Landmark Asia
Nineveh
Nineveh was a giant city long, long ago, in what is now Iraq. Kings built huge palaces there. One king collected a library of clay books.
Nineveh was the biggest city of the Assyrian Empire, on the east bank of the Tigris River in what is now Mosul, Iraq. About 2,700 years ago, King Sennacherib filled it with streets, canals and a palace of at least 80 rooms, and King Ashurbanipal collected a library of clay tablets. In 612 BCE the city was conquered and burned, and it never recovered.
Nineveh, on the Tigris opposite the old city of Mosul, was settled by the 7th millennium BCE and became the Neo-Assyrian capital under Sennacherib (704 to 681 BCE). His walls, 15 gates, 18 canals and 'palace without a rival', and Ashurbanipal's library of more than 20,000 tablets and fragments, ended in the sack of 612 BCE. Excavated since the 1840s, the site is on Iraq's UNESCO Tentative List.
Photo: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Discover Nineveh
Nineveh is a very old city in Iraq.
Long ago, it was the home of powerful kings. They built big palaces with carved stone walls. Today, the old city is mostly mounds of earth. A newer city, Mosul, has grown all around it.
Nineveh stands on the east bank of the Tigris River in northern Iraq. Today the modern city of Mosul surrounds it. It was built where important trade routes crossed, with good farmland and grazing land nearby.
Nineveh was the oldest and biggest city of the Assyrian Empire, one of the world's first empires, about 2,700 years ago. Its kings built palaces with carved stone walls and huge gateways. Most of what is left today lies inside two big mounds of earth. Archaeologists, scientists who study the past from what people left behind, have been digging there since the 1840s.
Britannica describes Nineveh as the oldest and most populous city of the ancient Assyrian empire, on the east bank of the Tigris and now encircled by Mosul. It lay at the crossing of north-south and east-west trade routes, and a nearby tributary of the Tigris, the Khawsar, added to the value of the farming and grazing land around it.
Its ruins center on two mounds: Kuyunjik (Quyunjik), the acropolis, which rises about 30 m above the plain, and Nabi Yunus to the south. Around 700 BCE the city covered about 700 hectares (1,800 acres) inside walls with 15 great gates. Claudius Rich first surveyed and mapped it in 1820, and excavations have continued on and off ever since. Iraq has placed Nineveh on its UNESCO Tentative List.
- Where
- East bank of the Tigris, in Mosul, Iraq
- City area (about 700 BCE)
- about 700 hectares (1,800 acres)
- Gates in the walls
- 15
- Fell
- 612 BCE
From a village to an empire's capital
At first, Nineveh was a tiny farming village.
Over thousands of years, it grew and grew. Then Assyrian kings made it their great city. Later, enemies attacked it and burned it. After that, it was never great again.
The first village at Nineveh was probably built at least 8,000 years ago, in the New Stone Age. Over thousands of years, layer upon layer of ruins piled up there into a high mound.
Nineveh grew into a great city under the Assyrian kings. About 700 BCE, King Sennacherib made it the capital of his empire and filled it with new streets, squares, walls and gardens. Later, King Ashurbanipal built another palace there. But in 612 BCE an army of Babylonians, Scythians and Medes captured and burned the city. Archaeologists still find thick layers of ash from that fire.
Britannica dates the first settlement, a Neolithic hamlet, to probably no later than the 7th millennium BCE. Digging a shaft from the top of Kuyunjik to virgin soil in 1931 to 1932, R. Campbell Thompson and Max Mallowan showed that more than four-fifths of the mound's accumulated debris is prehistoric. A life-size bronze head of a bearded king, perhaps Sargon of Akkad (about 2334 to 2279 BCE), comes from Nineveh and is now in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.
Large-scale building began with the Neo-Assyrian kings, from Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883 to 859 BCE). Sennacherib, who ruled from 704 to 681 BCE, moved the capital to Nineveh from Khorsabad, founded by his father Sargon II, and made it a magnificent city. His successor Esarhaddon built an arsenal in the Nabi Yunus mound, and Ashurbanipal added a palace at the northwest end of Kuyunjik in the 7th century BCE. Fourteen years after Ashurbanipal's death, in 612 BCE, the city was sacked by Babylonians, Scythians and Medes; ash from the destruction covers much of the acropolis. Later remains are slight, though houses were lived in until at least the 16th century CE.
The palace without a rival
King Sennacherib built a giant palace.
It had more than 80 rooms. Many walls were covered with carved stone pictures. Huge stone bulls with human heads stood by the big doors. He also dug canals to bring water to the city.
