Nineveh, third Assyrian capital

The city of Nineveh had a glorious history that made the province assume its name. It was the third Assyrian capital after Assur and Nimrod, and its position in the center of the original Assyrian lands between the Tigris and Zab rivers gave it an added administrative and religious importance. But it had been a cultural settlement since long before, right through Sumerian and Babylonian periods. In fact the name of Nineveh is of Sumerian origin.

Nineveh was ruled by a number of great Assyrian kings, such as Sargon II (721-705 BC), before he moved to Dur Sharrukin (Khorsabad), succeeded by his son Sennacherib (705-681 BC) who abandoned his father's new capital and went back to Nineveh. Esarhaddon (681-669) and Assur-bani-pal (619-626), all of whom enlarged and built up the city and made it the center of the civilized world of their time. Sennacherib brought water to it in an 80km.long canal from river Gomel, built a dam for water regulation, the remains of which are still visible somewhere near the eastern wall, and filled the city and its environs with gardens and orchards to which he brought some rare trees.

On rising ground one can see the remains of the ancient walls, partly reconstructed, 12kms.in circumference. There were 15 gates each called after an Assyrian god. The two most prominent mounds of ruins are Kuyunjik and Nabi Younis. On the latter hill rises now the Mosque of Prophet Younis (Jonah). King Esarhaddon had once built a palace on this very hill.

On Kuyunjik hill are the remains of the most important palaces of the period: Sennacherib's palace, with 71 chambers and halls and 27 entrances, embellished with winged bulls and lions. The walls has long series of bas-reliefs most of which were taken to the British Museum, as they were dug up by quite unscientifically by European excavators in the middle of the 19th century, when Iraq was still under Ottoman domination. Assurbanipal left a magnificent library with thousand of clay tablets which he had collected from various cities and which preserved for us much of the lore and knowledge of ancient Mesopotamia.

State Board of Antiquities and Heritage has worked hard on certain parts of the site and succeeded to reconstruct them.