Nineveh
Encyclopedia
Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian
city on the eastern bank of the Tigris
River, and capital of the Neo Assyrian Empire. Its ruins are across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul
, in the Ninawa Governorate
of Iraq
.
The origin of the name Nineveh is obscure. Possibly it meant originally the seat of Ishtar
, since Nina was one of the Babylonian names of that goddess. The ideogram means "house or place of fish," and was perhaps due to popular etymology (comp. Aramaic "nuna," denoting "fish").
s within a 7 km² (1732 acres) area circumscribed by a 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) brick rampart. This whole extensive space is now one immense area of ruins overlaid in parts by new suburbs of the city of Mosul.
Nineveh was an important junction for commercial routes crossing the Tigris. Occupying a central position on the great highway between the Mediterranean Sea
and the Indian Ocean
, thus uniting the East and the West, wealth flowed into it from many sources, so that it became one of the greatest of all the region's ancient cities,and the capital of the Neo Assyrian Empire.
ous Ninus
as the founder of Nineveh, although there is no historical basis for this. The historic Nineveh is mentioned about 1800 BC
as a centre of worship of Ishtar
, whose cult was responsible for the city's early importance. The goddess's statue was sent to Pharaoh Amenhotep III
of Egypt in the 14th century BC, by orders of the king of Mitanni
. The Assyria
n city of Nineveh became one of Mitanni's vassals for nearly a century until the mid 14th century BC, when the Assyrian king Ashur-uballit I
reclaimed it in 1365 BC while overthrowing the Mitanni Empire.
There is no large body of evidence to show that Assyrian monarchs built at all extensively in Nineveh during the 2nd millennium BC; it appears to have been originally an "Assyrian provincial town". Later monarchs whose inscriptions have appeared on the high city include Shalmaneser I
and Tiglath-Pileser I
, both of whom were active builders in Assur(Ashur
); the former had founded Calah (Nimrud
). Nineveh had to wait for the Neo Assyrian Empire, particularly from the time of Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883–859 BC) onward, for a considerable architectural expansion. Thereafter successive monarchs such as Sargon II
, Esarhaddon
, Sennacherib
and Ashurbanipal
kept in repair and founded new palaces, temples to Sîn
, Ashur
, Nergal
, Šamaš
, Ishtar
, and Nabiu
of Borsippa
.
It was Sennacherib
who made Nineveh a truly magnificent city (c. 700 BC). He laid out new streets and squares and built within it the famous "palace without a rival", the plan of which has been mostly recovered and has overall dimensions of about 503 by 242 m (1,650.3 by 794 ft). It comprised at least 80 rooms, many of which were lined with sculpture. A large number of cuneiform tablet
s were found in the palace. The solid foundation was made out of limestone blocks and mud bricks; it was 22 metres (72 ft) tall. In total, the foundation is made of roughly 2680000 cubic metres (3,505,308 cu yd) of brick (approximately 160 million bricks). The walls on top, made out of mud brick, were an additional 20 metres (66 ft) tall. Some of the principal doorways were flanked by colossal stone door figures weighing up to 30000 kilograms (30 t); they included many winged lions or bulls with a man's head. These were transported 50 kilometres (31 mi) from quarries at Balatai and they had to be lifted up 20 metres (66 ft) once they arrived at the site, presumably by a ramp. There are also 3000 metres (9,843 ft) of stone panels carved in bas-relief, that include pictorial records documenting every construction step including carving the statues and transporting them on a barge. One picture shows 44 men towing a colossal statue. The carving shows three men directing the operation while standing on the Colossus. Once the statues arrived at their destination the final carving was done. Most of the statues weigh between 9000 and 27000 kg (19,841.6 and 59,524.8 lb).
The stone carvings in the walls include many battle scenes, impalings and scenes showing Sennacherib's men parading the spoils of war before him. He also bragged about his conquests: he wrote of Babylon "Its inhabitants, young and old, I did not spare, and with their corpses I filled the streets of the city." He later wrote about a battle in Lachish
"And Hezekiah
of Judah who had not submitted to my yoke...him I shut up in Jeruselum his royal city like a caged bird. Earthworks I threw up against him, and anyone coming out of his city gate I made pay for his crime. His cities which I had plundered I had cut off from his land."
At this time the total area of Nineveh comprised about 7 square kilometres (1,730 acre), and fifteen great gates penetrated its walls. An elaborate system of eighteen canals brought water from the hills to Nineveh, and several sections of a magnificently constructed aqueduct erected by Sennacherib were discovered at Jerwan, about 65 kilometres (40 mi) distant. The enclosed area had more than 100,000 inhabitants (maybe closer to 150,000), about twice as many as Babylon
at the time, placing it among the largest settlements worldwide.
Nineveh's greatness was short-lived. In around 627 BC after the death of its last great king Ashurbanipal
, the Neo-Assyrian empire began to unravel due to a series of bitter civil wars, and Assyria was attacked by its former vassals, the Babylonians and Medes
. From about 616 BC, in a coalition with the Scythians and Cimmerians
, they besieged Nineveh, sacking the town in 612 BC, after which it was razed to the ground. Most of the people in the city who could not escape to the last Assyrian strongholds in the north and west were either massacred or deported out of the city. Many unburied skeletons were found by the archaeologists at the site. The Assyrian empire then came to an end by 605 BC, the Medes and Babylonians dividing its colonies between them.
Following the defeat in 612 BC, the site remained largely unoccupied for centuries with only a scattering of Assyrians living amid the ruins until the Sassanian period, although Assyrians
continue to live in the surrounding area to this day. The city is mentioned again in the Battle of Nineveh
in 627 AD, which was fought between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanian Empire of Persia near the ancient city. From the Arab
conquest 637 CE until modern time the city of Mosul
on the opposite bank of the river Tigris became the successor of ancient Nineveh.
, Nineveh is first mentioned in : "Ashur
left that land, and built Nineveh". Some modern translations interpret "Ashur" in the Hebrew of this verse as the country "Assyria" rather than a person, thus making Nimrod
the builder of Nineveh.