His new palace is famous as the "palace without a rival." Archaeologists have found most of its plan. It measured about 180 by 190 meters and had at least 80 rooms. Many rooms were lined with carved stone panels called reliefs, pictures cut into the surface of the stone. Giant statues of bulls with human heads stood beside the main doorways.
Sennacherib also built strong walls around the city with 15 great gates. A network of 18 canals carried water down from the hills to Nineveh. Parts of a stone aqueduct, a bridge that carries water, have been found at Jerwan, about 40 kilometers away.
Sennacherib laid out new streets and squares and built the famous "palace without a rival," today often called the Southwest Palace. Britannica gives its recovered plan as about 180 by 190 m (600 by 630 ft), with at least 80 rooms, many lined with sculpted slabs, and principal doorways flanked by human-headed bulls. Much of the K collection of tablets was found in it.
Water came from far away: a system of 18 canals brought it from the hills, and sections of Sennacherib's finely built aqueduct survive at Jerwan, about 40 km (25 miles) from the city. The walls had 15 great gates. Austen Henry Layard, digging from 1845 to 1851, found Sennacherib's palace and took an unrivaled collection of stone reliefs back to England.
A library of clay
King Ashurbanipal collected old writings.
He sent helpers to copy old writings onto clay tablets. Thousands of tablets were kept at Nineveh. Many carved stones from Nineveh are now in a big museum in London.
King Ashurbanipal founded a great library at Nineveh. He ordered his scribes, people trained to write, to find old texts all over the country and copy them. They wrote in cuneiform, wedge-shaped marks pressed into soft clay.
More than 20,000 tablets and pieces of tablets have been found. Some are literature, some are records and many are letters. Others are about mathematics, plants, chemistry and the meanings of words. In the 1840s the archaeologist Austen Henry Layard took thousands of them, with many carved stone panels, back to England. Carved panels from Nineveh are now shown in the British Museum in London.
Ashurbanipal founded the library and ordered his scribes to collect and copy ancient texts throughout the land. The so-called K collection holds more than 20,000 tablets or fragments, inscribed in cuneiform, and preserves much of the literature and learning of Mesopotamia.
Britannica groups the subjects as literary, religious and administrative, with a great many letters, and lists mathematics, botany, chemistry and lexicology among the branches of learning. Layard's excavations of 1845 to 1851 brought thousands of the tablets to England with an unrivaled collection of stone reliefs; Sennacherib's reliefs of the siege of Lachish, for one, are on display in the British Museum. Britannica judges that the library will keep scholars busy for generations to come.
- Tablets and fragments
- more than 20,000
- Collected by
- King Ashurbanipal, 7th century BCE
- Found by
- Layard's excavations, 1845 to 1851
Rebuilding a great gate
In recent years, people have been working hard at Nineveh.
They have been rebuilding one of its old gateways. While they dug, they found carved stone pictures. They had been hidden underground for thousands of years.
Archaeologists from Iraq and the University of Pennsylvania Museum in the United States have been working to rebuild the Mashki Gate, one of Nineveh's great city gates. The gateway visitors knew had itself been rebuilt in the 1970s by the Iraqi archaeologist and artist Tariq Madhloom.
In 2022, while digging below it, the team found seven carved alabaster panels, about 2,700 years old. They show soldiers, palm trees, pomegranate trees and grapevines from the time of King Sennacherib. Project leader Michael Danti called them some of the best-preserved Sennacherib reliefs in existence.
In 2016 fighters of the group known as ISIS destroyed the Mashki Gate, one of Nineveh's monumental gates. What they destroyed was not the ancient gate, burned in 612 BCE, but the reconstruction made in the 1970s by Tariq Madhloom, who began excavating it in 1968.
An Iraqi and Penn Museum team led by Michael Danti began new excavations there in April 2022 as part of rebuilding the gate, with just over $1 million from the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH). Digging below Madhloom's level, they found seven relief slabs of alabaster, or Mosul marble, of Sennacherib's reign showing military camps, soldiers and captives among date palms, pomegranates and vines. Danti thinks they were first used in the Southwest Palace, then partly chiseled away for reuse by a later king and reset in the gate. A visitor center is planned.
Amazing facts
-
Nineveh's oldest layers are much older than its palaces.
Archaeologists dug a deep shaft down through Nineveh's big mound. More than four-fifths of the layers they passed through are prehistoric, from before written records.
A shaft sunk from the top of Kuyunjik to virgin soil in 1931 to 1932 showed that more than four-fifths of the mound's accumulation is prehistoric.
-
Canals carried water to Nineveh from the hills.
