Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)
” It is not again noticed till the days of Jonah, when it is described (Jonah 3:3; 4:11) as a great and populous city, the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire (2 Kings 19:36; Isa. 37:37). The book of the prophet Nahum is almost exclusively taken up with prophetic denunciations against this city. Its ruin and utter desolation are foretold (Nah. 1:14; 3:19, etc.). Zephaniah also (2:13-15) predicts its destruction along with the fall of the empire of which it was the capital.
From this time there is no mention of it in Scripture till it is named in gospel history (Matt. 12:41; Luke 11:32). This “exceeding great city” lay on the eastern or left bank of the river Tigris, along which it stretched for some 30 miles, having an average breadth of 10 miles or more from the river back toward the eastern hills. This whole extensive space is now one immense area of ruins.
Occupying a central position on the great highway between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, thus uniting the East and the West, wealth flowed into it from many sources, so that it became the greatest of all ancient cities. C. 625, being joined by the Babylonians and Susianians, again attacked it, when it fell, and was razed to the ground. The Assyrian empire then came to an end, the Medes and Babylonians dividing its provinces between them.
“After having ruled for more than six hundred years with hideous tyranny and violence, from the Caucasus and the Caspian to the Persian Gulf, and from beyond the Tigris to Asia Minor and Egypt, it vanished like a dream” (Nah. 2:6-11). Its end was strange, sudden, tragic. It was God’s doing, his judgement on Assyria’s pride (Isa. 10:5-19). Forty years ago our knowledge of the great Assyrian empire and of its magnificent capital was almost wholly a blank. Vague memories had indeed survived of its power and greatness, but very little was definitely known about it.
Other cities which had perished, as Palmyra, Persepolis, 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 was only matter of conjecture. C. 400, it 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, and no one knew its grave. It is never again to rise from its ruins.
At length, after being lost for more than two thousand years, the city was disentombed. A little more than forty years ago the French consul at Mosul 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, one of the Assyrian kings.
They found their way into its extensive courts and chambers, and brought forth form its hidded depths many wonderful sculptures and other relics of those ancient times. The work of exploration has been carried on almost continuously by M. Botta, Sir Henry Layard, George Smith, and others, in the mounds of Nebi-Yunus, Nimrud, Koyunjik, and Khorsabad, and a vast treasury of specimens of old Assyrian art has been exhumed.
Palace after palace has been 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 streets of the city have been explored, the inscriptions on the bricks and tablets and sculptured figures have been read, and now the secrets of their history have been brought to light. ). ) This library consists of about ten thousand flat bricks or tablets, all written over with Assyrian characters.
They contain a record of the history, the laws, and the religion of Assyria, of the greatest value. These strange clay leaves found in the royal library form the most valuable of all the treasuries of the literature of the old world. The library contains also old Accadian documents, which are the oldest extant documents in the world, dating as far back as probably about the time of Abraham.
Smith's Bible Dictionary (1863)
(abode of Ninus), the capital of the ancient kingdom and empire of Assyria. The name appears to be compounded from that of an Assyrian deity “Nin,” corresponding, it is conjectured, with the Greek Hercules, and occurring in the names of several Assyrian kings, as in “Ninus,” the mythic founder, according to Greek tradition of the city. Nineveh is situated on the eastern bank of the river Tigris, 50 miles from its mouth and 250 miles north of Babylon. It is first mentioned in the Old Testament in connection with the primitive dispersement and migrations of the human race.
Asshur, or according to the marginal reading, which is generally preferred, Nimrod is there described, (Genesis 10:11) as extending his kingdom from the land of Shinar or Babylonia, in the south, to Assyria in the north and founding four cities, of which the most famous was Nineveh. Hence Assyria was subsequently known to the Jews as “the land of Nimrod,” cf. (Micah 5:6) and was believed to have been first peopled by a colony from Babylon. C. 770. Nahum (? C. 645) directs his prophecies against Nineveh; only once against the king of Assyria. ch.
(Nahum 3:18) In (2 Kings 19:36) and Isai 37:37 The city is first distinctly mentioned as the residence of the monarch. Sennacherib was slain there when worshipping in the temple of Nisroch his god. C. 630, couples the capital and the kingdom together, (Zephaniah 2:13) and this is the last mention of Nineveh as an existing city. C. 606. The city was then laid waste, its monuments destroyed and its inhabitants scattered or carried away into captivity. It never rose again from its ruins. This total disappearance of Nineveh is fully confirmed by the records of profane history.
The political history of Nineveh is that of Assyria, of which a sketch has already been given. [Assyria, Asshur] Previous to recent excavations and researches, the ruins which occupied the presumed site of Nineveh seemed to consist of mere shapeless heaps or mounds of earth and rubbish. Unlike the vast masses of brick masonry which mark the site of Babylon, they showed externally no signs of artificial construction, except perhaps here and there the traces of a rude wall of sun-dried bricks.
Some of these mounds were of enormous dimensions, looking in the distance rather like natural elevations than the work of men’s hands. They differ greatly in form, size and height. Some are mere conical heaps, varying from 50 to 150 feet high; others have a broad flat summit, and very precipitous cliff-like sites furrowed by deep ravines worn by the winter rains.
