NINEVEH "the Great," the residence of Ninus, as the name means, and one of the most ancient of cities, was the capital of the Assyrian empire. It was built by Asshur, the son of Nimrod,' on the eastern bank of the river Tigris. Its early history is not noticed either by sacred or profane writers; in the time of Jonah, however, в.c. 860, it is described as being "an exceeding great city, of three days' journey ;" and ancient geographers say that it was as large as Babylon, or even larger. It is also stated in the book of Jonah that it contained 120,000 persons who knew not their right hand from their left, a proverbial expression for very young children. Hence it has been

(1) Gen. x. 11. Out of that land went forth Asshur (or, the Assyrian), and builded Nineveh.

calculated that the population amounted to two millions. This number appears small in proportion to the vast extent of ground occupied; but it must be recollected that the cities of the East enclosed many gardens and large spaces of vacant ground, a mode of building common also in the present day. The walls of Nineveh were a hundred feet high, and so broad that three wagons might be driven on them abreast. Upon the wall stood fifteen hundred towers, each two hundred feet in height; and the whole was so strong as to be deemed impregnable. The position of Nineveh, close to a great navigable river, tended to promote not only its security, but its commercial prosperity; it was therefore the principal resort of the merchants who traded between the East and West, and its inhabitants were highly civilized, but idolaters and of corrupt morals. On this account the prophet Jonah was commanded to cry against it: "for their wickedness was come up before God." At the preaching of the man of God, they repented, but soon fell away again, for we find, in the books of Nahum and Zephaniah," the anger of God denounced on it for its falsehood, robbery, and pride. The former prophet foretold that it should be besieged and destroyed by fire, and its inhabitants cut off by the sword until it was empty, and

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(1) Nahum iii. 8. Art thou better than populous No, that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea ?- Ezek. xxxi. 3-7. Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent out her little rivers unto all the trees of the field. Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth. All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches: for his root was by great waters.

(2) Nahum iii. 16. Thou hast multiplied thy merchants above the stars of heaven.

(3) Jonah i. 2.

(4) Nahum iii. 1. Woe to the bloody city! it is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not.

(5) Zeph. ii. 15. This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand.

void, and waste.1 Zephaniah describes it as destined to become a desolation, and a dwelling-place for wild animals. Ezekiel too alludes to it under the image of a cedar of Lebanon, at one time so fair, that "not any tree in the garden of God was like unto it in its beauty;" at another, cut off, its branches fallen, its boughs broken, and its shadow deserted."

In the reign of Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, led a vast army into Judæa, with the intention of reducing Jerusalem, but was obliged to return with shame, a hundred and eighty-five thousand men having been killed in a single night by the angel of the Lord. This loss he never recovered: several of his provinces revolted, and he was assassinated by his own sons. Under his successor, Nineveh rapidly declined, and was finally destroyed by the united forces of the kings of Babylon and Media, about 606 B.C.

The ruins of Nineveh are situated near the modern town of Mosul, but on the opposite bank of the Tigris. No ancient structure of any size is now standing, but numerous masses of ruined masonry, long mounds and ditches scattered over a

(1) Nahum ii. 10. She is empty, and void, and waste: and the heart melteth, and the knees smite together, and much pain is in all loins, and the faces of them all gather blackness.- -Nahum iii. 15. There shall the fire devour thee; the sword shall cut thee off, it shall eat thee up like the canker-worm.

(2) Zeph. ii. 13, 14. And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds: for he shall uncover the cedar-work.

(3) Ezek. xxxi. 8-12. The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him : the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chesnut trees were not like his branches: nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty. I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches: so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him. Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because thou hast lifted up thyself in height, and he hath shot up his top among the thick boughs, and his heart is lifted up in his height; I have therefore delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the heathen; he shall surely deal with him: I have driven him out for his wickedness. And strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off, and have left him : upon the mountains and in all the valleys his branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken by all the rivers of the land; and all the people of the earth are gone down from his shadow, and have left him.

(4) Isa. xxxvii. 36. Then the angel of the Lord went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.

wide surface, point out where once stood "Nineveh, that great city." On one of the mounds has been built a mean village of about three hundred houses, the foundations of which are laid among broken bricks, hewn stones, and fragments of ancient sculpture, some of which still bear inscriptions.

In the village stands a mosque, which is said to cover the tomb of Jonah, and is the largest building in the place. There was formerly a Christian monastery in this spot, the Mahometan building having been erected over the church, which is preserved entire: but no Christian is allowed to enter it. The Christians named their church "the church of Jonah,” from the tradition that the prophet preached in that place, but they deny that he was buried there. On the contrary, they maintain that after his mission he returned to Palestine, where he died, and was buried.

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The tradition which places the tomb of Jonah on this spot has long been considered sufficient to identify the ruins described above with the site of ancient Nineveh. But it appears, from the extraordinary discoveries made by Mr. Layard, in 1845, that this opinion is only partially correct. Ancient Nineveh was in form a double square, two of its opposite sides measuring about twenty miles each, and the other two about ten: so that the whole circuit was sixty miles; and it might therefore be called with reason an exceeding great city, of three days' journey." But the ruins opposite Mosul are scarcely five miles in circumference, and consequently can form only a small portion of the ancient Assyrian capital. About twenty miles lower down the Tigris, and on the eastern side of the river, is another assemblage of mounds, called Nimroud, similar in character to those opposite Mosul. These, owing to their greater distance from any large city, have not been disturbed for centuries; but Mr. Layard, conjecturing that they probably contained ruins, undertook to excavate them, and finally, after having surmounted difficulties which would have utterly daunted a less resolute man, brought to light the remains of a splendid palace, or rather series of palaces, decorated with painted alabaster sculptures,

(1) Jonah iii. 3.

representing kings and nobles engaged in war and hunting, religious processions, figures of idols, some of Egyptian origin, others illustrating the peculiar forms of Assyrian worship denounced by the prophets,' but all belonging to so remote antiquity that he could not doubt the fact, that "before these wonderful forms, Ezekiel, Jonah, and others of the prophets stood, and Sennacherib bowed; that even the patriarch Abraham himself may possibly have looked upon them."

These structures, Mr. Layard, for satisfactory reasons, believes to be more ancient than those opposite Mosul; and he is inclined to the opinion either that Nimroud is identical with part of the most ancient city of Nineveh, and that the mound on which the tomb of Jonah stands, covers the remains of a palace subsequently erected; or, that both these remains were comprised within the limits of the Assyrian capital, the opposite angles being represented by two similar mounds, (which also contain ruined palaces,) situated at such a distance from the river as would make the limits of the city agree exactly with the description of the old geographers. The fact that, in this country, dwelling-houses were anciently, as now, constructed of unbaked bricks, sufficiently accounts for the disappearance of all remains of houses in the intervening space; that material being of so perishable a nature that constant repairs are required to prevent such structures from crumbling into dust.

Thus, after having been buried twenty-five centuries, her own records and even her place having been lost, "Nineveh the great" has, as it were, risen from the dead, to verify the records of the family of a humble but faithful man-the "Syrian ready to perish"-who, in the days of Nineveh's prosperity, became an exile, and turned from her dumb idols, to receive, in exchange, the oracles of God.

(1) Ezek. xxiii. 14, 15. She saw men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity.