NINEVEH

the oldest and most populous city of the ancient Assyrian Empire, situated on the east bank of the Tigris opposite modern Mosul (in Iraq). From time immemorial, roads from the foothills of Kurdistan debouched there, and a tributary of the Tigris, the Khawsar River, added to the value of the fertile agricultural and pastoral lands in the district. The first person to survey and map Nineveh was the archaeologist Claudius J. Rich in 1820, a work later completed by Felix Jones and published by him in 1854. Excavations have been undertaken intermittently since that period by many persons. A.H. (later Sir Henry) Layard during 184551 discovered the palace of Sennacherib and took back to England an unrivalled collection of stone bas-reliefs together with thousands of tablets inscribed in cuneiform from the great library of Ashurbanipal. Hormuzd Rassam continued the work in 1852. During 192932 R. Campbell Thompson excavated the temple of Nabu (Nebo) on behalf of the British Museum and discovered the site of the palace of Ashurnasirpal II. In 193132, together with M.E.L. (later Sir Max) Mallowan, Thompson for the first time dug a shaft from the top of the Quyunjik (Acropolis), 90 feet (30 metres) above the level of the plain, down through strata of accumulated debris of earlier cultures to virgin soil. It was then proved that more than four-fifths of this great accumulation is prehistoric. Additional reading A.H. Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, with an Enquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1849); Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan and the Desert (1853); R. Campbell Thompson, R.W. Hutchinson, and M.E.L. Mallowan, in Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, 18:79112, 19:55116, 20:71186 (193133), containing accounts of the excavations on the site of the palace of Ashurnasirpal in 192930, on the site of the Temple of Ishtar in 193132, and in the mound of Quyunjik; R. Campbell Thompson and R.W. Hutchinson, A Century of Exploration of Nineveh (1929); J.P.G. Finch, The Winged Bulls at the Nergal Gate of Nineveh, Iraq, 10:918 (1948); Tariq Madhloum, Excavations at Nineveh: A Preliminary Report (19651967), Sumer, 23:7682 (1967), a short account of the excavations and restoration work carried out in 196567 necessitated by the development and rapid growth of the city of Mosul; and Nineveh (19671968) Campaign, Sumer, 24:4552 (1968), containing the results of further excavation work.