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<< Our Photo Pages >> Nineveh - Ancient Village or Settlement in Iraq

Submitted by AlexHunger on Monday, 25 November 2013  Page Views: 13468

Multi-periodSite Name: Nineveh Alternative Name: Ninua
Country: Iraq Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Mosul  Nearest Village: Kuyunjik
Latitude: 36.366840N  Longitude: 43.156343E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
2 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
5 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4

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Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by dodomad : A bas relief showing that Nineveh might be the more likely site of the garden. Image courtesy Oxford University Press (Vote or comment on this photo)
Nineveh, as mentioned in the Bible, was an important city in ancient Assyria at the confluence of the Tigris and Khosr river, where it controlled trade routes between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean.

According to Hellenistic texts Ninus was the eponymous founder of Nineveh. Nineveh was mentioned about 1800 BCE as the location of the temple of Ištar. Nineveh was a vassals city of Mitanni's until the mid 14th century BCE, when the Assyrian kings of Assur seized it. The neo-Assyrian kings, particularly Ashurnasirpal II who reigned between 883 and 859 BCE started building great monuments.

Successive kings repaired and founded new palaces and temples to Sîn, Nergal, Šamaš, Ištar, and Nabiu of Borsippa. Sennacherib in 700 BCE laid out fresh avenues and squares and built a great palace about 210 by 200 Meters. A large number of clay tablets were found in the palace and allowed us to reconstruct the Epic of Gilgamesh. Nineveh had 15 great gates in its walls and 18 canals bringing water from the hills for the more than 100,000 inhabitants. Assyria was a very militaristic state which conquered much of the middle east.

Nineveh was, however, destroyed in 612 BCE by the Medes, Babylonians and Susianians and remained unoccupied until the city of Mosul on the opposite bank of the river Tigris rose up again centuries later. In the early 19th century, the French consul at Mosul began to research the mounds on the opposite bank of the Tigris.

Later, in 1847 Sir Austen Henry Layard first excavated the ruins in the Kuyunjik mound and rediscovered the palace of Sennacherib across the Tigris River from Mosul, with its 71 rooms and colossal bas-reliefs and the famous library of Ashurbanipal with 22,000 inscribed clay tablets. Bas Relief stone slabs are now in many western museums, such as the British Museum, Pergamon Museum and the Metropolitan. The mound at Kuyunjik was excavated by British Museum archaeologists in the early 1900s who discovered the Temple of Nabu.

Note: “What we are proposing is that these demographic and climatic factors played an indirect but significant role in the demise of the Assyrian Empire,” See latest comment.
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Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by davidmorgan : Part of the Lion Hunt relief from the north palace at Nineveh, late 7th century BCE. In the British Museum. (1 comment - Vote or comment on this photo)

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by davidmorgan : Part of the Lion Hunt relief from the north palace at Nineveh, late 7th century BCE. In the British Museum. (1 comment - Vote or comment on this photo)

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by davidmorgan (Vote or comment on this photo)

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by davidmorgan : Part of the Lion Hunt relief from the north palace at Nineveh, late 7th century BCE. In the British Museum. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by durhamnature : Drawing from "The History of Egypt" via archive.org Site in Iraq (Vote or comment on this photo)

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by h_fenton : An Assyrian relief from Nineveh, depicting a soldier escorting captives and loot from a Babylonian city in central or southern Iraq. Early 7th century BC. This relief is in: The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, United Kingdom Photographed: 30 December 2009

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by durhamnature : Old plan of the city, from "Babylonian Expedition...." via archive.org Site in Iraq (1 comment)

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by durhamnature : Fighting in the forest, from "History of Egypt...." via archive.org Site in Iraq

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by durhamnature : Sennacherib's palace, from "Ninevah and Babylon" via archive.org Site in Iraq

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by durhamnature : Underneath Ninevah, from "Ninevah and Babylon" via archive.org Site in Iraq

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by durhamnature : Old plan of part of Ninevah, from "Ninevah and Babylon" via archive.org Site in Iraq

