nind in the cuneiform inscriptions.

A popular ymology connected it with the Assyrian nunu, s sh,’ at a very early date, since the name is ideo- graphically represented by the picture of a fish inside the enclosure of a city. But it seems really to have been derived from the title of the Baby- lonian goddess Nin4, the daughter of Ea, who was identified with the Semitic Istar. Nin4 is the original of the Greek form Ninos.

The city lay on the eastern side of the Tigris, northward of the Greater Zab, and opposite the modern town of Mosul. As late as the 12th cent. Benjamin of Tudela still knew its ruins under the name of Niniveh, although its site had been su completely deserted before the 4th cent. B.c. that when Xenophon passed the spot all recollection of the place had disappeared. The ruins consist chiefly of two great mounds, Kouyunjik and Nebi Yunus, and the remains of the ancient city walls.

The latter are of a rectangular shape, running parallel to the river on the western side, and pro- tected on the eastern side by a double earthwork, between which and the walls was a deep ditch. The walls themselves were protected by towers and pierced by gates, and rose to a vast height, and consisted of a basement of stone with a super- structure of erude bricks.

They enclosed about 1800 acres, or about half the space enclosed within the Aurelian walls of Rome, and had a cireumfer- ence of 74 miles. The moat between them and the eastern outwerks was 145 feet wide. It was filled with water from the river Khusur, now called Khoser, which flows in a southward direction from Khorsabad, and, after passing through the centre of the ancient Nineveh, falls into the Tigris on the south side of the mound of Kouyunjik.

The Tigris must originally have washed the foot of the western city wall, though at present a bank of silt has been formed between it and the river. The mound of Kouyunjik lies on the north side of the Khoser, and covers the site of two palaces, —that of Sennacherib to the south and of Assur- bani-pal to the north.

Sennacherib levelled the remains of an older palace which stood on the bank of a stream called the Tebilti, and had been so injured by the floods that the sarcophagi of his royal predecessors who had been buried there were exposed to view. In its place he erected a splendid building, partly in the native Assyrian, partly in the Syrian, style of architecture, with a park and peraat stables and storehouses, and special forti- cations of its own.

Assur-bani-pal’s palace was chiefly distinguished by the extent of the harim buildings and the establishment of a library. The southern mound, which lies, like Kouyunjik, against the inner side of the western city wall, rises midway between the Khoser and the southern Slee of the city rampart. It is now known as ebi Yunus, from a supposed tomb of the prophet Jonah, and also represents the site of two palaces, one constructed by Sennacherib and the other by Esarhaddon.

Compared, however, with the palaces at Kouyunjik, they were of inferior size and splendour. Southward of Nineveh, at the corner of land formed by the junction of the Tigris and Greater Zab, was Kalkhu or Calah, whose site is now marked by the mound of Nimrfid. Between it and Nineveh stood the Resen of Gn 10", the Res- ἐπὶ or ‘Fountain-head’ of the Bavian inscription of Sennacherib. It is doubtless the Larissa (A/- Resen or ‘City of Resen’) of Xenophon’s Anabasis (iii. 4.

7), 6 parasangs from Mespila, the Assyrian Muspalu or ‘low ground’ near the mound of Nebi Yunus. To the north of Nineveh, close to the quoting prob- 554 NINEVEH sources of the Khoser and on the hill-slopes of Magganubba, is Khorsabad, still called Sarghtin by ths Mohammedan writer Yakut in the l4th cent. Khorsabad is the site of the palace and city founded by Sargon in B.c. 707, the remains of which were excavated by Botta.

7 The name of Nineveh is perhaps first met with in the inscriptions of Gudea, the high priest of Lagas or Tello in Babylonia (B.c. 2700), who tells us that he had built a temple of Istar at Nin4, though it is possible that the Nin& referred to may be the Ninf of Babylonia.

The Assyrian Nineveh, however, which seems to have been a colony from the Babylonian city of the same name, was glee dedicated to Istar, and up to the last ‘Istar of Nineveh’ continued to be invoked by the side of ‘Istar of Arbela.’ Gudea, it should be added, calls himself ‘the powerful minister of the goddess Nind.’ An inscription of Dungi of Ur, a contem- porary of Gudea, which is now in the Louvre, is said to have been discovered on the site of Nineveh.