Sennacherib built 18 canals to bring water from the hills, with a stone aqueduct about 40 kilometers away at Jerwan.
Sennacherib's water system had 18 canals; sections of his aqueduct survive at Jerwan, about 40 km from the city.
-
Workers found carved stone pictures while rebuilding a gate.
In 2022, a team rebuilding Nineveh's Mashki Gate found seven carved stone panels about 2,700 years old.
Digging below the 1970s reconstruction of the Mashki Gate in 2022, an Iraqi and Penn Museum team found seven Sennacherib-era alabaster reliefs.
-
A palace doorstep was carved to look like a rug.
Some doorsteps in Ashurbanipal's palace were carved in stone to look like carpets, with rosettes and lotus flowers.
Gypsum door-sills in Ashurbanipal's North Palace were carved as carpets with rosette and lotus designs; one is in the British Museum.
Words to know
- archaeologist
- a scientist who learns about the past by studying what people left behind
- cuneiform
- an ancient kind of writing made of wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay
- tablet
- a flat piece of clay or stone with writing on it
- relief
- a carved picture that stands out from a flat stone surface
- aqueduct
- a channel or bridge built to carry water a long way
- mound
- a hill made of the ruins of buildings piled up over thousands of years
- empire
- many lands and peoples ruled by one ruler or government
Discovery challenge
-
Which river flows past Nineveh?
On which river's bank does Nineveh stand?
Nineveh lies on the east bank of which river?
- The Nile
- The Tigris
- The Amazon
Show the answer
The Tigris
The Tigris! It flows through Iraq.
The Tigris River. Today the city of Mosul surrounds Nineveh's ruins.
The Tigris; a tributary, the Khawsar, flowed nearby, and modern Mosul now encircles the site.
-
What were the books in Ashurbanipal's library made of?
What material were the tablets in Ashurbanipal's library made of?
On what material were the texts of the K collection written?
- Paper
- Clay
- Leaves
Show the answer
Clay
Clay! Writers pressed marks into wet clay.
Clay. Scribes pressed wedge-shaped cuneiform marks into the soft clay.
Clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform; more than 20,000 tablets and fragments survive.
-
Which king made Nineveh his great city?
Which Assyrian king made Nineveh a magnificent capital about 700 BCE?
Which king built the 'palace without a rival' at Nineveh?
- Sennacherib
- Ramesses II
- Julius Caesar
Show the answer
Sennacherib
Sennacherib! He built a giant palace there.
Sennacherib. He built new streets, walls with 15 gates, canals and a huge palace.
Sennacherib (704 to 681 BCE), who moved his capital to Nineveh from Khorsabad.
-
What happened to Nineveh long ago?
What happened to Nineveh in 612 BCE?
What do the thick ash layers on Kuyunjik record?
- It was captured and burned
- It sank into the sea
- It was buried by a volcano
Show the answer
It was captured and burned
Enemies captured it and burned it.
An army of Babylonians, Scythians and Medes captured and burned it, and it never recovered.
The sack of 612 BCE by Babylonians, Scythians and Medes, fourteen years after Ashurbanipal's death.
Nearby places
-
Watch
Landmark
Samarra
Samarra, on the Tigris River in Iraq, was the capital of the Abbasid caliphs, rulers of a huge Islamic empire, from 836 to 892. In that short time they built enormous mosques, palaces, canals and even racecourses. Because the city was left so early, its plan survives, and its Great Mosque still has a famous spiral minaret.
-
Watch
City
Baghdad
Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, stands on the Tigris River in the land once called Mesopotamia. It was founded in 762 as a round city, and for about 500 years it was one of the greatest cities in the world and a great center of learning, where scholars studied math, medicine and the stars. Today it is Iraq's largest city.
-
Watch
Natural wonder
Mount Ararat
Mount Ararat is a huge volcanic mountain in the far east of Türkiye, close to where Türkiye, Iran and Armenia meet. It has two peaks: Great Ararat, about 5,165 meters high and the tallest mountain in Türkiye, and the smaller, cone-shaped Little Ararat. Snow covers the top all year, and a glacier clings to its north side.
-
Watch
Landmark
Babylon
Babylon was one of the most famous cities of the ancient world, beside the Euphrates River in what is now Iraq. Kings like Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar II ruled from here. Today its ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and about 85 percent of it has never been dug up.