Though the Books of Kings
and Books of Chronicles
talk a great deal about the Assyrian empire, Nineveh itself is not again noticed till the days of Jonah
, when it is described (ff; ) as an "exceedingly great city of three days journey in breadth". But it is also possible that it took three days to cover all its neighborhoods by walking, which would match the size of ancient Nineveh. The ruins of Kouyunjik, Nimrud
, Karamles
and Khorsabad form the four corners of an irregular quadrangle. The ruins of Nineveh, with the whole area included within the parallelogram they form by lines drawn from the one to the other, are generally regarded as consisting of these four sites. The book of Jonah depicts Nineveh as a wicked city worthy of destruction. God sent Jonah to preach, and the Ninevites fasted and repented. As a result, God spared the city; when Jonah protests against this, God states He is showing pity for the population who are ignorant of the difference between right and wrong ("who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand" ) and the animals in the city.
Nineveh was the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire ; and ostensibly was the home of King Sennacherib
, King of Assyria, during the Biblical reign of King Hezekiah
and the prophetic career of Isaiah
. According to scripture, Nineveh was also the place where Sennacherib died at the hands of his two sons, who then fled to the land of `rrt Urartu
. . The book of the prophet Nahum
is almost exclusively taken up with prophetic denunciations against this city. Its ruin and utter desolation are foretold . Its end was strange, sudden, tragic. According to the Bible, it was God's doing, his judgment on Assyria's pride . In fulfillment of prophecy, God made "an utter end of the place". It became a "desolation". Zephaniah
also predicts its destruction along with the fall of the empire of which it was the capital. Nineveh is also the setting in the Book of Tobit
.
Nineveh's repentance and salvation from evil is noted in the Gospel of Matthew
and the Gospel of Luke
. To this day, churches in Iraq commemorate the three days Jonah spent inside the fish by fasting. The faithful fasts by refraining from food and drinks (if he or she wishes to). Churches encourage followers to refrain from meat, fish and dairy products.
, and Thebes, had left ruins to mark their sites and tell of their former greatness; but of this city, imperial Nineveh, not a single vestige seemed to remain, and the very place on which it had stood became only matter of conjecture.
In the days of the Greek historians Ctesias
and Herodotus
, 400 BC
, Nineveh had become a thing of the past; and when Xenophon
the historian passed the place in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand
the very memory of its name had been lost. It was buried out of sight.
In his History of the World (written c. 1616) Sir Walter Raleigh erroneously asserted (attributing the information to Johannes Nauclerus
c. 1425-1510), that Nineveh had originally had the name Campsor before Ninus supposedly rebuilt it. This was still regarded as correct information when news of Layard's discoveries (see below) reached the west.
", and the remains of the city walls (about 12 kilometres (7 mi) in circumference). The Neo-Assyrian levels of Kouyunjik have been extensively explored. The other mound, Nabī Yūnus, has not been as extensively explored because there is an Arab Muslim shrine dedicated to that prophet on the site.
In 1842, French Consul General at Mosul, Paul-Émile Botta
began to search the vast mounds that lay along the opposite bank of the river. The Arabs whom he employed in these excavations, to their great surprise, came upon the ruins of a building at the mound of Khorsabad, which, on further exploration, turned out to be the royal palace of Sargon II
, which was largely explored for sculptures and other precious relics.
In 1847 the young British adventurer Sir Austen Henry Layard
explored the ruins.
In the Kuyunjik mound Layard rediscovered in 1849 the lost palace of Sennacherib
with its 71 rooms and colossal bas-reliefs. He also unearthed the palace and famous library of Ashurbanipal
with 22,000 cuneiform
clay tablets. Most of Layard's material
was sent to the British Museum
, but two large pieces were given to
Lady Charlotte Guest
and eventually found their way to the Metropolitan Museum.
The study of the archaeology of Nineveh reveals the wealth and glory of ancient Assyria under kings such as Esarhaddon
(681–669 BC) and Ashurbanipal (669–626 BC).
The work of exploration was carried on by George Smith
, Hormuzd Rassam
, and others, and a vast treasury of specimens of Assyria was incrementally exhumed for European museums. Palace after palace was discovered, with their decorations and their sculptured slabs, revealing the life and manners of this ancient people, their arts of war and peace, the forms of their religion, the style of their architecture, and the magnificence of their monarchs.
The mound of Kouyunjik were excavated again by the archaeologists of the British Museum
, led by Leonard William King
, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Their efforts concentrated on the site of the Temple of Nabu
, the god of writing, where another cuneiform library was supposed to exist. However, no such library was ever found: most likely, it had been destroyed by the activities of later residents.
The excavations started again in 1927, under the direction of Campbell Thompson, who had already taken part in King's expeditions.
Some works were carried out outside Kouyunjik, for instance on the mound of Nebi Yunus, which was the ancient arsenal of Nineveh, or along the outside walls. Here, near the northwestern corner of the walls, beyond the pavement of a later building, the archaeologists found almost 300 fragments of prisms recording the royal annals of Sennacherib
, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal
, beside a prism of Esarhaddon which was almost perfect.
After the Second World War, several excavations were carried out by Iraqi archaeologists. From 1951 to 1958 Mohammed Ali Mustafa worked the site.
The work was continued from 1967 through 1971 by Tariq Madhloom. Some additional excavation occurred by Manhal Jabur in 1980, and Manhal Jabur in 1987. For the most part, these digs focused on Nebi Yunus.
Most recently, British archaeologist and Assyriologist Professor David Stronach
of the University of California, Berkeley
conducted a series of surveys and digs at the site from 1987–1990, focusing his attentions to the several gates and the existent mudbrick walls, as well as the system that supplied water to the city in times of siege. The excavation reports
are in progress.
The ruins of Nineveh are surrounded by the remains of a massive stone and mudbrick wall dating from about 700 BC. About 12 km in length, the wall system consisted of an ashlar stone retaining wall about 6 metres (20 ft) high surmounted by a mudbrick wall about 10 metres (33 ft) high and 15 metres (49 ft) thick. The stone retaining wall had a'foresticking stone towers spaced about every 18 metres (59 ft). The stone wall and towers were topped by three-step merlon
s.
