I. Assyria Proper. — 1. Ancient Notices of its Po- sition.— This was a great and powerful country, lying on the east of the Tigris (Gen. ii, 14), the capital of which was Nineveh (Gen. x, 11, etc.). Its exact limits in early times are unknown ; but when its mon- archs enlarged their dominions by conquest, the name of this metropolitan province was extended to the whole empire. Hence, while Homer calls the in- habitants of the country north of Palestine Arimoi (evidently the Aramim or Aramaeans of the Hebrews), the Greeks of a later period, finding them subject to the Assyrians, called the country Assyria, or (by con- traction) Syria, a name which it has ever since borne. It is on this account that, in classical writers, the names Assyria and 8}'ria are so often found inter- changed (Henderson, On Isa. p. 173; Hitzig, Begriff d. Krit. Alt. Test. p. 98); but it may be questioned whether in Hebrew "Asshur" and "Aram" are ever confounded. The same, however, cannot be affirmed
of those parts of the Assyrian empire which lay east of the Euphrates, but west of the Tigris. The He- brews, as well as the Greeks and Romans, appear to have spoken of them in a loose sense as being in As- syria, because in the Assyrian empire. Thus Isaiah (vii, 20) describes the Assyrians as those " beyond the river," i. e. east of the Euphrates, which river, and not the Tigris, is introduced at viii, 7, as an image of their power. In Gen. xxv, 18, the locality of the Isk- maelites is described as being east of Egypt, " as thou goest to Assyria," which, however, could only be reached through Mesopotamia or Babylonia, and this idea best reconciles the apparent incongruity of the statement in the same book (ii, 1-4), that the Hiddekel, or Tigris, runs "on the east of Assyria," i. c. of the Assyrian provinces of Mesopotamia and Babylonia; for there can be no doubt that, not only during the existence of the Assyrian monarchy, but long after its overthrow, the name of Assyria was given to those provinces, as having once formed so important a part of it. For example, in 2 Kings xxiii, 29, Nebuchad- nezzar is termed the kint!; of Assyria, though resident at Babylon (comp. Jer. ii, 18 ; Lament, v, G ; Judith i, 7; ii, 1); even Darius, king of Persia, is called, in Ezra Vi, 22, king of Assyria (comp. Plin. Hist. Nat. xix, 19) ; and, on a similar principle, in 2 Mace, i, 19, the Jews are said to have been carried captive to Per- sia, i. e. Babylonia, because, as it had formerly been subject to the Assyrians, so it was afterward under the dominion of Persia. (Comp. Herodotus, i, 106, 178; iii, 5 ; vii, 03 ; Strabo, ii, 84 ; xvi, 1 ; Arrian, vii ; Exped. Alex, vii, 21, 2; Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii, 20 ; xxiv, 2 ; Justin, i, 2, 13.) One writer, Dionysius Periegetes (v, 975), applies the designation of Assyria even to Asia Minor, as far as the Black Sea. Yet, ultimately, this name again became restricted to the original province east of the Tigris, which was called by the Greeks 'Aaavpia (Ptolemy, vi, 1), and more commonly 'Arovpia (Strabo, xvi, 507), or 'Arvpia (Dion Cassius, lxviii, 28), the latter being only a dia- lectic variety of pronunciation, derived from the Ara- maean custom of changing s into t. A trace of the name is supposed to be preserved in that of a very an- cient place, Athur, on the Tigris, from four to six hours N.E. of Mosul. Rich, in his Residence in Kurdistan (ii, 129), describes the ruins'as those of the " city of Nimrod," and states that some of the better informed of the Turks at Mosul " said that it was Al Athur, or Ashur, from which the whole country was denomi- nated.
2. Boundaries. — According to Ptolemy, Assyria was in his day bounded on the north by Armenia, the Gordisean or Carduchian mountains, especially by Mount Niphates ; on the west by the River Tigris and Mesopotamia; on the south by Susiana, or Chuzistan, in Persia, and by Babylonia; and on the east by a part of Media, and Mounts Choathras and Zagros (Ptolemy, vi, 1; Pliny, Hist. Nat.x, '13; Strabo, xvi, 73G). It corresponded to the modern Kurdistan, or country of the Kurds (at least to its larger and western portion), with part of the pashalic of Mosul. — Kitto.
Toward the north Assyria bordered on the strong and mountainous region of Armenia, which may have been at times under Assyrian dominion, but was never reckoned an actual part of the country. (See 2 Kings xix, 37.) Toward the east her neighbors were orig- inally a multitude of independent tribes, scattered along the Zagros chain, who have their fitting repre- sentatives in the modern Kurds and Lurs— the real sovereigns of that mountain range. Beyond these tribes lay Media, which ultimately subjected the moun- taineers^ and was thereby brought into direct contact with Assyria in this quarter. On the south, Elam or Susiana was the border state east of the Tigris, while Babylonia occupied the same position between the rivers. West of the Euphrates was Arabia, and higher up Syria, and the country of the llittites, which last