Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/556

Rh 512 NINEVEH protects the northern half of this face 5 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 Kuyunjik, north of the Khausar, and that of the prophet Jonah (Nebl Yii- nus) south of that stream. The latter is the traditional .site of Jonah s preaching, and is crowned by an ancient and fam ous Mohammedan shrine. The sys tematic explora tion of these ruins is mainly due to Layard (1845- 46), whose work has been con tinued by subse quent diggers. These researches leave no doubt FIG. 1. Country round Nineveh. 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 3000 YARDS FIG. 2. Ruins of Nineveh. and its buildings. The mound of Kuyunjik covers palaces of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal, 1 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. 1 In this palace is the famous library chamber from which Layard and George Smith brought the tablets now in the British Museum, containing the account of the deluge. Nineveh proper was only one of a group of cities and royal residences whose ruins still mark the plain between the Tigris, the Great Zab, and the Khazir. The chief of these are at Khorsabad or Khurustabad, five hours by caravan north-east of Mosul, on a tributary of the Khausar, and at Nimrud, on the left bank of the Tigris, eight caravan hours (18 miles) south-east from Kuyunjik. 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. 2 The ruins of Nimrud, identical with the ruin Athiir of Arabic geographers (Yakut, s.vv. &quot;Athur,&quot; &quot;Salamlya&quot;), 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 Esar- haddon. 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 (Kal a Sherkat) on the Tigris, 50 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 subse quently fallen into decay. Calah seems to have been the chief scat 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. 3 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 Zab. In this connexion the words of Gen. x. 11 sq. are remarkable; for, on the most natural view, the clause &quot;this is the great city &quot; 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 Resh Aina, that is, with Khorsabad, 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 Salamiya a little above Nimrud, but in fact the whole district is studded with ruins. Sec the works of Layard, Botta and Flandin, V. Tlace, Oppert (Expedition en Mesopotamia, 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. 11. A. T. gives the bearing of recent dis coveries on the Biblical records. See also, in general, the article BABYLONIA, vol. iii. p. 183 sq. (W. R. S.) . 2 There is some evidence that Syriac tradition connected these ruins with the name of Sargon ; though our authority Yakut, in giving the alleged old name of Khurustabad, has corrupted Sarghiin into Sar un, by writing c for = H. Another Syriac tradition connects Khurusta bad with Resen, finding the name Resen in the neighbouring Ras al- Ain (Resh Aina). See Hoffmann, Syrische Aden, p. 183. 3 The legend of Ninus and Semiramis in classical authors appears to be of late origin and quite unhistorical. Ninus is merely the eponym hero of Nineveh.