The city wall was fitted with fifteen monumental gateways. In addition to serving as checkpoints on entering and exiting the city, these structures were probably used as barracks and armories. With the inner and outer doors shut, the gateways were virtual fortresses. The bases of the walls of the vaulted passages and interior chambers of the gateway were lined with finely cut stone orthostats about 1 metres (3 ft) high. A stairway led from one of the interior chambers to the top of the mudbrick wall.
Five of the gateways have been explored to some extent by archaeologists:
, it may have been used for some ceremonial purpose, as it is the only known gate flanked by stone sculptures of winged bull-men (lamassu
). The reconstruction is conjectural, as the gate was excavated by Layard in the mid 19th century, and reconstructed in the mid 20th century.
Named for the god Adad
. A reconstruction was begun in the 1960s by Iraqis, but was not completed. The result is an uneasy mixture of concrete and eroding mudbrick, which nonetheless does give one some idea of the original structure. Fortunately, the excavator left some features unexcavated, allowing a view of the original Assyrian construction. The original brickwork of the outer vaulted passageway is well exposed, as is the entrance of the vaulted stairway to the upper levels. The actions of Nineveh's last defenders can be seen in the hastily built mudbrick construction which narrows the passageway from 4 to 2 m (13.1 to 6.6 ft).
Named for the Sun god Shamash
, it opens to the road to Arbil. It was excavated by Layard in the 19th century. The stone retaining wall and part of the mudbrick structure were reconstructed in the 1960s. The mudbrick reconstruction has deteriorated significantly. The stone wall sticks outward about 20 metres (66 ft) from the line of main wall for a width of about 70 metres (230 ft). It is the only gate with such a significant projection. The mound of its remains towers above the surrounding terrain. Its size and design suggest it was the most important gate in Neo-Assyrian times.
In an October 2010 report titled Saving Our Vanishing Heritage
, Global Heritage Fund
named Nineveh one of 12 sites most "on the verge" of irreparable destruction and loss, citing insufficient management, development pressures and looting as primary causes.
of the Ancient Church of the East
, Chaldean Catholic Church
, and Assyrian Church of the East
observe a fast called Ba'uta d-Ninwe or Bo'utho d-Ninwe (ܒܥܘܬܐ ܕܢܝܢܘܐ) which means Nineveh's Wish. Copts and Ethiopian Orthodox
also maintain this fast.
Assyrian people
The Assyrian people are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia...
city on the eastern bank of the Tigris
Tigris
The Tigris River is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq.-Geography:...
River, and capital of the Neo Assyrian Empire. Its ruins are across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul
Mosul
Mosul , is a city in northern Iraq and the capital of the Ninawa Governorate, some northwest of Baghdad. The original city stands on the west bank of the Tigris River, opposite the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh on the east bank, but the metropolitan area has now grown to encompass substantial...
, in the Ninawa Governorate
Ninawa Governorate
Ninawa is a governorate in northern Iraq, and the Arabic name for the biblical city of Nineveh in Assyria. It has an area of and an estimated population of 2,453,000 people in 2003. Its chief city and provincial capital is Mosul, which lies across the Tigris river from the ruins of ancient...
of Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
.
The origin of the name Nineveh is obscure. Possibly it meant originally the seat of Ishtar
Ishtar
Ishtar is the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. She is the counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate north-west Semitic goddess Astarte.-Characteristics:...
, since Nina was one of the Babylonian names of that goddess. The ideogram means "house or place of fish," and was perhaps due to popular etymology (comp. Aramaic "nuna," denoting "fish").
Geography
Ancient Nineveh's mound-ruins of Kouyunjik and Nabī Yūnus are located on a level part of the plain near the junction of the Tigris and the Khosr RiverKhosr River
The Khosr River was a tributary of the Tigris River which ran directly through the centre of the ancient city of Nineveh in Northern Mesopotamia. During the reign of Sennacherib, walls were built along the banks of the Khosr to prevent it from flooding....
s within a 7 km² (1732 acres) area circumscribed by a 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) brick rampart. This whole extensive space is now one immense area of ruins overlaid in parts by new suburbs of the city of Mosul.
Nineveh was an important junction for commercial routes crossing the Tigris. Occupying a central position on the great highway between the Mediterranean Sea
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
and the Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
, thus uniting the East and the West, wealth flowed into it from many sources, so that it became one of the greatest of all the region's ancient cities,and the capital of the Neo Assyrian Empire.
History
Texts from the Hellenistic period and later offered an eponymEponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...
ous Ninus
Ninus
Ninus , according to Greek historians writing in the Hellenistic period and later, was accepted as the eponymous founder of Nineveh , Ancient capital of Assyria, although he does not seem to represent any one personage known to modern history, and is more likely a conflation of several real and/or...
as the founder of Nineveh, although there is no historical basis for this. The historic Nineveh is mentioned about 1800 BC
18th century BC
The 18th century BCE was the century which lasted from 1800 BCE to 1701 BCE.-Events:*1800 BCE: Iron age in India*1800 BCE: Beginning of the Nordic Bronze Age in the period system devised by Oscar Montelius....
as a centre of worship of Ishtar
Ishtar
Ishtar is the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. She is the counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate north-west Semitic goddess Astarte.-Characteristics:...
, whose cult was responsible for the city's early importance. The goddess's statue was sent to Pharaoh Amenhotep III
Amenhotep III
Amenhotep III also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty. According to different authors, he ruled Egypt from June 1386 to 1349 BC or June 1388 BC to December 1351 BC/1350 BC after his father Thutmose IV died...
of Egypt in the 14th century BC, by orders of the king of Mitanni
Mitanni
Mitanni or Hanigalbat was a loosely organized Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and south-east Anatolia from ca. 1500 BC–1300 BC...
. The Assyria
Assyria
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
n city of Nineveh became one of Mitanni's vassals for nearly a century until the mid 14th century BC, when the Assyrian king Ashur-uballit I
Ashur-uballit I
Ashur-uballit I , was king of the Assyrian empire . His reign marks Assyria's independence from the kingdom of Mitanni, by defeating Shuttarna II; and the beginning of Assyria's emergence as a powerful empire...
reclaimed it in 1365 BC while overthrowing the Mitanni Empire.
