THIRD   MISSION.

{Continued from Vol. L)

Nineveh and the Excavation of its Ruins.

The name " Nineveh" is a transcription of the
Hebrew T^'^.T^, which in turn is the transcription of
'* Ni-na-a,'' ^ ^ I?, the old name of the city which
in the seventh century B.C. developed into the great
capital of Assyria. About the meaning of this old
name ''Ni-na/'^ which is not necessarily Semitic,
there is some doubt. The second part of it, " na,"
seems to mean something like " dwelling-place" or
" resting-place,'' ^ and if this be so we may assume that
the city was regarded as the abode of some deity, and
that " Ni " (or whatever may be the true reading of
>^ in this place) represents that deity's name. The
ideogram for the city's name is ^2gJ <M, Nina ki,^
which means '' House [of the] Fish," and as this is also
the name of a goddess * who was the daughter of Ea it
has been thought that Nineveh was a centre, perhaps
the chief centre, of her cult. At a comparatively early
period Ishtar was the great goddess of Nineveh, and
the city enjoyed her peculiar favour and protection,
and was called " Naram Ishtar," the ''beloved of
Ishtar." Her cult spread northw:aTds into Mitani, and,
Tushratta, King of Mitani, and his father, prompted
by the goddess, made vigorous attempts to induce the

^ The variants (alu) Ni-nu-u '-^ff 5ff >7^ ^ and (alu) Ni-nu-a
>-^f ^ */- yj also exist. (Rawlinson, Cuneiform Inscrip., iii, pis. 48,
3, 8 ; i, pi. 19, Is. 93, loi.)

^ Delitzsch, Wo lag, p. 260.

' Rawlinson, op. cit., i, pi. 39,1. 39. See also Rawlinson, op. cit.,
v, pi. 23, 1. 6, where ^ "^Vl} ^^ equivalent to S:<jk"T ^Igf,
and Briinnow, Classified Lists, Leyden, 1889, Nos. 4800-4805.

^ Delitzsch, Wo lag, p. 260.

b