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by durhamnature : Relief showing domes at Ninevah, from "Mesopotamian Archaeology" via archive.org Site in Iraq

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by durhamnature : Old photo from "Mesopotamian Archaeology" via archive.org Site in Iraq

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by durhamnature

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by durhamnature : Old photo from "The Romance of Excavation..." a wonderful book via archive.org Site in Iraq

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by AngieLake : Royal Albert Memorial Museum: A marble Cuneiform tablet from Nineveh, Mesopotamia, about 700 BC. "Cuneiform script was first used over 5000 years ago. It was the earliest form of written expression and was used for several different language systems."

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by AlexHunger : Bas relief of wall plaque representing Assyrian God dated to ca 700 BCE from Nineveh at the Berlin Pergamum museum. (2 comments)

Nineveh
Nineveh submitted by AlexHunger : Stele of King Asahaddon dating to ca 671 BCE from Nineveh at the Berlin Pergamum museum.

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Climate change and population growth may be factors in Assyrian Empire collapse by bat400 on Wednesday, 11 February 2015
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Archaeological, historical, and palaeoclimatic evidence suggests that climatic factors and population growth might have contributed to the decline of the Assyrian Empire along with civil wars and political unrest.

This is the claim of Adam Schneider of the University of California-San Diego in the US, and Selim Adali of the Research Centre for Anatolian Civilisations in Turkey, in a report published in the journal Climatic Change.

In the 9th century BC, the Assyrian Empire of northern Iraq relentlessly started to expand into most of the ancient Near East. It reached its height in the early 7th century BC, becoming the largest of its kind in the Near East up to that time. The Assyrian Empire’s subsequent quick decline by the end of the 7th century has puzzled scholars ever since. Most ascribe it to civil wars, political unrest, and the destruction of the Assyrian capital, Nineveh, by a coalition of Babylonian and Median forces in 612 BC. Nevertheless, it has remained a mystery why the Assyrian state, the military superpower of the age, succumbed so suddenly and so quickly.

Schneider and Adali argue that factors such as population growth and droughts also contributed to the Assyrian downfall. Recently published palaeoclimate data show that conditions in the Near East became more arid during the latter half of the 7th century BC. During this time, the region also experienced significant population growth when people from conquered lands were forcibly resettled there. The authors contend that this substantially reduced the state’s ability to withstand a severe drought such as the one that hit the Near East in 657 BC. They also note that within five years of this drought, the political and economic stability of the Assyrian state had eroded, resulting in a series of civil wars that fatally weakened it.

“What we are proposing is that these demographic and climatic factors played an indirect but significant role in the demise of the Assyrian Empire,” says Schneider.

Thanks to coldrum for the link. Source: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com
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Finding Babylon's Hanging Garden - Secret History - UK Channel 4 by Andy B on Monday, 25 November 2013
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The Hanging Garden of Babylon is the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world for which no archaeological evidence has ever been found. Centuries of digging have turned up nothing, and many people assume it never existed.

But has everyone simply been looking in the wrong place? Oxford academic Stephanie Dalley has decoded an ancient, long-overlooked text in the British Museum and now believes that the gardens were built by another man, in another time, in another location.

She travels to war-torn northern Iraq to gather evidence to support her controversial new theory and try to solve this ancient mystery.

Part of Channel 4's Secret History strand

Next on
Friday 6th December, 1:55am
Sunday 8th December, 8:00pm
or online:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/finding-babylons-hanging-garden/4od



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Was the legendary 'Hanging Garden' in Nineveh? by Andy B on Monday, 25 November 2013
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The legendary 'Hanging Garden of Babylon' has since ancient times been recognised as one of the Seven Wonders of the World – but no trace of it has ever been found.

After 20 years of research, Dr Stephanie Dalley may have discovered why.

Dr Dalley, an honorary research fellow at Somerville College and part of the Oriental Institute at Oxford University, believes the garden was actually created at Nineveh, 300 miles from Babylon, in the early seventh century BC. She argues that it was built by the Assyrians in the north of Mesopotamia – modern-day Iraq - at the instigation of the Assyrian king, Sennacherib.