There is no large body of evidence to show that Assyrian monarchs built at all extensively in Nineveh during the 2nd millennium BC; it appears to have been originally an "Assyrian provincial town". Later monarchs whose inscriptions have appeared on the high city include Shalmaneser I
Shalmaneser I
Shalmaneser I was a king of Assyria.Son of Adad-nirari I, he succeeded his father as king in 1265 BC....
and Tiglath-Pileser I
Tiglath-Pileser I
Tiglath-Pileser I was a king of Assyria during the Middle Assyrian period . According to Georges Roux, Tiglath-Pileser was "one of the two or three great Assyrian monarchs since the days of Shamshi-Adad I"...
, both of whom were active builders in Assur(Ashur
Ashur
Ashur |Shin]]) in the Masoretic text, which doubles the 'ש'), was the second son of Shem, the son of Noah. Ashur's brothers were Elam, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram....
); the former had founded Calah (Nimrud
Nimrud
Nimrud is an ancient Assyrian city located south of Nineveh on the river Tigris in modern Ninawa Governorate Iraq. In ancient times the city was called Kalḫu. The Arabs called the city Nimrud after the Biblical Nimrod, a legendary hunting hero .The city covered an area of around . Ruins of the city...
). Nineveh had to wait for the Neo Assyrian Empire, particularly from the time of Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883–859 BC) onward, for a considerable architectural expansion. Thereafter successive monarchs such as Sargon II
Sargon II
Sargon II was an Assyrian king. Sargon II became co-regent with Shalmaneser V in 722 BC, and became the sole ruler of the kingdom of Assyria in 722 BC after the death of Shalmaneser V. It is not clear whether he was the son of Tiglath-Pileser III or a usurper unrelated to the royal family...
, Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon , was a king of Assyria who reigned 681 – 669 BC. He was the youngest son of Sennacherib and the Aramean queen Naqi'a , Sennacherib's second wife....
, Sennacherib
Sennacherib
Sennacherib |Sîn]] has replaced brothers for me"; Aramaic: ) was the son of Sargon II, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria .-Rise to power:...
and Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal |Ashur]] is creator of an heir"; 685 BC – c. 627 BC), also spelled Assurbanipal or Ashshurbanipal, was an Assyrian king, the son of Esarhaddon and the last great king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire...
kept in repair and founded new palaces, temples to Sîn
Sin (mythology)
Sin or Nanna was the god of the moon in Mesopotamian mythology. Nanna is a Sumerian deity, the son of Enlil and Ninlil, and became identified with Semitic Sin. The two chief seats of Nanna's/Sin's worship were Ur in the south of Mesopotamia and Harran in the north.- Name :The original meaning of...
, Ashur
Ashur
Ashur |Shin]]) in the Masoretic text, which doubles the 'ש'), was the second son of Shem, the son of Noah. Ashur's brothers were Elam, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram....
, Nergal
Nergal
The name Nergal, Nirgal, or Nirgali refers to a deity in Babylon with the main seat of his cult at Cuthah represented by the mound of Tell-Ibrahim. Nergal is mentioned in the Hebrew bible as the deity of the city of Cuth : "And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal"...
, Šamaš
Shamash
Shamash was a native Mesopotamian deity and the sun god in the Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian pantheons. Shamash was the god of justice in Babylonia and Assyria, corresponding to Sumerian Utu...
, Ishtar
Ishtar
Ishtar is the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. She is the counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate north-west Semitic goddess Astarte.-Characteristics:...
, and Nabiu
Nabu
Nabu is the Assyrian and Babylonian god of wisdom and writing, worshipped by Babylonians as the son of Marduk and his consort, Sarpanitum, and as the grandson of Ea. Nabu's consort was Tashmetum....
of Borsippa
Borsippa
Borsippa was an important ancient city of Sumer, built on both sides of a lake about southwest of Babylon on the east bank of the Euphrates. The site of Borsippa is in Babil Governorate, Iraq and now called Birs Nimrud, identifying the site with Nimrod...
.
Sennacherib
Sennacherib |Sîn]] has replaced brothers for me"; Aramaic: ) was the son of Sargon II, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria .-Rise to power:...
who made Nineveh a truly magnificent city (c. 700 BC). He laid out new streets and squares and built within it the famous "palace without a rival", the plan of which has been mostly recovered and has overall dimensions of about 503 by 242 m (1,650.3 by 794 ft). It comprised at least 80 rooms, many of which were lined with sculpture. A large number of cuneiform tablet
Cuneiform
Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...
s were found in the palace. The solid foundation was made out of limestone blocks and mud bricks; it was 22 metres (72 ft) tall. In total, the foundation is made of roughly 2680000 cubic metres (3,505,308 cu yd) of brick (approximately 160 million bricks). The walls on top, made out of mud brick, were an additional 20 metres (66 ft) tall. Some of the principal doorways were flanked by colossal stone door figures weighing up to 30000 kilograms (30 t); they included many winged lions or bulls with a man's head. These were transported 50 kilometres (31 mi) from quarries at Balatai and they had to be lifted up 20 metres (66 ft) once they arrived at the site, presumably by a ramp. There are also 3000 metres (9,843 ft) of stone panels carved in bas-relief, that include pictorial records documenting every construction step including carving the statues and transporting them on a barge. One picture shows 44 men towing a colossal statue. The carving shows three men directing the operation while standing on the Colossus. Once the statues arrived at their destination the final carving was done. Most of the statues weigh between 9000 and 27000 kg (19,841.6 and 59,524.8 lb).
The stone carvings in the walls include many battle scenes, impalings and scenes showing Sennacherib's men parading the spoils of war before him. He also bragged about his conquests: he wrote of Babylon "Its inhabitants, young and old, I did not spare, and with their corpses I filled the streets of the city." He later wrote about a battle in Lachish
Lachish
Lachish was an ancient Near East town located at the site of modern Tell ed-Duweir in the Shephelah, a region between Mount Hebron and the maritime plain of Philistia . The town was first mentioned in the Amarna letters as Lakisha-Lakiša...
"And Hezekiah
Hezekiah
Hezekiah was the son of Ahaz and the 14th king of Judah. Edwin Thiele has concluded that his reign was between c. 715 and 686 BC. He is also one of the most prominent kings of Judah mentioned in the Hebrew Bible....
of Judah who had not submitted to my yoke...him I shut up in Jeruselum his royal city like a caged bird. Earthworks I threw up against him, and anyone coming out of his city gate I made pay for his crime. His cities which I had plundered I had cut off from his land."
At this time the total area of Nineveh comprised about 7 square kilometres (1,730 acre), and fifteen great gates penetrated its walls. An elaborate system of eighteen canals brought water from the hills to Nineveh, and several sections of a magnificently constructed aqueduct erected by Sennacherib were discovered at Jerwan, about 65 kilometres (40 mi) distant. The enclosed area had more than 100,000 inhabitants (maybe closer to 150,000), about twice as many as Babylon
Babylon
Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
at the time, placing it among the largest settlements worldwide.
Nineveh's greatness was short-lived. In around 627 BC after the death of its last great king Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal |Ashur]] is creator of an heir"; 685 BC – c. 627 BC), also spelled Assurbanipal or Ashshurbanipal, was an Assyrian king, the son of Esarhaddon and the last great king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire...
, the Neo-Assyrian empire began to unravel due to a series of bitter civil wars, and Assyria was attacked by its former vassals, the Babylonians and Medes
Medes
The MedesThe Medes...
. From about 616 BC, in a coalition with the Scythians and Cimmerians
Cimmerians
The Cimmerians or Kimmerians were ancient equestrian nomads of Indo-European origin.According to the Greek historian Herodotus, of the 5th century BC, the Cimmerians inhabited the region north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea during the 8th and 7th centuries BC, in what is now Ukraine and Russia...
, they besieged Nineveh, sacking the town in 612 BC, after which it was razed to the ground. Most of the people in the city who could not escape to the last Assyrian strongholds in the north and west were either massacred or deported out of the city. Many unburied skeletons were found by the archaeologists at the site. The Assyrian empire then came to an end by 605 BC, the Medes and Babylonians dividing its colonies between them.
Following the defeat in 612 BC, the site remained largely unoccupied for centuries with only a scattering of Assyrians living amid the ruins until the Sassanian period, although Assyrians
Assyrian people
The Assyrian people are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia...
continue to live in the surrounding area to this day. The city is mentioned again in the Battle of Nineveh
Battle of Nineveh (627)
The Battle of Nineveh was the climactic battle of the Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602–628. The Byzantine victory broke the power of the Sassanid dynasty and for a period of time restored the empire to its ancient boundaries in the Middle East...
in 627 AD, which was fought between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanian Empire of Persia near the ancient city. From the Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
conquest 637 CE until modern time the city of Mosul
Mosul
Mosul , is a city in northern Iraq and the capital of the Ninawa Governorate, some northwest of Baghdad. The original city stands on the west bank of the Tigris River, opposite the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh on the east bank, but the metropolitan area has now grown to encompass substantial...
on the opposite bank of the river Tigris became the successor of ancient Nineveh.
Biblical Nineveh
In the BibleBible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, Nineveh is first mentioned in : "Ashur
Ashur
Ashur |Shin]]) in the Masoretic text, which doubles the 'ש'), was the second son of Shem, the son of Noah. Ashur's brothers were Elam, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram....
left that land, and built Nineveh". Some modern translations interpret "Ashur" in the Hebrew of this verse as the country "Assyria" rather than a person, thus making Nimrod
Nimrod (king)
Nimrod is, according to the Book of Genesis and Books of Chronicles, the son of Cush and great-grandson of Noah and the king of Shinar. He is depicted in the Tanakh as a man of power in the earth, and a mighty hunter. Extra-Biblical traditions associating him with the Tower of Babel led to his...
the builder of Nineveh.
Though the Books of Kings
Books of Kings
The Book of Kings presents a narrative history of ancient Israel and Judah from the death of David to the release of his successor Jehoiachin from imprisonment in Babylon, a period of some 400 years...
and Books of Chronicles
Books of Chronicles
The Books of Chronicles are part of the Hebrew Bible. In the Masoretic Text, it appears as the first or last book of the Ketuvim . Chronicles largely parallels the Davidic narratives in the Books of Samuel and the Books of Kings...
talk a great deal about the Assyrian empire, Nineveh itself is not again noticed till the days of Jonah
Jonah
Jonah is the name given in the Hebrew Bible to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BC, the eponymous central character in the Book of Jonah, famous for being swallowed by a fish or a whale, depending on translation...
, when it is described (ff; ) as an "exceedingly great city of three days journey in breadth". But it is also possible that it took three days to cover all its neighborhoods by walking, which would match the size of ancient Nineveh. The ruins of Kouyunjik, Nimrud
Nimrud
Nimrud is an ancient Assyrian city located south of Nineveh on the river Tigris in modern Ninawa Governorate Iraq. In ancient times the city was called Kalḫu. The Arabs called the city Nimrud after the Biblical Nimrod, a legendary hunting hero .The city covered an area of around . Ruins of the city...
, Karamles
Karamles
Karamlish is an ancient Assyrian town in Iraq located less than south east of Mosul, and has been occupied by Assyrians for 5000 years....
and Khorsabad form the four corners of an irregular quadrangle. The ruins of Nineveh, with the whole area included within the parallelogram they form by lines drawn from the one to the other, are generally regarded as consisting of these four sites. The book of Jonah depicts Nineveh as a wicked city worthy of destruction. God sent Jonah to preach, and the Ninevites fasted and repented. As a result, God spared the city; when Jonah protests against this, God states He is showing pity for the population who are ignorant of the difference between right and wrong ("who cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand" ) and the animals in the city.
Nineveh was the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire ; and ostensibly was the home of King Sennacherib
Sennacherib
Sennacherib |Sîn]] has replaced brothers for me"; Aramaic: ) was the son of Sargon II, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria .-Rise to power:...
, King of Assyria, during the Biblical reign of King Hezekiah
Hezekiah
Hezekiah was the son of Ahaz and the 14th king of Judah. Edwin Thiele has concluded that his reign was between c. 715 and 686 BC. He is also one of the most prominent kings of Judah mentioned in the Hebrew Bible....
and the prophetic career of Isaiah
Isaiah
Isaiah ; Greek: ', Ēsaïās ; "Yahu is salvation") was a prophet in the 8th-century BC Kingdom of Judah.Jews and Christians consider the Book of Isaiah a part of their Biblical canon; he is the first listed of the neviim akharonim, the later prophets. Many of the New Testament teachings of Jesus...
