Nineveh
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Nineveh. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
nin'e-ve, a capital of ancient Assyria. According to all accounts it was a city of size, strength, and magnificence. Jonah was sent to warn Nineveh of its wickedness. The prophet Ezekiel portrays the desolation of Nineveh in the most energetic, vivid imagery. It is now known, however, that his "city of three days' journey" was rather a group of cities. The wealth of the city was due to two facts. It was the seat of the court and it was the center of an enormous caravan trade. In 1841 Botta, the French consul at Mosul, a Turkish town on the Tigris, began exploring a series of huge sand mounds on the opposite or east shore of the river. He became convinced that the tradition assigning this site to Nineyeh was correct. A few years later the English consul, Layard, began excavations also. He found that the plain, for a distance of thirty miles up and down the river, was the site of ancient cities. Nineveh proper he located where Botta had made his excavations. In 1849 he was provided with funds by the British Museum and commissioned to excavate with a view to obtaining the art treasures for which Nineveh was noted. He found that the ancient city had been destroyed, in all probability by fire. When the heap of drifting sand had been dug away, much of the stonework crumbled into powder, showing that it had been exposed to intense heat. Many palaces and halls were found, however, in an excellent state of preservation. Nineveh proper occupied a rectangular space. It was surrounded by brick walls sixteen miles in length. In the northwest portion of the city a palace of twenty-eight rooms was found practically intact. Winged bulls and lions with human heads, and sculptured sphinxes with wings, guarded the gates. The rooms were decorated with bas-reliefs, moldings, and carvings, giving evidence of no little artistic skill. A vast number of reliefs and inscriptions were sent to London, where they are preserved in the Assyrian gallery of the British Museum. In addition to huge sculptures from the ancient city of Sennacherib there are many small articles of interest, as seals, cut stones, writing rolls, fragments bearing cuneiform characters, necklaces, bronze ornaments, dishes, domestic utensils, enameled brick, earthen coffins, and pottery. The walls and show cases of six long rooms are required to display the sculptures and other antiquities from Assyria. In its prime Nineveh was, no doubt, a city of great splendor. It stood on a level plain. It was constructed of brick and enameled tile, or of stone brought from the distant mountains. The following description, condensed by Professor W. M. West from Dr. Hosmer's History of the Jews, gives a vivid picture of a palace in ancient Nineveh. "Upon a huge, wide-spreading, artificial hill, faced with masonry for a platform, rose cliff-like fortress walls a hundred feet more, wide enough for three chariots abreast and with frequent towers shooting up to a still loftier height. Sculptured portals, by which stood silent guardians, colossal figures in white alabaster, the forms of men and beasts, winged and of majestic mien, admitted to the magnificence within. . . .Upward, tier above tier, into the blue heavens, ran lines of colonnades, pillars of costly cedar, cornices glittering with gold, capitals blazing with vermilion, and between them voluminous curtains of silk, purple, and scarlet, interwoven with threads of gold. . . .In the interior, stretching for miles, literally for miles, the builder of the palace ranged the illustrated record of his exploits. The inscriptions were deeply cut in the cuneiform character; and parallel with them, in scarlet and green, gold and silver, ran the representation of the scenes themselves. . . .The mind grows dizzy with the thought of the splendor, the processions of satraps and eunuchs and tributary kings, winding up the stairs, and passing in a radiant stream through the halls-the gold and embroidery, the ivory and the sumptuous furniture, the pearls and the hangings." See Susa ; Bagdad ; Babylon
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or NINUS, an ancient and famous city; capital of the great Assyrian empire; said in Scripture to have been founded by Ninus or Nimrud. It was situated on the E. bank of the Tigris, opposite to the present Mosul. According to classic writers the city was of vast extent, 480 stadia, or more than 60 miles in circumference. Its walls were 100 feet high, and furnished with 1,500 towers, each 200 feet in height. After having been for many centuries the seat of empire, it was taken, after a siege of several years, and destroyed by the united armies of the Medes, under Cyaxares, and the Babylonians, under Nabopolassar, about 625 B. C. When Herodotus, not quite 200 years afterward, and Xenophon visited the spot there remained only ruins. In recent times much excavation work has been done.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's dated the fall of Nineveh to "about 625 B.C."; the Babylonian Chronicle tablets have since fixed it firmly at 612 BC, when the Medes and Babylonians took the city. The classical figures Collier's repeated — a circuit of "more than 60 miles" and 1,500 towers 200 feet high — have not survived survey: the walled city measures roughly 12 km around, enclosing some 750 hectares, still enormous for its day but a fraction of Diodorus's claim. Aiton's credits Botta with locating "Nineveh proper," but his 1843 mounds were Khorsabad, Sargon II's separate capital, and Layard's early digging was at Nimrud; Nineveh itself is the Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus mounds, and it was Hormuzd Rassam in 1853 who found the library tablets from which George Smith read the Flood story in 1872. The site's fate since is grim: it now lies inside greater Mosul, and in 2014-16 ISIS dynamited the shrine of Jonah on Nebi Yunus and wrecked the Nergal and Mashki gates, though tunnelling under the shrine exposed a palace of Esarhaddon and international teams have since begun restoration.
Written for this edition, 2026.