Nineveh

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Nineveh \Nineveh\ prop. n.
     An ancient Assyrian city.
     [WordNet 1.5]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:



  Nineveh
       n : an ancient Assyrian city on the Tigris across from the
           modern city of Mosul in the northern part of what is now
           known as Iraq

From Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary [easton]:

  Nineveh
     First mentioned in Gen. 10:11, which is rendered in the Revised
     Version, "He [i.e., Nimrod] went forth into Assyria and builded
     Nineveh." 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.
     
       About B.C. 633 the Assyrian empire began to show signs of
     weakness, and Nineveh was attacked by the Medes, who
     subsequently, about B.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. In fulfilment of prophecy, God made "an utter end
     of the place." It became a "desolation."
     
       In the days of the Greek historian Herodotus, B.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.
     
       One of the most remarkable of recent discoveries is that of
     the library of King Assur-bani-pal, or, as the Greek historians
     call him, Sardanapalos, the grandson of Sennacherib (q.v.). (See {ASNAPPER}.) 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. (See {SARGON}.)
     
       "The Assyrian royalty is, perhaps, the most luxurious of our
     century [reign of Assur-bani-pa]...Its victories and conquests,
     uninterrupted for one hundred years, have enriched it with the
     spoil of twenty peoples. Sargon has taken what remained to the
     Hittites; Sennacherib overcame Chaldea, and the treasures of
     Babylon were transferred to his coffers; Esarhaddon and
     Assur-bani-pal himself have pillaged Egypt and her great cities,
     Sais, Memphis, and Thebes of the hundred gates...Now foreign
     merchants flock into Nineveh, bringing with them the most
     valuable productions from all countries, gold and perfume from
     South Arabia and the Chaldean Sea, Egyptian linen and
     glass-work, carved enamels, goldsmiths' work, tin, silver,
     Phoenician purple; cedar wood from Lebanon, unassailable by
     worms; furs and iron from Asia Minor and Armenia" (Ancient Egypt
     and Assyria, by G. Maspero, page 271).
     
       The bas-reliefs, alabaster slabs, and sculptured monuments
     found in these recovered palaces serve in a remarkable manner to
     confirm the Old Testament history of the kings of Israel. The
     appearance of the ruins shows that the destruction of the city
     was due not only to the assailing foe but also to the flood and
     the fire, thus confirming the ancient prophecies concerning it.
     "The recent excavations," says Rawlinson, "have shown that fire
     was a great instrument in the destruction of the Nineveh
     palaces. Calcined alabaster, charred wood, and charcoal,
     colossal statues split through with heat, are met with in parts
     of the Nineveh mounds, and attest the veracity of prophecy."
     
       Nineveh in its glory was (Jonah 3:4) an "exceeding great city
     of three days' journey", i.e., probably in circuit. This would
     give a circumference of about 60 miles. At the four corners of
     an irregular quadrangle are the ruins of Kouyunjik, Nimrud,
     Karamless and Khorsabad. These four great masses of ruins, with
     the whole area included within the parallelogram they form by
     lines drawn from the one to the other, are generally regarded as
     composing the whole ruins of Nineveh.
     

From Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary (late 1800's) [hitchcock]:

  Nineveh, handsome; agreeable
  

From U.S. Gazetteer (1990) [gazetteer]:

  Nineveh, IN
    Zip code(s): 46164
  Nineveh, NY
    Zip code(s): 13813
  Nineveh, PA
    Zip code(s): 15353