Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/453

 NINGUM. to Lucian, indeed {Jupiter Tragaed. § 42), the Aegvptians sacrificed to the element of water, not locally, but universally. Pictorially, the Nile was represented under a round and plump figure, of a blue colour, and sometimes with female breasts, indi- cative of its productive and nutritive powers. On the base of the throne of Amenophis-Memnun, at Thebes, two figures represent the Nile, similar in all other respects, except that one is crowned with lotus to denote the upper courses of the river, the other with papyrus to designate the lower. [See Aegyp- TUS, p. 37.] (Rosellini, Mon. del. Cult. ; Kenrick's Ancient Aegypt, vol. i. pp. 349—463.) [W.B.D.] NINGUM. [IsTRiA.] NINIVE. [NiLus.] NINNITACI. [MiN.TicuM.] NINUS (v Nrcos or NiVos, Herod i. 193, ii. 1.50; Ptol. vi 1. § 3; NiVos i) koI Nivei/i', Ptol. viii. 21. § 3; Nicevr/, Joseph. Ant. Jud. ix. 10. § 2; Ninus, Tacit. Ann. xii. 13; Ninive, Amm. Marc, xviii. 7, xxiii. 6: Eth. NiVios, Steph. B. s. v.), a great city, and for many centuries the capital of ancient Assy- ria. It will be convenient to notice here such ac- counts as we have from the Bible and ancient his- torians, and then to state succinctly the curious results of the recent discoveries of Mr. Layard, Colonel Rawlinson, and other modern travellers. I. Nineveh is first mentioned in the Bible among the eight primeval cities in Genesis (x.ll), and is there stated to have been founded either by Nimrod himself, or, according to another reading, by his lieutenant, Assur, the 'Aa-irovpas of Joseph. Ant. Jud. i. 6. § 4, and the Eponymus of Assyria. The latter view is the most agreeable to the construction of the Hebrew text. From this period w^e have no mention of it in Holy Scripture for more than a thousand years; and when it is noticed again, on Jonah being sent thither to preach repentance, it is described as a " city of three days' journey" (Jonah, iii. 3), and as " that great city wherein are six score thousand persons, that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand." {Jonah, iv. 11.) Sub- sequently to this time, it is not referred to by name, except in 2 Kings, xix. 37, and Isaiah, xxxvi. 37, as the residence of Sennacherib, after his return from the invasion of Judaea ; in the prophets Nahum and Zephaniah, who predict its speedy downfal; and in the apocryphal books of Tobit and Judith, the former of whom long lived in the great city. II. The earliest classical mention of Nineveh is by Herodotus, who places it on the Tigris (i. 193, ii. 1 50), but does not state on which bank it stood ; in this he is confirmed by Arrian {Hist. Ind. c. 42) and Strabo, who in one place calls it the metropolis of Syria, i.e. Assyria (ii. p. 84), in another states it to have been a city more vast than even Babylon, lying in the plain of Aturia (a dialectical change of name for As.syria), beyond the Lycus (or Great Zdb) with reference to Arbela (xvi. p. 737). Pliny places it on the east bank of the Tigris " ad solis occasum spectans" (vi. 13. s. 16); Ptolemy, along the Tigris, but without accurate definition of its position (vi. 1. § 3). The same may be said of the notice in Taci- tus {Annul, xii. 13), and in Ammianus, who calls it a vast city of Adiabene. On the other hand, Dio- dorus, professing to copy Ctesias, places it on the Euphrates (ii. 3, 7), which is the more remarkable, as a fragment of Nicolaus Damascenus, who has preserved a portion of Ctesias, is still extant, in which Nineveh occupies its correct position on the Tigris. {Frag. Hist. Graec. vol. iii. p. 858, ed. NINUS. 437 Miiller.) It may be remarked that in much later times the name appears to have been applied to more than one town. Thus Ammianus in one passage seems to think that Hierapolis was the " vetus Ninus" (xiv. 8). Philostratus {Vit. A poll. Ty an. i. 19) speaks of a Ninus on this side of the Euphra- tes ; and Eusebius, in his Chronicon, asserts, that in his time it was called Nisibis. No doubt much of the obscurity in the minds of ancient writers, both as to its position and the real history of the empire of which it was the capital, arose from the circum- stance that its entire overthrow preceded the ear- liest of the Greek historians by nearly 200 years, and that it does not appear to have been rebuilt at any period of the classical ages. So complete was its destruction, that, though Xenophon marched within a few miles of it, lie was not aware of its ex- istence, though, in his allusion to the " Median city of Mespila," he doubtless is describing one of the great outworks of the Assyi-ian capital {Anab. iii. 4. § 10); while, with the exception of Arrian, none of the historians of the campaigns of Alexander, who, like Xenophon, must have passed it on his way to fight the battle of Arbela, allude to it. That the ancients generally believed in its entire destruction, is clear from Pausanias, who classes it with My- cenae, Thebae, and other ruined cities (viii. 33. § 2); from Lucian {Charon, c. 23), and from Strabo (xvi. p. 737). The last, indeed, has an argument that Homer, who mentions Thebes in Egypt, and the wealth of Phoenicia, could not have omitted Babylon, Nineveh, and Ecbatana, had he ever heard of them (xv. p. 735). But though so early a ruin, the ancients generally had a correct idea of the wonderful greatness of Nineveh, and many passages are scattered through the classical writers, giving a manifest proof of this belief of the people. Thus Strabo himself, as we have .seen, considered Nineveh greater than Babylon (xvi. p. 737); while Diodorus has a long and exaggerated narrative of the vast extent of Ninus's capital (which, as we stated be- fore, he places incorrectly on the Euphrates, ii. p. 7). Some curious incidental facts are preserved. Thus, the vast mound Semiramis erected as a tomb for her husband Ninus, by the river-side, is almost certainly the Pyramid at Nimrud, though the re- sults of Mr. Layard's last excavations have not proved that this structure was a tomb. (Diod. ii. 7 ; comp. with Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, p. 128). Again, Amyntas (as quoted by Athenaeus) states, that at the town of Ninus was a high mound, which was thrown down by Cyrus when he attacked the city, that this was traditionally the tomb of Sarda- napalus, and had a stele on it inscribed with Chal- daic (i. e. Assyrian) letters. (Amynt. Fragm. p. 136, ed. Muller; cf. also Polyaen. vii. 25.) Nor must we omit the presence of what has been held by all numismatists to be a traditional representation of this celebrated tomb on the Tetradrachms of Anti- ochus VIII., king of Syria, which were struck at Tarsus, and on the imperial coins of Anchialus (both places connected with the name of Sarda- napalus). Again we have the legend of Diodorus, that the Assyrians sent assistance to the Trojans against the Greeks (ii. 22; cf. Plat. Leg. p. 296, ed. Bekker), — the " busta Nini " of Ovid {Me- tani. iv. 88), though referred by him wrongly to Babylon, — and the occurrence, in several of the poets, of the name of Assaracus (now known through Colonel Kawlinson's interpretations to be a Graecized form of the genuine Assyrian Assarac, the 'Auapax F F 3