volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

2 Size of Nineveh Exaggerated.
Egyptians to worship " Ishtar of Ni-i-na-a, the Lady of
the World."^
Thanks to writers who lacked exact information on
the subject, the size and extent of Nineveh have been
greatly exaggerated. Strabo says (xvi, i, section 3)
that the city of Nineveh was " much larger than Babylon
(iroKv fieitfiiv tijs Ba/JuXSj/os), and was situated in the
plain of Aturia,"' i.e., Assyria. When Jonah spoke
of " an exceeding great city of three days' journey "
(iii, 3), he must have been speaking of Nineveh and its
suburbs, in which he probably included Nimrud {i.e.,
Calah), about 20 miles south of Kuyunjik, and Khorsabad,
about 30 miles from Nimrud, and 15 miles from Kuyunjik,
besides Nineveh itself. According to Diodorus (ii, , 3) the
city of Nineveh had the form of an oblong rectangle,
the longer sides being 150 stadia (about i6|^ miles) in
length, and the shorter sides 90 stadia (10 miles). The
walls were 100 feet high, and were wide enough for three
chariots to drive side by side on them ; the towers which
flanked the wall were 200 feet high, and were in number
1500. In size and magnificence no other city could compare
with it. Ninus, its founder, determined to build a
city which had never been equalled, and should never be
surpassed, and according to Diodorus he did so. No
walls of such height and length, and no towers of such
height can ever have existed at Nineveh, and no city of
the size described by Diodorus was ever built on the Tigris.
It is likely enough that the land along the river bank for
many miles to the north and south of Nineveh was regarded
as a part of Nineveh by careless writers and
thinkers, but about the size of the Nineveh of Sennacherib
there can be no doubt whatever. The fact that
Diodorus places Nineveh on the Euphrates should warn
us not to put too much confidence in his figures. The
1
->f -Vf ^|4 ^fy J^ c£ ^4 ]\ ^t] \- \\ See Bezold
and Budge, The Tell el-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum, No. 10,
obv. 1. 13 (p. 24). ^
^ I.e., ToiiA', AthUr, the name which Syrian writers give both
to Assyria and to the town of M6sul, which Bar Bahlul says was built
by Sapor.