. According to scripture, Nineveh was also the place where Sennacherib died at the hands of his two sons, who then fled to the land of `rrt Urartu
Urartu
Urartu , corresponding to Ararat or Kingdom of Van was an Iron Age kingdom centered around Lake Van in the Armenian Highland....
. . The book of the prophet Nahum
Nahum
Nahum was a minor prophet whose prophecy is recorded in the Hebrew Bible. His book comes in chronological order between Micah and Habakkuk in the Bible. He wrote about the end of the Assyrian Empire, and its capital city, Nineveh, in a vivid poetic style....
is almost exclusively taken up with prophetic denunciations against this city. Its ruin and utter desolation are foretold . Its end was strange, sudden, tragic. According to the Bible, it was God's doing, his judgment on Assyria's pride . In fulfillment of prophecy, God made "an utter end of the place". It became a "desolation". Zephaniah
Zephaniah
Zephaniah or Tzfanya is the name of several people in the Bible Old Testament and Jewish Tanakh. He is also called Sophonias as in the New Catholic Encyclopaedia and in Easton's [Bible] Dictionary....
also predicts its destruction along with the fall of the empire of which it was the capital. Nineveh is also the setting in the Book of Tobit
Book of Tobit
The Book of Tobit is a book of scripture that is part of the Catholic and Orthodox biblical canon, pronounced canonical by the Council of Carthage of 397 and confirmed for Roman Catholics by the Council of Trent...
.
Nineveh's repentance and salvation from evil is noted in the Gospel of Matthew
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...
and the Gospel of Luke
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...
. To this day, churches in Iraq commemorate the three days Jonah spent inside the fish by fasting. The faithful fasts by refraining from food and drinks (if he or she wishes to). Churches encourage followers to refrain from meat, fish and dairy products.
Classical history
Before the great archaeological excavations in the 19th century, historical knowledge of the great Assyrian empire and of its magnificent capital was almost wholly a blank. Other cities that had perished, such as Palmyra, PersepolisPersepolis
Perspolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire . Persepolis is situated northeast of the modern city of Shiraz in the Fars Province of modern Iran. In contemporary Persian, the site is known as Takht-e Jamshid...
, and Thebes, had left ruins to mark their sites and tell of their former greatness; but of this city, imperial Nineveh, not a single vestige seemed to remain, and the very place on which it had stood became only matter of conjecture.
In the days of the Greek historians Ctesias
Ctesias
Ctesias of Cnidus was a Greek physician and historian from Cnidus in Caria. Ctesias, who lived in the 5th century BC, was physician to Artaxerxes Mnemon, whom he accompanied in 401 BC on his expedition against his brother Cyrus the Younger....
and Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
, 400 BC
400 BC
Year 400 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Tribunate of Esquilinus, Capitolinus, Vulso, Medullinus, Saccus and Vulscus...
, Nineveh had become a thing of the past; and when Xenophon
Xenophon
Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...
the historian passed the place in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand
Anabasis (Xenophon)
Anabasis is the most famous work, in seven books, of the Greek professional soldier and writer Xenophon. The journey it narrates is his best known accomplishment and "one of the great adventures in human history," as Will Durant expressed the common assessment.- The account :Xenophon accompanied...
the very memory of its name had been lost. It was buried out of sight.
Johannes Nauclerus
Johannes Nauclerus was a 16th century Swabian historian and humanist. He was born Johann Vergenhans to a noble man of the same name...
c. 1425-1510), that Nineveh had originally had the name Campsor before Ninus supposedly rebuilt it. This was still regarded as correct information when news of Layard's discoveries (see below) reached the west.
Archaeology
Today, Nineveh's location is marked by two large mounds, Kouyunjik and Nabī Yūnus "Prophet JonahJonah
Jonah is the name given in the Hebrew Bible to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BC, the eponymous central character in the Book of Jonah, famous for being swallowed by a fish or a whale, depending on translation...
", and the remains of the city walls (about 12 kilometres (7 mi) in circumference). The Neo-Assyrian levels of Kouyunjik have been extensively explored. The other mound, Nabī Yūnus, has not been as extensively explored because there is an Arab Muslim shrine dedicated to that prophet on the site.
- Kuyunjik - The ruin mound rises about 20 metres (66 ft) above the surrounding plain of the ancient city. It is quite broad, measuring about 800 by 500 m (2,624.7 by 1,640.4 ft). Its upper layers have been extensively excavated and several Neo-Assyrian palaces and temples have been found there. A deep sounding by Max Mallowan revealed evidence of habitation as early as the 6th millennium BC. Today, there is little evidence of these old excavations other than weathered pits and earth piles. In 1990, the only Assyrian remains visible were those of the entry court and the first few chambers of the Palace of Sennacherib. Since that time, the palace chambers have received significant damage by looters due to the turmoil in the area. Portions of relief sculptures that were in the palace chambers in 1990 were seen on the antiquities market by 1996. Photographs of the chambers made in 2003 show that many of the fine relief sculptures there have been reduced to piles of rubble.
- Nebi Yunus - located about 1 kilometre (0.621372736649807 mi) south of Kuyunjik, is the secondary ruin mound at Nineveh. On the basis of texts of Sennacherib, the site has traditionally been identified as the "armory" of Nineveh, and a gate and pavements excavated by Iraqis in 1954 have been considered to be part of the "armory" complex. Excavations in 1990 revealed a monumental entryway consisting of a number of large inscribed orthostats and "bull-man" sculptures, some apparently unfinished.
In 1842, French Consul General at Mosul, Paul-Émile Botta
Paul-Émile Botta
Paul-Émile Botta was a French scientist who served as Consul in Mosul from 1842.-Life:...
began to search the vast mounds that lay along the opposite bank of the river. The Arabs whom he employed in these excavations, to their great surprise, came upon the ruins of a building at the mound of Khorsabad, which, on further exploration, turned out to be the royal palace of Sargon II
Sargon II
Sargon II was an Assyrian king. Sargon II became co-regent with Shalmaneser V in 722 BC, and became the sole ruler of the kingdom of Assyria in 722 BC after the death of Shalmaneser V. It is not clear whether he was the son of Tiglath-Pileser III or a usurper unrelated to the royal family...
