Its chief city and provincial capital is Mosul, which lies across the Tigris river from the ruins of ancient Nineveh.

Layard remained in the neighbourhood of Mosul, carrying on excavations at Kuyunjik and Nimrud, and investigating the condition of various peoples, until 1847 ; and, returning to England in 1848, published Nineveh and its Remains: with an Account of a Visit to the Chaldaean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, and an Inquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians ( 2 vols., 1848 – 1849 ).

Nineveh and its Remains.

* Nineveh and its Remains ( vol.

* Nineveh and its Remains ( vol.

* First volume of Austen H. Layard's Nineveh and its Remains

The modern discovery of Babylonia and Assyria begins with excavations in Nineveh in 1845, which revealed the Library of Ashurbanipal.

Nineveh is compared to Thebes, the Egyptian city that Assyria itself had destroyed in 663 BCE.

In the 1840s and 1850s the Museum supported excavations in Assyria by A. H. Layard and others at sites such as Nimrud and Nineveh.

The Medes, Persians, Chaldean ruled Babylonians, together with the Scythians and Cimmerians attacked Assyria in 616 BC, and by 612 BC, after five years of bitter fighting, the alliance had sacked Nineveh, killing Sin-shar-ishkun in the process.

According to a recent hypothesis, the Archimedes screw may have been used by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, for the water systems at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Nineveh in the 7th century BC, although mainstream scholarship holds it to be a Greek invention of later times.

Some modern translations interpret " Ashur " in the Hebrew of this verse as the country " Assyria " rather than a person, thus making Nimrod the builder of Nineveh.

Nineveh was the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire (); and ostensibly was the home of King Sennacherib, King of Assyria, during the Biblical reign of King Hezekiah and the prophetic career of Isaiah.

The study of the archaeology of Nineveh reveals the wealth and glory of ancient Assyria under kings such as Esarhaddon ( 681 – 669 BC ) and Ashurbanipal ( 669 – 626 BC ).

* The late 8th century BC siege system surrounding the site of Lachish ( Tell el-Duweir ) in Israel, built by Sennacherib of Assyria in 701 BC, is not only evident in the archaeological remains, but is described in Assyrian and biblical sources and in the reliefs of Sennacherib's palace in Nineveh.

Assyria n warship ( probably built by Phoenicians ) with two rows of oars, relief from Nineveh, ca.

Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria who created " the first systematically collected library " at Nineveh

* c. 668 BC: Nineveh, capital of Assyria becomes the largest city of the world, taking the lead from Thebes in Egypt.

* 625 BC: Medes and Babylonians assert their independence from Assyria and attack Nineveh ( approximate date ).

* c. 612 BC: Babylon, capital of Babylonia becomes the largest city of the world, taking the lead from Nineveh, capital of Assyria.

* 704 BC: Sennacherib moves the capital of Assyria to Nineveh.

* Battle of Nineveh ( 612 BC ) ( Fall of Assyria )

* 612 BC — Estimation: Babylon, capital of Babylonia becomes the largest city of the world, taking the lead from Nineveh, capital of Assyria.

* 625 BC — Medes and Babylonians assert their independence from Assyria and attack Nineveh ( approximate date ).

* 668 BC: Nineveh, capital of Assyria becomes the largest city of the world, taking the lead from Thebes in Egypt ( estimation ).

* 704 BC — Sennacherib moves the capital of Assyria to Nineveh.

Nebuchadnezzar was the oldest son and successor of Nabopolassar, who delivered Babylon from its dependence on Assyria and laid Nineveh in ruins.

Commonly thought of as a form of paganism, Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic, worshipping over 2100 different deities, many of which were associated with a specific city or state within Mesopotamia such as Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Assur, Nineveh, Ur, Uruk, Mari and Babylon.

These and the other towers have overhanging parapets just like the mediaeval machicolations, and are finished at top with battlements, remains of which have been found at Nimroud and Kouyunjik, and at Kale Shortage, the supposed capital of Assyria before Nineveh.

