Nineveh Ninawa Iraq

Nineveh, strategically situated on the main river crossing in the fertile northern Mesopotamian plain, is mentioned about 1800 BCE as a center of worship of Ishtar, whose cult is responsible for the city's early importance.

Only intermittently governed by local rulers, Nineveh had been dominated in the third millennium BCE by the Agade and Ur empires, and will be dominated by the Mitanni and Kassite empires later in the second millennium.

A temple is erected in the mid-second millennium at the ancient site of Tepe Gawra, fifteen miles (twenty-four kilometers) northeast of present Mosul, Iraq, near the site of Nineveh, occupied from approximately 5000 to 1500 BCE.

The temple, among the earliest known in northern Mesopotamia, contains a number of features basic to Mesopotamian temples in subsequent periods; it is the earliest known temple to be decorated with pilasters and recesses.

Entry is through a stairway leading to a platform; its center is a cella, along one side of which is placed an altar and offering table.

Subsidiary rooms in the corner bastions are set off from the central area.

The temple's walls are buttressed both inside and out, an architectural feature that distinguishes Mesopotamian temples from secular buildings.

…Nineveh, which, like the other principal cities of Assyria, is situated in the Tigris River valley.

The goddess’s cult statue at Nineveh had been sent to Pharaoh Amenhotep III of Egypt by orders of the king of Mitanni; the city had remained one of Mitanni's vassals until its seizure by Ashur-uballit.

With the rise of Assyrian power in the late second millennium, Nineveh becomes a royal residence.

At the end of the Bronze Age, Nineveh is much smaller than Babylon, but still one of the world's major cities (population is about thirty-three thousand).

All free male citizens are obliged to serve in the army for a time, a system called the ilku-service.

The Assyrian law code, notable for its repressive attitude towards women in their society, is compiled during this period.

Assyrian law is very similar to Sumerian and Babylonian law, however, notably more brutal than its predecessors.

Three Assyrian law collections have been found to date.

Such punishments as cutting of ears and noses are common, as in the Code of Hammurabi composed several centuries earlier.

In the case of murder, the victim’s family is allowed to decide the death penalty for the murderer.

Assyria has difficulties with keeping the trade routes open.

Unlike the situation in the Old Assyrian period, the Hittites and the Hurrians effectively dominate the Anatolian metal trade.

These people now control the Mediterranean ports, while the Kassites control the river route south to the Persian Gulf.

The Middle Assyrian kingdom is well organized, and in the firm control of the king, who functions as the High Priest of Ashur, the state god.

He has certain obligations to fulfill in the cult, and has to provide resources for the temples.

The priesthood becomes a major power in Assyrian society.

Conflicts with the priesthood are thought to have been behind the murder of king Tukulti-Ninurta I in 1207.

The Assyrian archers have gained renown for their excellent organization, strong bows, and iron-tipped arrows.

Sennacherib makes Nineveh the Assyrian capital, enlarging and rebuilding the city on a magnificent scale.

Shortly after his ascendancy, he is fully occupied with rebellious subjects in both the east and the west.

The Babylonian revolt, quickly suppressed, is followed by uprisings in Syria and Palestine.

Sennacherib builds a conduit to transport water from a river about thirty-four miles (fifty-five kilometers) distant to his fields and gardens in Nineveh in 691 BCE.

Assyrian engineers construct a gently sloping masonry channel, and where it passes over a valley, build an arched bridge thirty feet (nine meters) high to support it.

Two of Sennacherib's sons conspire against him soon after his conquest of Babylon and assassinate him in 681.

The biblical account is that the brothers killed their father after the failed attempt to capture Jerusalem and fled (2 Kings 19:37).

The faithful son, Esarhaddon, who returns to the capital of Nineveh in forced marches and defeats his rival brothers in six weeks of civil war, is formally declared king in spring of 681 BCE.

His brothers flee the land, and their followers and families are put to death.

Esarhaddon, who is apparently a good general and administrator, strengthens the frontiers of his recently enlarged empire against repeated incursions by the Cimmerians and Scythians, who pose serious threats to Assyrian possessions in Anatolia and Media, the latter of which is a primary source of horses for the Assyrian army.

Crown prince Sin-iddina-apla, Esarhaddon’s oldest son, had been designated as king of Assyria, while the second son Shamash-shum-ukin was to become the ruler of Babylon.

With the death of the crown prince in 672 BCE, the younger Ashurbanipal becomes crown prince, but he is very unpopular with the court and the priesthood.

Contracts are made with leading Assyrians, members of the royal family and foreign rulers, to assure their loyalty to the thirteen-year-old crown prince.

Ashurbanipal does not accede to the kingship of Assyria until late in the year.