-
Watch
Landmark
Palmyra
Palmyra is an ancient city built on an oasis in the Syrian desert. About 2,000 years ago it grew rich from caravans carrying goods between the Roman Empire and lands to the east. Its ruins, with a colonnaded street 1,100 meters long, are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
-
Watch
City
Tbilisi
Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, lies along the Mtkvari River between mountain ridges. Its name comes from the Georgian word for "warm", after the hot springs that feed its old bathhouses. At the 2024 census, 1,331,485 people lived in the self-governing city.
-
Watch
Landmark
Shaki
Shaki, also spelled Sheki, is a historic town in the forested Caucasus Mountains of Azerbaijan. After a flood of mud destroyed the old town in 1772, people rebuilt it higher up the valley, with houses, gardens, water channels and a khan's palace. Its wealth came from silk, and UNESCO made its historic center a World Heritage Site in 2019.
-
Watch
Landmark
Susa
Susa, in southwest Iran, is one of the most ancient places where towns first grew. People built there from more than 6,000 years ago until about 800 years ago, one town on top of another. It was the capital of the Elamites and later of the Persian king Darius I, whose great palace still lies in ruins there.
Explore next
-
Watch
Country
Iraq
Iraq is a country in the Middle East. Its two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, water a wide plain that was once called Mesopotamia, where some of the world's earliest cities grew. About 46.1 million people were counted there in 2024, and its capital is Baghdad.
-
Watch
Landmark
Babylon
Babylon was one of the most famous cities of the ancient world, beside the Euphrates River in what is now Iraq. Kings like Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar II ruled from here. Today its ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and about 85 percent of it has never been dug up.
-
Watch
Landmark
Ur
Ur was a great city of Sumer, in the south of what is now Iraq, founded more than 5,000 years ago. Twice it was the capital of an empire. Archaeologists found royal tombs full of gold treasures, streets of brick houses and a huge stepped temple tower called a ziggurat. When the Euphrates River moved away, the fields dried up and the city was abandoned.
-
Watch
Landmark
British Museum
The British Museum in London was founded in 1753 and opened in 1759. It holds treasures from all over the world, like the Rosetta Stone, which helped people learn to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. Its grand building with columns was built from 1823 to 1847, and in 2025 it had more than 6.4 million visits.
-
Watch
Landmark
Persepolis
Persepolis was a royal city of the Persian kings. King Darius I began it around 518 BCE on a huge terrace at the foot of a mountain in southwestern Iran. Its palaces had very tall, slender columns and walls carved with long parades of people bringing gifts. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
-
Watch
Landmark
Agra Fort
Agra Fort is a huge red sandstone fortress beside the Yamuna River in Agra, India. The Mughal emperor Akbar began it in 1565. Its walls, about 2.5 kilometers around, protect palaces, halls and mosques added by later emperors. It was both an army base and a royal home.
-
Watch
Landmark
Al-Aqsa Mosque
Al-Aqsa Mosque stands at the southern end of a huge raised plaza in the Old City of Jerusalem. Built in the early 700s, it has a silver-gray dome, and the golden Dome of the Rock stands nearby. The plaza is important to Muslims and to Jews.
-
Watch
Landmark
Al-Masjid al-Haram
Al-Masjid al-Haram, the Great Mosque of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, was built around the Kaaba, a cube-shaped building that Muslims face when they pray. It is the most important place of pilgrimage in Islam. In 2026, 1,707,301 pilgrims came to Mecca for the hajj, and the mosque can hold up to about one million worshippers.
For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Locate Nineveh on the Tigris in northern Iraq and explain that modern Mosul surrounds it.
- Describe how Sennacherib built up Nineveh with a palace, walls, gates and canals.
- Explain what Ashurbanipal's library was and why clay tablets survived.
- Discuss how archaeologists learn from mounds, ash layers and carved stones.
Recommended ages: 3 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- Clay tablets survived a fire that destroyed much of Nineveh. Why might clay last longer than paper?
- Why do you think people kept building on the same spot for thousands of years?
- Many of Nineveh's treasures are in a museum in London. Where do you think ancient objects should be kept, and why?
Try at home or in class
- Press a craft stick or pencil end into a flat piece of modeling clay to make wedge-shaped marks, like cuneiform writing.
- Layer sand, soil and small toys in a clear cup, then dig down with a spoon and talk about which layer is oldest.
Key vocabulary: archaeologist, cuneiform, tablet, relief, aqueduct, mound, empire
Where these facts come from
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- Nineveh , Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Archaeologists restoring monument damaged by Islamic State discover ancient stone carvings unseen for millennia (October 25, 2022) , The Art Newspaper
- Preserving Assyria (exhibition) , Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania
- Door-Sill from Nineveh , World History Encyclopedia
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file (public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA); see each media record)
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated October 27, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.