Nineveh was the last great capital of the Assyrian Empire, its walled mounds — Kuyunjik and Nabi Yunus — lying across the Tigris from modern Mosul. Nineteenth-century excavations by Austen Henry Layard and Hormuzd Rassam uncovered Sennacherib's 'Palace Without Rival' and the library of Ashurbanipal, tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets that included the Flood account of the Epic of Gilgamesh. From the same palace came the Lachish reliefs, a carved narrative of Assyria's siege of a Judean city; these treasures are now in the British Museum. For the Bible, Nineveh is the city Jonah is sent to warn, the target of Nahum's oracle of doom, and the seat of Sennacherib, whose army pressed against Hezekiah's Jerusalem. Its excavated palaces and archives make it one of the best-documented cities of the ancient Near East.
- Where it is
- Opposite Mosul, Nineveh Province, Iraq (Mesopotamia)
- Scripture
- Jonah 1:2 · Jonah 3 · Nahum 1-3 · 2 Kings 19:36