His grandmother Zakutu Naqi'a required all to support his sole claim to the throne and to report acts of treason from now on to him and herself, which shows how influential the old lady was at the beginning of Ashurbanipal's reign.

The official ceremonies of coronation come in the second month of the new year, and within the same year (668 BCE), Ashurbanipal installs his brother as King of Babylon.

The transition is smooth, and the dual monarchy of the youthful brothers begins.

Texts describe their relationship as if they were twins.

It is clear, however, that Ashurbanipal, as king of Assyria, like his fathers before him, is also called "king of the universe".

Not having been expected to become heir to the throne, Ashurbanipal was trained in scholarly pursuits as well as the usual horsemanship, hunting, chariotry, soldierliness, craftsmanship, and royal decorum.

In a unique autobiographical statement, Ashurbanipal specified his youthful scholarly pursuits as having included oil divination, mathematics, and reading and writing.

According to legend, Ashurbanipal was the only Assyrian king who learned how to read and write.

Assyria retains control and subjugation of Media, Persia, Aramaea, Phoenicia, Israel, Judah, Asia Minor, northern Arabia, the Syro-Hittites and Cyprus with few problems.

Urartu is defeated and contained, and the Nubians have been expelled from Egypt and a native puppet regime installed.

For the time being, the dual monarchy in Mesopotamia goes well, with no problems from the junior partner Babylon, and its Assyrian king.

An Assyrian royal inscription informs us of the Lydian king Gyges receiving dreams from the Assyrian god Ashur, telling him that when he submitted to Ashurbanipal he would conquer his foes.

After he sends his ambassadors to do so he is indeed able to defeat his Cimmerian enemies around 660.

This alliance effectively extends Assyrian influence across Anatolia to the Aegean Sea.

The Elamite ambassadors in Nineveh lose control when they see the head of Teumman; one tears out his beard and the other commits suicide.

As further humiliation, the head of the Elamite king is put on display at the port of Nineveh.

The death and head of Teumman is depicted multiple times in the reliefs of Ashurbanipal's palace.

Ashurbanipal, a scholar as well as a warrior, is collecting an enormous library of Babylonian, Assyrian, and Sumerian cuneiform literature at Nineveh.

Ashurbanipal launched a devastating attack on Elam in 653. A text, written in 649, among the annals of Ashurbanipal, records Ashurbanipal's justifications for the war and its conclusion.

The first of these two reliefs depicts the death of the Elamite king, Teumman (also Teumann), and his son, Tammaritu, during the battle of Til-Tuba (River Ulai) in c. 653 BCE. Teumman had been waging war against Ashurbanipal, but during the battle, which Ashurbanipal decisively won, Teumman met his end.

The second relief depicts Ashurbanipal and his queen relaxing at a banquet while the head of Teumman hangs from a tree (far left). Ashurbanipal described his victory and the fate of his enemy: 
"Like the onset of a terrible hurricane, I overwhelmed Elam in its entirety. I cut off the head of Teumann, their king, – the haughty one, who plotted evil. Countless of his warriors I slew. Alive, with my hands, I seized his fighters. With their corpses I filled the plain about Susa as with baltu and ashagu. Their blood I let run down the Ulai; its water I dyed red like wool."

Ashurbanipal also went on to destroy the Kingdom of Elam: 
"I had the sanctuaries of the land Elam utterly destroyed and I counted its gods and its goddesses as ghosts… I destroyed and devastated the tombs of their earlier and later kings… I took their bones to Assyria. I prevented their ghosts from sleeping and deprived them of funerary-offerings and libations… On a march of one month and twenty-five days, I devastated the districts of the land Elam and scattered salt and cress over them."

Assyrian king Ashurbanipal asserts his pride in his scribal education his in the statement: “I Ashurbanipal within [the palace], took care of the wisdom of Nebo, the whole of the inscribed tablets, of all the clay tablets, the whole of their mysteries and difficulties, I solved.”

He is one of the few kings who can read the cuneiform script in Akkadian and Sumerian, and claims that he even wrote texts from before the great flood.

He is also able to solve mathematical problems.

He collects cuneiform texts from all over Mesopotamia, and especially Babylonia, in the library in Nineveh.

Despite being a popular king among his subjects, Ashurbanipal is also known by for his exceedingly cruel actions towards his enemies.

Some pictures depict him putting a dog chain through the jaw of a defeated king and then making him live in a dog kennel.

Many paintings of the period seem to exhibit pride in his malice and brutality.

During the final decade of his rule, Assyria is quite peaceful, but the country apparently faces a serious decline.

Documentation from the last years of Ashurbanipal's reign is very scarce but the latest attestations of Ashurbanipal's reign are of his year 38 (631 BCE), but according to later sources he reigned for 42 years (627 BCE).

While he still lives, Ashurbanipal’s sons apparently contest the succession.