If this were really the case, we should have direct monumental evidence of Babylonian work in the future Assyrian capital. A letter of the Babylonian king Khammurabi (B.C. 2300) speaks of Assyrian soldiers in the Babylonian army ; and as late as B.C. 1400 Burna-buryas still regards the Assyrians as his vassals. Before this latter date, however, the high priests of Assur (the modern Kalah Sherghat) had become kings, and claimed to be independent of Babylonia.

Dusratta of Mitanni, the contemporary of Burna-buryas, sent a golden image of ‘Istar of Nineveh’ to Egypt, and mentions another that had been already sent there in the reign of his father. Winckler infers from this that Nineveh was subject at the time to Mitanni; but the conclusion does not necessarily follow.

At all events, the Assyrian king, Assur-yuballidh writes to the Egyptian Pharaoh as an independent sovereign; and an inscription tells us that he restored E-Masmas, the temple of Istar at Nineveh, which had been built by Samas-Hadad, the high priest of Assur, in B.C. 1820. Shalmaneser I. (B.C. 1300) again repaired the temple, by the side of which his father Hadad- nirari I. had erected a chapel to the Babylonian deities Merodach and Nebo. Shalmaneser 1.

, however, was the builder of Calah, and does not seem to have lived in Nineveh itself. Indeed the first king whom we know to have made it his lace of residence was Assur-bil-kala, the son of liglath-pileser 1. (B.c. 1100). From this time onward Nineveh was probably a royal residence until the) reign of Assur-nazir-pal (B.C. 880), when Calah was rebuilt and its palace restored.

For nearly two centuries Calah now remained the capital, and it was only under Sennacherib that Nineveh resumed its place as the chief city of the empire. All the spoils of Asia were lavished on its adornment and fortification; pure drinking- water was introduced into it in place of the rain- water on which the inhabitants had hitherto de- ee par ; and stately palaces rose in the neighbour- 100d of the Tigris.

It was to Nineveh that captive princes were brought and exposed in iron cages to the gaze of the multitude; here the head of Teum- man, the conquered king of Elam, was hung up in the garden of Assur-bani-pal’s palace ; and out of its gates marched the armies that conquered the Oriental world. Its markets were thronged with merchants and traders, and its library was stored with thousands of clay books. Nineveh fell in B.C. 607-6, and with it fell also the Assyrian kingdom and empire.

According to an inscription of Nabonidos, it was destroyed by the king of the Manda or Scythians, 5 had settled in Ecbatana and gone to the assistance of Nabopolassar, the Babylonian king. War had NISROCH broken out between the latter and his suzerai the king of Assyria, who was suppo> ted by sever: of the Babylonian cities where the i was still obeyed. According to Abydenos, the last king of Assyria was Sarakos, who appears to be the Sin-sar-iskun of the monuments.

tablet dated in the seventh year of the latter king has been found at Erech.

But there was another Assyrian king, Sin-sum-lisir, whose name is found on a tablet dated at Nippur in the year of his accession, and it is therefore possible that with him rather than with Sin-sar-iskun Nineveh and Assyria came to an end, The fall of Nineveh is prophesied by Nahum and Zephaniah (2'-), and in Nahum more especially there are references to the Loe EY of the Assyrian capital (see Billerbeck and Jeremias, ‘ Der Untergang ines und die Wei gschrift des Nahum,’ in the Beitrage zur Assyriologie, iii.

1). In 2 Καὶ 19%=Is 3757, it is described as the residence of Sennacherib, and the temple of ‘ Nisroch his god’ is referred to. The name of Nisroch, how- ever, is corrupt, and it is impossible to say what was the original reading. For the story of Jonah’s preosing at Nineveh, and our Lord’s application of this, see art. JONAH in vol. ii., especially pp. 746-751. In Jon 4" it is stated that Nineveh contained ‘more than sixscore thousand’ infants, which would give a population of about 600,000.

Cap- tain Jones, who made a trigonometrical survey of the site in 1853, estimates that, allowing 50 square yards to each inhabitant, the population may have amounted to about 174,000 souls. The statement, however, in the Bk. of Jonah, that Nineveh was a city of ‘ three days’ journey,’ can be explained onl, on the supposition that both Calah and Khorsab: (Dur-Sargon) were included in its precincts ;andeven then Konig (see art. JONAH, vol. il. p. 7485) thinks the dimensions impossible.

Nineveh is again brought before us in the books of Tobit (11° ete.) and Judith (1. Tobit is said to have lived there like certain Israelites mentioned in the cuneiform con- tract tablets, some of whom even held office under the government.