Ninus (), according to Greek historians writing in the Hellenistic period and later, was accepted as the eponymous founder of Nineveh ( also called Νίνου πόλις " city of Ninus " in Greek ), Ancient capital of Assyria, although he does not seem to represent any one personage known to modern history, and is more likely a conflation of several real and / or fictional figures of antiquity, as seen to the Greeks through the mists of time.

In many modern interpretations of the Hebrew text of Genesis 10, it is Nimrod, the son of Cush, who founded Nineveh ; other translations ( e. g., the KJV ) render the same Torah verse as naming Ashur ( Assyria ), son of Shem, as the founder of Nineveh.

* John Murray ( 1867 ), Nineveh and its remains: a narrative of an expedition to Assyria during the years 1845, 1846 and 1847

The destruction of the Assyrian capitals of Nineveh and Assur by the Babylonians, Medes and their allies ensured that much of the bilingual elite ( but not all ) were wiped out.

It tells the story of a Hebrew prophet named Jonah ben Amittai who is sent by God to prophesy the destruction of Nineveh but tries to escape the divine mission.

Jonah had already uttered his message of warning, and Nahum was followed by Zephaniah, who also predicted ( Zephaniah 2: 4-15 ) the destruction of the city, predictions which were remarkably fulfilled ( 625 BC ) when Nineveh was destroyed apparently by fire, and the Assyrian empire came to an end, an event which changed the face of Asia.

The collection was dramatically enlarged by the excavations of A. H. Layard at the Assyrian sites of Nimrud and Nineveh between 1845 and 1851.

Layard's work was continued by his assistant, Hormuzd Rassam and in 1852 – 1854 he went on to discover the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh with many magnificent reliefs, including the famous Royal Lion Hunt scenes.

* 627 – Battle of Nineveh: A Byzantine army under Emperor Heraclius defeats Emperor Khosrau II's Persian forces, commanded by General Rhahzadh.

Ordered by God to go to the city of Nineveh to prophesy against it " for their great wickedness is come up before me ," Jonah seeks instead to flee from " the presence of the Lord " by going to Jaffa and sailing to Tarshish, which, geographically, is in the opposite direction.

Jonah's mission to the Ninevites is commemorates by the Fast of Nineveh in Syriac and Oriental Orthodox Churches.

An elaborate system of eighteen canals brought water from the hills to Nineveh, and several sections of a magnificently constructed aqueduct erected by Sennacherib were discovered at Jerwan, about distant.

But it is also possible that it took three days to cover all its neighborhoods by walking, which would match the size of ancient Nineveh.

The ruins of Nineveh, with the whole area included within the parallelogram they form by lines drawn from the one to the other, are generally regarded as consisting of these four sites.

On the basis of texts of Sennacherib, the site has traditionally been identified as the " armory " of Nineveh, and a gate and pavements excavated by Iraqis in 1954 have been considered to be part of the " armory " complex.

The ruins of Nineveh are surrounded by the remains of a massive stone and mudbrick wall dating from about 700 BC.

The site of Nineveh is exposed to decay of its reliefs by a lack of proper protective roofing, vandalism and looting holes dug into chamber floors.

However, the Assyrian king, Sin-shar-ishkun was plagued by constant revolt in Nineveh, and was thus unable to eject Nabopolassar.

* The Babylonian Legends of the Creation and the Fight between Bel and the Dragon, as told by Assyrian Tablets from Nineveh, 1921 ( a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries ; DjVu & layered PDF format )

However, some scholars argue that they may have been constructed by a queen from the Assyrian city, Nineveh.

A tablet unearthed in 1854 by Austen Henry Layard in Nineveh reveals Ashurbanipal as an " avenger ", seeking retribution for the humiliations the Elamites had inflicted on the Mesopotamians over the centuries: