finally took it, c. 606 B.C. Much conjecture has been lavished upon the varying accounts which have reached us of the capture, but it seems probable that a heavy flood or the besiegers burst the great dam and while thus emptying the moats launched a flood against the west wall on the inside and thus breached the defences.
It may be of interest to record the names of the governors of Nineveh: Nergal-mudammik. 835 B.C. ; Ninib-mukin-ahi, 790–761 B.C.; Mahdē, 725 B.C. ; Nabū-dini-epush, 704 B.C.; Ahi-ilai, 649 B.C., officiated as Eponyms for the year.
If, as generally admitted, the ruins of Mespila and Larissa “described” by Xenophon, Anab. iii. 4, 7 sq. were those of Kuyunjik and Nimrud, we may conclude that there was no inhabited city on the spot at the time of the march of the Greeks with Cyrus (cf. Strabo xvi. p. 245). The name of Nineveh (Syriac Nīnwē; Arabic Nīnawā, Nūnawā) continued, even in the middle ages, to be applied to a site opposite Mōsul on the east bank of the Tigris, where huge mounds and the traces of an ancient city wall bore witness of former greatness. Copious references to these mentions are collected in Tuch, De Nino Urbe (Leipzig, 1845). Ibn Jubair, p. 237 sq., followed by Ibn Batuta, ii. 137, gives a good description of the ruins and the great shrine of Jonah as existing in the 12th century. The name of Nīnawā applied, not to the ruins, but to the Rustak (fields and hamlets) on the site (Balādhurī, p. 331; Ibn Haukal, p. 145; Yaqut, ii. 694).
A very complete summary of the traditions will be found in Lincke, “Assyrien und Nineveh,” in Geschichte und Sage der Mittelmeervölker nach 607–606.
The explorations of Sir A. H. Layard at Kuyunjik (1845–1847 and 1849–1851) definitely located the city, in confirmation of ancient tradition and the identifications of Rich and others. Excavations were carried on by Rawlinson, 1853–1855; H. Rassam, 1854; G. Smith, 1873–1874 and 1876; Rassam again, 1877–1883; E. A. Wallis Budge, 1888–1889; and King, 1902. The enormous mound of Kuyunjik now separated from that of Nebi-Yunus by the deep and rapid Khausar, marks the site of the palace of Sennacherib and Assur-bani-pal. The mound of Nebi-Yunus is crowned by the “Tomb of Jonah,” a sacred shrine to the modern inhabitants, and could not be explored; but by sinking a shaft within the walls of a private house, some sculptured slabs were recovered, and the Turkish government later opened out part of a palace of Esarhaddon. Excavations at two of the great city gates showed them to have been erected by Sennacherib.
Bibliography.—The architecture of these palaces is exhaustively treated in Ferguson’s Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored, and in Perrot and Chipiez, Art in Chaldea and Assyria. Each palace was in itself a fort, and the external walls are still 80 ft. high in places. The many topographical details furnished by exploration when compared with the building inscriptions and the indications given by deeds of sale will doubtless enable us ultimately to map out the principal features of the ancient city, but much more systematic exploration is needed, as well as further publication of existing documents. (C. H. W. J.)
NING-PO (Ning-Po-Fu, i.e. City of the Peaceful Waves), a
great city of China, the principal emporium of trade in the
province of Chehkiang, standing in a fine plain bounded by
mountains towards the west, on the left bank of the Ning-po
river, about 16 m. from its mouth, in 29° 49′ N., 121° 35′ E. It
was visited by Portuguese traders as early as 1522, and is one of
the five seaports which were thrown open to foreign trade in
1842 by the treaty of Nanking. The population of the city and
suburbs is estimated from 400,000 to 500,000. Ning-po is
surrounded by a fine old wall, 25 ft. high and 16 ft. broad, pierced
by six gates and two passages for ships in its circuit of 4 to 5 m.
Just within the walls there is a considerable belt of open ground,
and in many places the ramparts are thickly covered with
jasmine and honeysuckle. In ascending the river a stranger’s
eye is first caught by the numerous huge ice-houses with high
thatched roofs and by a tall white tower—the T’ien-fēng-t’a or
Ning-po pagoda or obelisk—which rises to a height of 160 ft.
and has fourteen stories and seven tiers of windows, but has
unfortunately been stripped of its galleries and otherwise
damaged. Another striking structure in the heart of the city
is the Drum Tower, dating from before the 15th century. As is
natural in a place long celebrated for its religious and educational
pre-eminence, there is no lack of temples, monasteries
and colleges, but few of these are of any architectural significance.