, which was largely explored for sculptures and other precious relics.
Austen Henry Layard
Sir Austen Henry Layard GCB, PC was a British traveller, archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, author, politician and diplomat, best known as the excavator of Nimrud.-Family:...
explored the ruins.
In the Kuyunjik mound Layard rediscovered in 1849 the lost palace of Sennacherib
Sennacherib
Sennacherib |Sîn]] has replaced brothers for me"; Aramaic: ) was the son of Sargon II, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria .-Rise to power:...
with its 71 rooms and colossal bas-reliefs. He also unearthed the palace and famous library of Ashurbanipal
Library of Ashurbanipal
-External links:. In our time discussion programme. 45 minutes....
with 22,000 cuneiform
Cuneiform
Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...
clay tablets. Most of Layard's material
was sent to the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, but two large pieces were given to
Lady Charlotte Guest
Lady Charlotte Guest
Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Guest, , later Lady Charlotte Schreiber, was an English businesswoman and translator...
and eventually found their way to the Metropolitan Museum.
The study of the archaeology of Nineveh reveals the wealth and glory of ancient Assyria under kings such as Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon
Esarhaddon , was a king of Assyria who reigned 681 – 669 BC. He was the youngest son of Sennacherib and the Aramean queen Naqi'a , Sennacherib's second wife....
(681–669 BC) and Ashurbanipal (669–626 BC).
The work of exploration was carried on by George Smith
George Smith (assyriologist)
George Smith , was a pioneering English Assyriologist who first discovered and translated the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest-known written work of literature.-Early life and early career:...
, Hormuzd Rassam
Hormuzd Rassam
Hormuzd Rassam , was a native Assyrian Assyriologist, British diplomat and traveller who made a number of important discoveries, including the clay tablets that contained the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest literature...
, and others, and a vast treasury of specimens of Assyria was incrementally exhumed for European museums. Palace after palace was discovered, with their decorations and their sculptured slabs, revealing the life and manners of this ancient people, their arts of war and peace, the forms of their religion, the style of their architecture, and the magnificence of their monarchs.
The mound of Kouyunjik were excavated again by the archaeologists of the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, led by Leonard William King
Leonard William King
Leonard William King , M.A., F.S.A., was an English archaeologist and Assyriologist educated at Rugby School and King's College in Cambridge. He collected stone inscriptions widely in the Near East, taught Assyrian and Babylonian archaeology at King's College for a number of years, and published a...
, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Their efforts concentrated on the site of the Temple of Nabu
Nabu
Nabu is the Assyrian and Babylonian god of wisdom and writing, worshipped by Babylonians as the son of Marduk and his consort, Sarpanitum, and as the grandson of Ea. Nabu's consort was Tashmetum....
, the god of writing, where another cuneiform library was supposed to exist. However, no such library was ever found: most likely, it had been destroyed by the activities of later residents.
The excavations started again in 1927, under the direction of Campbell Thompson, who had already taken part in King's expeditions.
Some works were carried out outside Kouyunjik, for instance on the mound of Nebi Yunus, which was the ancient arsenal of Nineveh, or along the outside walls. Here, near the northwestern corner of the walls, beyond the pavement of a later building, the archaeologists found almost 300 fragments of prisms recording the royal annals of Sennacherib
Sennacherib
Sennacherib |Sîn]] has replaced brothers for me"; Aramaic: ) was the son of Sargon II, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria .-Rise to power:...
, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal |Ashur]] is creator of an heir"; 685 BC – c. 627 BC), also spelled Assurbanipal or Ashshurbanipal, was an Assyrian king, the son of Esarhaddon and the last great king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire...
, beside a prism of Esarhaddon which was almost perfect.
After the Second World War, several excavations were carried out by Iraqi archaeologists. From 1951 to 1958 Mohammed Ali Mustafa worked the site.
The work was continued from 1967 through 1971 by Tariq Madhloom. Some additional excavation occurred by Manhal Jabur in 1980, and Manhal Jabur in 1987. For the most part, these digs focused on Nebi Yunus.
Most recently, British archaeologist and Assyriologist Professor David Stronach
David Stronach
David Stronach is a Scottish archeologist of ancient Iran and Iraq. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.Stronach is a leading Western expert on the city of Pasargadae. He obtained an Master of Arts from Cambridge University in 1958. In the 1960s and 1970s he was...
of the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
conducted a series of surveys and digs at the site from 1987–1990, focusing his attentions to the several gates and the existent mudbrick walls, as well as the system that supplied water to the city in times of siege. The excavation reports
are in progress.
City wall and gates
Merlon
In architecture, a merlon forms the solid part of an embattled parapet, sometimes pierced by embrasures. The space between two merlons is usually called a crenel, although those later designed and used for cannons were called embrasures.-Etymology:...
s.
Five of the gateways have been explored to some extent by archaeologists:
Mashki Gate
Translated "Gate of the Watering Places", it was perhaps used to take livestock to water from the River Tigris which currently flows about 1.5 kilometre (0.93205910497471 mi) to the west. It has been reconstructed in fortified mudbrick to the height of the top of the vaulted passageway. The Assyrian original may have been plastered and ornamented.Nergal Gate
Named for the god NergalNergal
The name Nergal, Nirgal, or Nirgali refers to a deity in Babylon with the main seat of his cult at Cuthah represented by the mound of Tell-Ibrahim. Nergal is mentioned in the Hebrew bible as the deity of the city of Cuth : "And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal"...
, it may have been used for some ceremonial purpose, as it is the only known gate flanked by stone sculptures of winged bull-men (lamassu
Lamassu
A Lamassu , is a protective deity, often depicted with a bull or lion's body, eagle's wings, and human's head. In some writings, it is portrayed to represent a female deity...
). The reconstruction is conjectural, as the gate was excavated by Layard in the mid 19th century, and reconstructed in the mid 20th century.
Adad Gate
Adad
Adad in Akkadian and Ishkur in Sumerian and Hadad in Aramaic are the names of the storm-god in the Babylonian-Assyrian pantheon. All three are usually written by the logogram dIM...
