volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

6 Sennacherib Rebuilds Nineveh.
Tiglath Pileser I, made Nineveh his capital, and built a
temple to Ishtar, and dedicated to the goddess an alabaster
statue of a naked woman.*
At the beginning of the seventh century before Christ
the great King Sennacherib (b.c. 705-681) carried out
vast building operations in the city, and fortified it with
mighty walls. The circuit of the city which he found
there was 9,300 cubits, and he added to it 12,515 cubits,
making its total 21,815 cubits. He built an inner and
an outer wall about the city, the fprmer being 40 cubits
thick and 180 iipki in height; the outer wall was immensely
strong, and built upon a stone foundation, and
faced with slabs of stone up to the coping. Sennacherib's
walls had fifteen gates, seven in the south and east walls,
three in the north wall, and five in the west wall. Sennacherib
greatly improved the water-supply of the town,
building a reservoir near some springs to the north-east
of Nineveh, and bringing water from it, by means of an
aqueduct, into the city. He also dug a canal, and made a
system of channels, whereby his gardens and orchards
were watered. In one section of the city he laid out a
park with ornamental waters, and he planted it with trees
of all kinds, which were brought there from various parts
of the country, and from foreign lands. Among these
were the " trees that produced wool {i.e., cotton), which
men picked and made into apparel." Into this park the
king turned wild boars and other animals. The trees
afforded a home for various kinds of rare birds, which
nested in their branches, and the reeds of the lake
sheltered various kinds of water-fowl.' Under the strong
hand of Sennacherib Nineveh became the true capital of
Assyria, and it was greatly enriched by the vast amount
of spoil which the king brought back from his successful
expeditions. The works which he carried out in connection
with his alteration of the course of the river Tebiltu
were a marvellous feat of hydrauUc engineering.^ His
^ This statue is in the British Museum (No. 849).
' See Cuneiform Texts, part xxv (ed. L. W. King), London, 1909.
' In the great cylinder inscription of Sennacherib, B.M. No.
103,000, the king states (col. v, 1. 79 ff.) that the river Tebiltu, which