eyes, and by the skill of draftsmen and the pen of antiquarian
travelers made known and preserved to the world.

In the history of Jonah's visit, Nineveh is twice described as "that
great city," and again as an "exceedingly great city of three days'
journey."

The measurement assigned to Nineveh by the sacred writer applies,
without doubt, to its circuit, and gives a circumference of about
sixty miles.

None of the historical books of the Old Testament give any details
respecting Nineveh. The prophets, however, make frequent incidental
allusion to its magnificence, to the "fenced place," the "stronghold,"
the "valiant men and chariots," the "silver and gold," the "pleasant
furniture," "carved lintels and cedar work." Zephaniah, who wrote
about twenty-four years before the fall of Nineveh, says of it:

"This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly;
That said in her heart, 'I am, and there is none beside me.'"

The ruins of Nineveh were virtually unknown to the ancient classical
writers, though we gather from all of them that it was one of the
oldest, most powerful and most splendid cities in the world; that it
perished utterly many hundred years before the Christian Era; and that
after its fall Babylon became the capital of the Assyrian empire,
which finally grew still greater and mightier. On examining their
details, we find names confounded, incidents transposed, and
chronology by turns confused, extended or inverted. Difficulties of
another and more peculiar kind beset this path of inquiry, of which it
will suffice to instance one illustration--proper names, those fixed
points in history around which the achievements or sufferings of its
heroes cluster, are constantly shifting in the Assyrian nomenclature;
both men and gods being designated, not by a word composed of certain
fixed sounds or signs, but by all the various expressions equivalent
to it in meaning, whether consisting of a synonym or a phrase. Hence
we find that the names furnished by classic authors generally have
little or no analogy with the Assyrian, as the Greeks generally
construed the proper names of other countries according to the genius
of their own language, and not unfrequently translated the original
name into it. Herodotus, however, though he mentions but one Assyrian
king, gives his true name, Sennacherib.

The immense mounds of brick and rubbish which marked the presumed
sites of Babylon and Nineveh had been used as quarri