The principal ruins are— (1) The group immediately opposite Mosul, including the great mounds of Kouyunjik and Nebbi Yunus ; (2) that near the junction of the Tigris and Zab comprising the mounds of Nimroud and Athur ; (3) Khorsabad, about ten miles to the east of the former river; (4) Shereef Khan, about 5 1/2 miles to the north Kouyunjik; and (5) Selamiyah, three miles to the north of Nimroud.
—The first traveller who carefully examined the supposed site of Nineveh was Mr. Rich formerly political agent for the East India Company at Bagdad; but his investigations were almost entirely confined to Kouyunjik and the surrounding mounds of which he made a survey in 1820. In 1843 M. Botta, the French consul at Mosul, fully explored the ruins. M. Botta’s discoveries at Khorsabad were followed by those of Mr. Layard at Nimroud and Kouyunjik, made between the years 1846 and 1850.
(Since then very many and important discoveries have been made at Nineveh, more especially those by George Smith, of the British Museum. He has discovered not only the buildings, but the remains of fin ancient library written on stone tablets. These leaves or tablets were from an inch to 1 foot square, made of terra-cotta clay, on which when soft the inscriptions were written; the tablets were then hardened and placed upon the walls of the library rooms, so as to cover the walls. This royal library contained over 10,000 tablets. C. 673) almost doubled it.
Stories or subjects were begun on tablets, and continued on tablets of the same size sometimes to the number of one hundred.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (1898) & Schaff's Bible Dictionary
NIN'EVEH (perhaps dwelling of Nin), the capital and greatest city of Assyria. Situation. - The city was founded by Asshur, Gen 10:11, and was situated on the eastern bank of the river Tigris, opposite the modern town of Mosul. It was about 250 miles in a direct line north of the rival city of Babylon, and not far from 550 miles north-west of the Persian Gulf. Extent. - Assyrian scholars are not agreed in respect to the size of this ancient city. Some, as Layard, regard it as covering a large parallelogram, whose sides were each from 18 to 20 miles long, and the ends 12 to 14 miles wide.
This view would include the ruins now known as Kouyunjik, Nimrud, Khorsabad, and Keremles. Diodorus Siculus makes the circumference of the city 55 miles, including pastures and pleasure-grounds. See article Assyria, p. 82. This view of the great extent of the city is, on the other hand, sharply disputed by Rawlinson, who thinks it highly improbable that this ancient city should have had an area about ten times that of London. He would reject it on two grounds, the one historical and the other topographical.
He maintains that the ruins of Khorsabad, Keremles, Nimrud, and Kouyunjik bear on their bricks distinct local titles, and that these titles are found attaching to distant cities in the historical inscriptions.
" He further claims that Assyrian writers do not consider these places to be parts of Nineveh, but distinct and separate cities; that Calah was for a long time the capital, while Nineveh was a provincial town; that Dur-sargina was built by Sargon - not at Nineveh, but near Nineveh; and that Scripture similarly distinguishes Calah as a place separate from Nineveh, and so far from it that there was room for a great city between them. See Gen 10:12. " Jon 3:3.
He would limit its extent, therefore, to the ruins immediately opposite Mosul, including two principal mounds, known as Nebi-Yunus and Kouyunjik. The latter mound, which lies about half a mile north-west of the former, is the larger of the two. In shape it is an irregular oval, the sides, sloping at a steep angle, furrowed with numerous ravines, worn out by the rains of thirty centuries. The greatest height of the mound is about 95 feet, and it is estimated to cover an area of 100 acres.
The other mound, Nebi-Yunus, is triangular in shape, loftier in height, with more precipitous sides than the other mound, and covers an area of about 40 acres. The reputed tomb of Jonah is on the western side of the mound, while the eastern portion forms a burial-ground for Mohammedans. Nergal's Emblem, the Man-Lion. From Fairbairn. History. - As already stated, Nineveh was founded by Asshur, or, as the marginal reading of Gen 10:11 states, Nimrod. When Nineveh became the capital of Assyria is not definitely known, but it is generally believed it was during the reign of Sennacherib.
The prophecies of the books of Jonah and Nahum are chiefly directed against this city. The latter prophet indicates the mode of its capture. Nah 1:8; Am 2:6, Deut 2:8; Nah 3:18. Nineveh was the capital of Assyria during the height of the grandeur of that empire, and in the time of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal. c. 606. Ruins. -According to George Smith, Nineveh is now represented by the mounds of Kouyunjik or Telarmush, Nebi-Yunus, and some surrounding remains. The circuit of the walls, including these ruins, measures about 8 miles.
The palace-mounds are on the side next to the river Tigris. Excavations have been made by M. Botta, Layard, Hormuzd Rassam, Loftus, and George Smith. ; (5) a temple of Nebo:(6j the south-west palace of Sennacherib; (7) the north-west palace of the same ruler; (8) the city walls built by the latter king and restored by Assurbanipal. , 1875).
Hitchcock's Bible Names (1869)
handsome; agreeable