NINEVEH

The final capital of the Neo-Assyrians was Nineveh. Sennacherib (704—681 BC), who chose this old city for new duty, enlarged and refurbished it, and left a detailed account of his good works. He built a lavish palace, called the “Incomparable Palace,” planted a wonderful park full of many varieties of herbs and fruit trees, created a reserve for birds and wild animals, and had stone aqueducts and water channels cut through over 80km of varying terrain to bring water to the city. But this nature-loving monarch did not shrink from kingly duty. He dealt harshly with unrest throughout the empire and struck a hard deal with the king ofJudah in exchange for sparing Jerusalem. He even sacked and destroyed rebellious Babylon, despite the veneration long accorded its prestigious gods throughout Mesopotamia. “To quiet the heart of Ashur, my lord, that peoples should bow in submission before his exalted might, I removed the dust of Babylon for presents to the (most) distant peoples, and in that Temple of the New Year Festival (in Assur) I stored up (some) in a covered jar” (Roux 1980: 297).

This time such arrogance did not go unpunished. Sennacherib was murdered by his son or sons while praying in a temple, “smashed with statues of protective deities” (Roux 1980: 298). And some seventy-five years later the Babylonians would take their revenge.

Nineveh occupies a large area on the east bank of the Tigris across from Mosul, in modern times the largest city of northern Iraq, and has been much explored from the mid-nineteenth century to the present (Figure 10.7). The walls of the seventh century BC measure almost 13km in length, enclosing a huge area of 750ha, the largest city yet known in the Ancient Near East. Only Babylon would eventually surpass it (see below). Fifteen gateways have been identified. The west

Sector, alongside the river, includes two prominent mounds, a pattern familiar from other NeoAssyrian sites: the citadel and the arsenal. The former, here known as Kuyunjik, was investigated by such nineteenth-century pioneers as Botta, Layard, Place, and Rassam. Here stood the palaces of Sennacherib and the last of the great kings of Assyria, Assurbanirpal (668—627 BC).

The latter mound, called Nebi Yunus, lies 1km south of Kuyunjik; the two are separated by the Khosr River, a tributary of the Tigris that divides the ancient city into northern and southern halves. The Nebi Yunus mound has on it a Muslim shrine associated with Jonah, the prophet who preached to the Ninevites after he was liberated from the belly of a big fish. Excavations in and around this religious site have been restricted. Nonetheless, it has been clearly established that the nerve center of the Assyrian war machine was located here.

Apart from these two major mounds, excavations have been carried out in the north-west corner of the city, where the “old city mound” was not built upon by the king, but instead served as an upper-class district. Workshops for ceramics and copper were found nearby. The vast remaining sections of the city, the Lower Town, were little explored until a surface survey conducted in 1990. The Gulf War of 1991 put a stop to this. But with the city of Mosul expanding into the south part of the ancient city, the resumption of this important salvage work is urgently needed.

Both royal palaces on the Kuyunjik mound have yielded impressive sculptured slabs. Subjects conform to those used in the time of Assurnasirpal II, as seen at Kalhu, with the king’s might illustrated by triumphs in lion hunts and military campaigns (Figure 10.8). Assurbanipal’s first victory over the Elamites is celebrated in a startling relief from his palace at Nineveh (Figure 10.9). The king, reclining on a couch in a pleasant garden, and his queen, seated in a heavy chair, are fanned by attendants as they drink. To the far left a harpist plays. In the middle of this idyllic scene a head hangs from a tree, the head of Teumman, the Elamite king killed in the Battle of Til-Tuba. In this matter-of-fact way the fate of enemies and the sangfroid of monarchs were impressed upon those privileged to see the sculptural decorations of the royal palace.

Figure 10.8 Capture of Ethiopians from an Egyptian city, relief sculpture, from Nineveh. British Museum, London

Figure 10.9 Assurbanipal and his queen, relief sculpture, from Nineveh. British Museum, London