Brick is the ordinary building material, and the dwelling-houses
are mostly of one storey. Silks, cottons, carpets, furniture,
white-wood carvings and straw hats are the chief products of
the local industry. Large salt-works are carried on in the
vicinity, and thousands of fishermen are engaged, mainly between
April and July, in catching cuttle-fish. In spite of the powerful
competition of Shanghai, Ning-po has a valuable foreign trade.
It is regularly visited by the vessels of the China Navigation
Company and the Chinese Merchants’ Steam Navigation
Company. From 216,191 register tons in 1873 the tonnage of the
port had increased to 303,109 in 1880, and in 1904 the figures
rose to 532,869 tons. The value of the trade passing through the
custom house in 1904 was £3,052,629, as compared with £2,312,000
in 1900 and £3,405,000 in 1880. Straw or grass hats, straw mats,
samshu (from the Shao-sing district), Chinese drugs, vegetable
tallow and fish are among the chief exports; in 1904 the hats
numbered 2,125,566, though in 1863 they had only amounted to
40,000, and the mats, mainly dispatched to south China, average
from 1,000,000, to 2,000,000. Missions are maintained in Ning-po
by the Roman Catholic church, by the Church Missionary Society
(1848), the American Presbyterians, the Reformed Wesleyans,
the China Inland Mission (1857), &c. A mission hospital was
instituted in 1843. After the storming of Chennai—the fortified
town at the mouth of the river—on the 10th of October 1841,
the British forces quietly took possession of Ning-po on the 12th.
In 1864 the Tʽaipʽings held the town for six months.
NINIAN, ST, a Briton, probably from Strathclyde, who was trained at Rome and founded a church at Whithorn on the West side of Wigtown Bay. Whithorn has been identified with the Leukopibia of Ptolemy, but this is uncertain. Bede, writing three centuries after Ninian, ascribes the name Ad Candidam Casam to the fact that the church of Ninian was built of stone. We are told by Bede that St Ninian dedicated his church to St Martin of Tours, who died between 397 and 400, but Ailred of Rievaulx is our only authority for the statement that St Martin supplied him with masons. The population of the north shore of the Solway Firth at the beginning of the 5th century were probably either Picts or Goidels or a blend of both, and naturally hostile to the Romanized Britons. Bede records that Ninian preached among the Picts within the Mounth, which indicates that he was acquainted with the Pictish language. The legends of his work in Ireland probably arise from the influence exercised in that country by the church of Whithorn. The date of Ninian’s death is given by Archbishop Ussher as 432, but there is no authority for this statement.
See Bede, Hist. Eccl. (ed. C. Plummer, Oxford, 1896), iii., iv.; Ailred of Rievaulx, “Life of St Ninian,” in the Historians of Scotland vol. v. (Edinburgh, 1874); W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland (Edinburgh, 1877), ii. 2 ff.; and J. Rhys, Celtic Britain (London, 1904), p. 173.
NINIB, the ideographic designation of a solar deity of Babylonia. The phonetic designation is uncertain—perhaps Annshit. The cult of Ninib can be traced back to the oldest period of Babylonian history. In the inscriptions found at Shirgulla (or Shirpurla, also known as Lagash), he appears as Nin-girsu, that is, “the lord of Girsu,” which appears to have been a quarter of Shirgulla. He is closely associated with Bel (q.v.), or En-lil of Nippur, as whose son he is commonly designated. The combination points to the amalgamation of the district in which Ninib was worshipped with the one in which Bel was the chief deity. This district may have been Shirgulla and surrounding places, which, as we know, fell at one time under the control of the rulers of Nippur.
Ninib appears in a double capacity in the epithets bestowed on him, and in the hymns and incantations addressed to him. On the one hand he is the healing god who releases from sickness and the ban of the demons in general, and on the other he is the god of war and of the chase, armed with terrible weapons. It is not easy to reconcile these two phases, except on the assumption
