volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

THIRD MISSION.
(Continued from Vol. I.)
Nineveh and the Excavation of its Ruins.
The name " Nineveh " is a transcription of the
Hebrew ni5"'3, which in turn is the transcription of
" Ni-na-a," J^f "^T T?' the old name of the city which
in the seventh century B.C. developed into the great
capital of Assyria. About the meaning of this old
name "Ni-na,"^ which is not necessarily Semitic,
there is some doubt. The second part of it, " na,"
seems to mean something like " dwelling-place " or
" resting-place," ^ and if this be so we may assume that
the city was regarded as the abode of some deity, and
that " Ni " (or whatever may be the true reading of
Jfl: in this place) represents that deity's name. The
ideogram for the city's name is C^SJ