One piece of evidence is a record of description by Sennacherib of an ‘unrivalled palace’ and a ‘wonder for all peoples’. He describes the marvel of a water-raising screw made using a new method of casting bronze.

A recent excavation near Nineveh found traces of an aqueduct with the inscription: 'Sennacherib king of the world ... Over a great distance I had a watercourse directed to the environs of Nineveh'.

Dr Dalley also believes the landscapes of Babylon and Nineveh support her conclusion - the flat countryside around Babylon would have made it impossible to deliver water to the raised gardens as described in classical sources.

Dr Dalley suggests that after Assyria conquered Babylon in 689BC, the Assyrian capital Nineveh may have been seen as the ‘New Babylon’, which could have created the confusion. Earlier research showed that after Sennacherib conquered Babylon, he renamed all the gates of Nineveh after the names used for Babylon’s city gates.

Moreover, Dr Dalley believes the Hanging Garden may in fact have been depicted in a bas-relief from Sennacherib's palace in Nineveh, which shows trees growing on a roofed colonnade as described in classical accounts of the 'Babylon' gardens (see image below).

It has taken many years to find the evidence to demonstrate that the gardens and associated system of aqueducts and canals were built by Sennacherib at Nineveh and not by Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon,' Dr Dalley says.

'For the first time it can be shown that the Hanging Gardens really did exist.'

The Mystery Of The Hanging Garden Of Babylon by Stephanie Dalley is published by Oxford University Press

Source: Oxford University

The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199662266/megalithicmyst0a


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Babylon's hanging garden: ancient scripts give clue to missing wonder by davidmorgan on Wednesday, 29 May 2013
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A British academic has gathered evidence suggesting garden was created at Nineveh, 300 miles from Babylon.

The whereabouts of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world – the fabled Hanging Garden of Babylon – has been one of the great mysteries from antiquity. The inability of archaeologists to find traces of it among Babylon's ancient remains led some even to doubt its existence.

Now a British academic has amassed a wealth of textual evidence to show that the garden was instead created at Nineveh, 300 miles from Babylon, in the early 7th century BC.

After 18 years of study, Stephanie Dalley of Oxford University has concluded that the garden was built by the Assyrians in the north of Mesopotamia – in modern Iraq – rather than by their great enemies the Babylonians in the south.

She believes her research shows that the feat of engineering and artistry was achieved by the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, rather than the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar.

The evidence presented by Dalley, an expert in ancient Middle Eastern languages, emerged from deciphering Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform scripts and reinterpreting later Greek and Roman texts. They included a 7th-century BC Assyrian inscription that, she discovered, had been mistranslated in the 1920s, reducing passages to "absolute nonsense".

She was astonished to find Sennacherib's own description of an "unrivalled palace" and a "wonder for all peoples". He describes the marvel of a water-raising screw made using a new method of casting bronze – and predating the invention of Archimedes' screw by some four centuries.

Dalley said this was part of a complex system of canals, dams and aqueducts to bring mountain water from streams 50 miles away to the citadel of Nineveh and the hanging garden. The script records water being drawn up "all day".
Location of the 'Hanging Gardens'

Recent excavations have found traces of aqueducts. One near Nineveh was so vast that Dalley said its remains looked like a stretch of motorway from the air, and it bore a crucial inscription: "Sennacherib king of the world … Over a great distance I had a watercourse directed to the environs of Nineveh …"

Having first broached her theory in 1992, Dalley is now presenting a mass of evidence in a book, The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon, which Oxford University Press publishes on 23 May. She expects to divide academic opinion, but the evidence convinces her that Sennacherib's garden fulfils the criteria for a wonder of the world – "magnificent in conception, spectacular in engineering, and brilliant in artistry".

Dalley said: "That the Hanging Garden was built in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar the Great is a fact learned at school and … 'verified' in encyclopaedias … To challenge such a universally accepted truth might seem the height of arrogance, revisionist scholarship ... But Assyriology is a relatively recent discipline … Facts that once seemed secure become redundant."

