NINEVEH (Hebrew in classical authors Nivoς, Ninus; LXX., Νινευι; Jerome, Niniue), the famous capital of the Assyrian empire, called Ninua or Nina on the monuments. Though the city appears to have been entirely destroyed in the fall of the empire the name of Nineveh (Syriac, Ninive ; Arabic, Nînawà, Nunawd) continued, even in the Middle Ages, to be applied to a site opposite Mosul on the east bank of the Tigris, where gigantic tells or artificial mounds, and the traces of an ancient city wall, bore evident witness of fallen greatness / The walls enclose an irregular trapezium, stretching in length about 2⅜ miles along the Tigris, which protected the city on the west. The greatest breadth is over a mile. The most elaborate defences, consisting of outworks and moats that can still be traced, were on the southern half of the east side, for the deep sluggish Khausar, which protects the northern half of this face, then bends round towards the Tigris and flows through the middle of the town, so as to leave the south-east of the city more open to attack than any other part. The principal ruin mounds within the walls are that of Kuyιinjik, north of the Khausar, and that of the prophet Jonah (Nebi Υύ-nus) south of that stream. The latter is the traditional site of Jonah’s preaching, and is crowned by an ancient and famous Mohammedan shrine. The systematic exploration of these ruins is mainly due to Layard (1845- 46), whose work has been continued by subsequent diggers. These researches leave no doubt as to the correctness of the local tradition. Not only have magnificent remains of Assyrian architecture and sculpture been laid bare, but the accompanying cuneiform inscriptions throw much light on the history of the city and its buildings. The mound of Kuyùnjik ...covers palaces of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal, that of Jonah a second palace of Sennacherib and one of Esarhaddon. Of other remains, the most striking is the gateway near the centre of the north wall, consisting of two halls, 70 feet by 23, the entrance to which towards the town was flanked by colossal man-headed bulls and winged human figures. For the structure and art of the palaces see vol. ii. p. 397 and vol. iii. p. 189.
Nineveh proper was only one of a group of cities and royal residences whose ruins still mark the plain between the Tigris, the Great Zâb, and the Kliâzir. The chief of these are at Khorsab<id or Khurustâbâd, five hours by caravan north-east of Mosul, on a tributary of the Khausar, and at Nimrùd, on the left bank of the Tigris, eight caravan hours (18 miles) south-east from Kuyhnjik∙ The former site was mainly explored by the Frenchmen Botta and Place. The city was almost square, each face of the wall a little more than a mile in length. The vast T-shaped palace of Sargon (722-705 b.c.), whose name the town bore (Dur-Sarrukin), stood near the northern angle. Its main frontage was nearly a quarter of a mile long; it had thirty-one courts and more than two hundred apartments.
The ruins of Nimrud, identical with the ruin Athιir of Arabic geographers (Yi⅛ht, s.vv. “Athùr,” “Salâmiya”), and first excavated by Layard, represent the ancient city of Kalhu, the Biblical Calah. The enclosure, protected on the west by the old bed of the Tigris, is, according to Layard’s measurements, a quadrangle of 2331 yards by 2095 at the widest part, and was surrounded by walls with towers and moats. The chief architectural remains belong to a group of palaces and temples which occupied the south-west quarter of the city. The principal palace (north-west palace) was built by Assur-nasir-pal (885-860 b.c.), and beside it he raised a temple with a great tower (falsely called the tomb of Sardanapalus) built in narrowing stages. The so-called central palace is that of his son Shalmaneser II.; the unfinished south-west palace was the work of Esarhaddon. Of the so-called south-east palace the chief part is really a temple of Nebo; a statue of the god from this temple is in the British Museum.
The main points in the history of these three great cities which are held to be established by monumental evidence are these. The ancient capital of Assyria was Assur (KaΓa Sherkat) on the Tigris, 5θ miles south of Mosul. Assur-nasir-pal transferred the residence to Calah, a city which he tells us upon an inscription had been originally founded by Shalmaneser I. (c. 1300 b.c. ), but had subsequently fallen into decay. Calah seems to have been the chief seat of the kings till Sargon the captor of Samaria founded his residence at Khorsabad; the glory of Nineveh proper begins with Sennacherib, but the city existed earlier, for his inscribed bricks represent him only as rebuilder of the walls. It is even averred that kings of the 19th and 15th centuries b.c. built temples at Nineveh, but the remoter dates of Assyrian history must be received with caution. From the time of Sennacherib down to the fall of the capital and empire—an event the date of which is still uncertain, the ancient accounts varying between 626 and 608 B.c.—Nineveh proper, that is, the city on the Tigris and Khausar, appears to have been the chief seat of empire. But when the book of Jonah speaks of Nineveh as a city of three days’ journey, or when Ctesias in Diodorus ii. 3 describes its circuit as 480 stadia, it is plain that these conceptions imply an extension of the name to the whole group of cities between the Tigris and the Zâb. In this connexion the words of Gen. X. 11 sq. are remarkable; for, on the most natural view, the clause “this is the great city” applies not to Resen alone but to the four cities of Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah, and Resen. Rehoboth Ir and Resen are still untraced; the Syriac tradition which connects the latter with Rêsh 'Ainâ, that is, with Khorsâbad, does not agree with the text, which says expressly that Resen was between Nineveh and Calah, and indeed the verses in Genesis appear to be older than the foundation of the city of Sargon. The description would suit the mound of Salâmiya a little above Nimrud, but in fact the whole district is studded with ruins.
See the works of Layard, Botta and Flandin, V. Place, Oppert (Expedition en Mésopotamie'), and G. Smith (Assyrian Discoveries). For the ruins and their exploration, Tuch’s Commentatio, above cited, gives all that was known before the explorations; Schrader, Keilinsch. u. A. T. gives the bearing of recent discoveries on the Biblical records. See also, in general, the article Babylonia, vol. iii. p. 183 sq.
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