. A reconstruction was begun in the 1960s by Iraqis, but was not completed. The result is an uneasy mixture of concrete and eroding mudbrick, which nonetheless does give one some idea of the original structure. Fortunately, the excavator left some features unexcavated, allowing a view of the original Assyrian construction. The original brickwork of the outer vaulted passageway is well exposed, as is the entrance of the vaulted stairway to the upper levels. The actions of Nineveh's last defenders can be seen in the hastily built mudbrick construction which narrows the passageway from 4 to 2 m (13.1 to 6.6 ft).
Shamash Gate
Shamash
Shamash was a native Mesopotamian deity and the sun god in the Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian pantheons. Shamash was the god of justice in Babylonia and Assyria, corresponding to Sumerian Utu...
, it opens to the road to Arbil. It was excavated by Layard in the 19th century. The stone retaining wall and part of the mudbrick structure were reconstructed in the 1960s. The mudbrick reconstruction has deteriorated significantly. The stone wall sticks outward about 20 metres (66 ft) from the line of main wall for a width of about 70 metres (230 ft). It is the only gate with such a significant projection. The mound of its remains towers above the surrounding terrain. Its size and design suggest it was the most important gate in Neo-Assyrian times.
Halzi Gate
Near the south end of the eastern city wall. Exploratory excavations were undertaken here by the University of California expedition of 1989–90. There is an outward projection of the city wall, though not as pronounced as at the Shamash Gate. The entry passage had been narrowed with mudbrick to about 2 metres (7 ft) as at the Adad Gate. Human remains from the final battle of Nineveh were found in the passageway.Threats to Nineveh
The site of Nineveh is exposed to decay of its reliefs by a lack of proper protective roofing, vandalism and looting holes dug into chamber floors. Future preservation is further compromised by the site's proximity to constantly expanding suburbs.In an October 2010 report titled Saving Our Vanishing Heritage
Saving Our Vanishing Heritage
Saving Our Vanishing Heritage: Safeguarding Endangered Cultural Heritage Sites in the Developing World was a report released by Global Heritage Fund on October 17, 2010...
, Global Heritage Fund
Global Heritage Fund
Global Heritage Fund is a non-profit organization that operates internationally. Its mission statement says that it exists to protect and preserve significant and endangered cultural heritage sites in the developing world, through scientific excellence and community development...
named Nineveh one of 12 sites most "on the verge" of irreparable destruction and loss, citing insufficient management, development pressures and looting as primary causes.
Rogation of the Ninevites (Nineveh's Wish)
AssyriansAssyrian people
The Assyrian people are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia...
of the Ancient Church of the East
Ancient Church of the East
The Ancient Church of the East was established in 1968. It follows the traditions of one of the oldest Christian churches, the Church of the East, whose origins trace back to the See of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in central Mesopotamia...
, Chaldean Catholic Church
Chaldean Catholic Church
The Chaldean Catholic Church , is an Eastern Syriac particular church of the Catholic Church, maintaining full communion with the Bishop of Rome and the rest of the Catholic Church...
, and Assyrian Church of the East
Assyrian Church of the East
The Assyrian Church of the East, officially the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East ʻIttā Qaddishtā w-Shlikhāitā Qattoliqi d-Madnĕkhā d-Āturāyē), is a Syriac Church historically centered in Mesopotamia. It is one of the churches that claim continuity with the historical...
observe a fast called Ba'uta d-Ninwe or Bo'utho d-Ninwe (ܒܥܘܬܐ ܕܢܝܢܘܐ) which means Nineveh's Wish. Copts and Ethiopian Orthodox
Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is the predominant Oriental Orthodox Christian church in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Church was administratively part of the Coptic Orthodox Church until 1959, when it was granted its own Patriarch by Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of All...
also maintain this fast.
See also
- Cities of the ancient Near EastCities of the ancient Near EastThe largest cities in the Bronze Age ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands. Memphis in the Early Bronze Age with some 30,000 inhabitants was the largest city of the time by far...
- Isaac of NinevehIsaac of NinevehIsaac of Nineveh also remembered as Isaac the Syrian and Isaac Syrus was a Seventh century bishop and theologian best remembered for his written work. He is also regarded as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church...
- Historical urban community sizesHistorical urban community sizesEstimated populations of historical cities over time.-Neolithic settlements:-Bronze Age:-Iron Age:-Middle Ages:-Early Modern era:-20th century:-See also:*World population*Urbanism*List of metropolitan areas by population...
- List of megalithic sites
- Short chronology timelineShort chronology timelineThe short chronology is one chronology of the Near Eastern Bronze and Early Iron Age, which fixes the reign of Hammurabi to 1728 BC – 1686 BC and the sack of Babylon to 1531 BC....
- Tel KeppeTel KeppeTel Keppe , is one of the largest formerly Assyrian towns in Iraq. It is located in the Ninawa Governorate, less than 8 miles North East of Mosul in northern Iraq.-Etymology:...
External links
- Joanne Farchakh-Bajjaly photos of Nineveh taken in May 2003 showing damage from looters.
- John Malcolm Russell, "Stolen stones: the modern sack of Nineveh" in Archaeology; looting of sculptures in the 1990s.
- Nineveh page at the British Museum's website. Includes photographs of items from their collection.
- University of California Digital Nineveh Archives A teaching and research tool presenting a comprehensive picture of Nineveh within the history of archaeology in the Near East, including a searchable data repository for meaningful analysis of currently unlinked sets of data from different areas of the site and different episodes in the 160-year history of excavations.
- CyArk Digital Nineveh Archives, publicly accessible, free depository of the data from the previously-linked UC Berkeley Nineveh Archives project, fully linked and georeferenced in a UC Berkeley/CyArkCyArkCyArk is a 501 nonprofit organization located in Oakland, California, United States. The company's website refers to it as a "digital archive of the world’s heritage sites for preservation and education"...
research partnership to develop the archive for open web use. Includes creative commons-licensed media items. - ABC 3: Babylonian Chronicle Concerning the Fall of Nineveh
- Layard's Nineveh and its Remains- full text
- A history
- Austen Henry Layard - Nineveh and Its Remains full book readable