Sennacherib's palace, with steps of semi-precious stone and an entrance guarded by colossal copper lions, was magnificent. Dalley pieced together ancient texts to reveal a garden that recreated a mountain landscape. It boasted terraces, pillared walkways, exotic plants and trees, and rippling streams.

The seven wonders appear in classical texts written centuries after the garden was created, but the 1st-century historian Josephus was the only author to name Nebuchadnezzar as creator of the Hanging Garden, Dalley said. She found extensive confusion over names and places in ancient texts, including the Book of Judith, muddling the two kings.

Little of Nineveh – near present-day Mosul – has so far been explored, because it has been judged too dangerous until now to conduct excavations.

h

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Saving Ancient Nineveh by coldrum on Monday, 24 October 2011
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Saving Ancient Nineveh

After 2,700 years, the walls and gates of ancient Nineveh can still be seen near the banks of the Tigris river just opposite the modern city of Mosul in Iraq. In ancient times, it was the capital of the great Assyrian empire, a city of more than 100,000 people, and it was a subject of a supreme being's attention throughout the books of the Old and New Testaments in the biblical account. "Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Ammittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me."[1] The prophet Jonah's efforts there were rewarded. Nineveh, at least for a time, was saved from destruction. But the city of Nineveh today will require a different kind of saving. There are comparatively few people living there now. It features mostly ruins. Even the ruins, however, will disappear unless, according to the Global Heritage Network's early warning system, urgent steps are taken to arrest the elements that endanger it and to restore and protect what is left.

Not an easy thing to do these days in a war-torn country. War has distracted and preoccupied the energies of a people who otherwise could be identifying and procuring the necessary resources needed to save and protect the city.

But long before war, it has been plagued by looting and vandalism. Artifacts have appeared on international markets for sale, reliefs have been marred by vandalism, and chamber floors have seen holes dug into them by looters hoping to find anything that will yield cash for their needs. The expanding suburbs of adjacent Mosul, too, threaten it with encroachment, with sewer and water lines having already been dug and new settlements already established within the area once occupied by the ancient city.

Even without looting, vandalism and suburban encroachment, however, Nineveh will crumble and succumb to the natural elements. Reports the Global Heritage Fund (GHF)*, a non-profit organization that specializes in saving and restoring archaeological sites, "without proper roofing for protection, Nineveh’s ancient walls and reliefs are becoming more and more damaged by natural elements every day. Exploration of the city is an important objective at this time, but preservation measures would go a long way as well".[2]

Historically, the site of ancient Nineveh, which consists of two large mounds, Kouyunjik and Nabī Yūnus ("Prophet Jonah"), has been the subject of numerous excavations and exploratory expeditions since the mid-19th century. Beginning with French Consul General at Mosul, Paul-Émile Botta in 1842, and most notably through the excavations of famous British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard (pictured right) and many others thereafter, the remains of Nineveh became one of the sensational archaeological revelations of modern times. Before that, Nineveh, unlike the clearly visible remains of other well-known sites such as Palmyra, Persepolis, and Thebes, was invisible, hidden beneath unexplored mounds. Even historical knowledge of the Assyrian Empire and its capital city was sparse in the beginning, changed primarily by the great archaeological discoveries that followed Botta's initial attempts. One palace after another was discovered, including the lost palace of Sennacherib with its 71 rooms and enormous bas-reliefs, the palace and library of Ashurbanipal, which included 22,000 cuneiform tablets. Fragments of prisms were discovered, recording the annals of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal, including one almost complete prism of Esarhaddon. Massive gates and mudbrick ramparts and walls were unearthed. The walls encompassed an area within a 12-kilometer circumference. Many unburied skeletons were found, evidencing violent deaths and attesting to the final battle and siege of Nineveh that destroyed the city and soon brought an end to the Assyrian Empire.

Despite its long history of excavation, the ancient site of Nineveh leaves much to be explored. But

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