It was divided into seven provinces, and contained many great cities, of
which the chief after Nineveh, the capital, were Asshur, which alone
stood on the west bank of the Tigris, Calah, Dur-Sargon, Arbela,
Tarbisi. The ruins of many cities are grouped around Nineveh; while
lower down the Tigris is exhibited an almost unbroken line of ruins from
Tekrit to Bagdad.
=Nineveh= was situated on the eastern bank of the upper Tigris
opposite the modern Mosul, two hundred and thirty miles northwest of
Bagdad. The ruins of the original capital, Asshur, now called Kalah
Sherghat, are some sixty miles south. Nineveh, Calah (Nimrud), and
Dur-Sargon (Khorsabad), ultimately supplanted it in importance. When
Nineveh itself fell, the whole Assyrian empire--essentially a
military power--perished with it. It was not until the excavations
of Botta in 1842 and Layard in 1845 that the remains, first of
Dur-Sargon, then of Nineveh itself, were revealed to the world.
As a result of these excavations, the general outline of the city,
the remains of four palaces and numerous sculptures, and thousands
of tablets (principally from the so-called library of Ashurbanipal)
were discovered. The greater part of these is now in the British
museum. The city had a circumference of from seven to eight miles,
the ruins of the walls showing a height in some parts of fifty feet.
Shalmaneser I. built a palace at Nineveh and made it the city of his
residence. Samsi-ramman III. decorated and restored the temple of
Ishtar, famous for a special phase of the cult of the goddess. For a
time Nineveh was neglected, but Sennacherib (705-681 B. C.), was a
special patron of Nineveh. He surrounded it with a wall, replaced
the small palace at the northeast wall by a large one, built another
palace which he filled with cedar wood and adorned with colossal
bulls and lions, and beautified the city with a park. Esarhaddon
finished a temple, widened the streets, and beautified the city,
forcing the kings whom he conquered to furnish materials for
adorning the city and palaces. Nineveh succumbed to the combined
attack of the Medes under Cyaxares and the Babylonians under
Nabopolassar in 608 B. C.
In its times of prosperity, Assyria extended its borders on every side;
and the Greeks and Romans often included the whole of Syria and of the
regions watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris under the name.
Assyria and the neighboring provinces were celebrated for their great
fertility; they were the original home of wheat and barley, and the
date-palm grew there to perfection. The irrigation of the crops was
ensured by the annual overflow of the Tigris.