Nineveh - The bloody history of Assyria

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Nineveh

On the plains of Assyria

 

 The plain of Assyria, crossed by the Tigris, faster and torencial the Euphrates, has a cooler climate than Babylon, sel neighboring southern lowland scorched by the sun and often flooded by the waters of the two great rivers. Ply this plain the Great and Little Zab, which allow water it, but always rains have led to believe there grasses easy to grow grass for goats and wild sheep. In sum, the country seemed destined Assyrian fat agriculture, associated with livestock. And indeed it was there, ten thousand years ago, the men began to be cuentade they could grow food instead of living precariously as predators, according to the prevailing lifestyle of humanity Palaeolithic from hundreds of millennia ago.

But this country's agricultural potential would see emerge and flourish on its soil to a warrior people, the Assyrians.

Archaeological discoveries of the cities

 Classical Europe had never land of Ashur and its agents more than vaguely familiar. The prestigious cities of Nimrud and Nineveh Khorsabad, located in the region between the Tigris and Great Zab, were destroyed before the travelers and historians had been able to visit and discover. However, the study of ancient authors distuinguir allowed several "empires" Assyrians, who had happened since the second millennium BC until the fall and destruction of Nineveh (612 BC), held a little later by the prophet Nahum as punishment for cruelty. The "big city" had entered into legend. Jonah's book reports that were so huge that it took three days going through on foot. Such data agree with those of the Greek geographers, who did not even know well what side of the Tigris to locate the city, was quite a feat. However, in the Middle Ages, a Spanish rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, placed exactly the ruins of Nineveh on the east bank of the river from Mosul. There were two mounds, one of them occupied by a people bearing the name of Ninivah transparent. The same location was confirmed in the nineteenth century by the British Rich, Layard and Rawlinson, and the French Botta and Place.
Botta, located in Mosul, was dedicated first to explore a neighboring mound Ninivah: Quyundjik. Not what I expected to find there his research directed towards the town of Khorsabad, about ten miles. Excavations undertaken by the top and found the bottom of two parallel walls, separated by a platform six feet wide.

"I was pleased to see that the whole surface was covered with carvings, the more curious since some are without dudaalgún important historical event"

 Botta believed he had discovered Nineveh, but in reality it was the palace that was built in Khorsabad King Sargon II of Assyria (721 705 BC), and had been kind of Versailles of this monarch. But there was to discover the "big city."

  This finding corresponded to English Layard. After exploring the area of Nimrud, south of Mosul, where sculptures found comparable to Khorsabad, Layard explored Quyundjik Hill and, more fortunate than Botta, ran to the southeast of the site, with the palace of Assyrian King Sennacherib ( 704-681 BC), "son of Sargon." This palace was built in Nineveh by Sennacherib, was renovated by his grandson Ashurbanipal (6629-627 BC), who set up his library there: thousands of clay tablets covered with cuneiform texts reveal the essentials of the intellectual heritage of the Assyrians, taken much of the Babylonians.
  A bright young English Assyriologist G. Smith, who undertook the reading of the tablets from the library of Ashurbanipal, was surprised to econtrar with the text of the story of the Flood, which coincided with the many details of the Bible. Others came after British missions to Nineveh to explore the depths of the archaeological site and reconstructed the formative stages of Assyrian civilization. It was learned that Nineveh was founded in the sixth millennium, and who were the nomadic Amorites, from the north of Syria, Assyria that gave his historic appearance at the beginning of the second millennium BC

  Investigations by Iraqi archaeological services have allowed us to find a palace built by Asarhaddón array (680-669 BC), son of Sennacherib.