'^.^^■viig/
Impressions of the Signets of the Kings of Assyria and Egypt. (Original size.)
chamber at Kuyunjik, and are now deposited in the British Museum. They appear to include historical documents, vocabularies, astronomical and other calcu- lations, calendars, directions for the performance of re- ligious ceremonies, lists of the gods, their attributes, and the days appointed for their worship, descriptions of countries, lists of animals, grants of lands, etc. In this chamber was also foimd the piece of clay bearing the seal of the Egyptian l<ing So or Sabaco, and that of an Assyrian monarch, cither Seimacherib or his sou, probably affixed to a treaty between the two, which, having been written on parchment or papyrus, had en- tirely perished (Layard, Nin. and Bah. p. 156).
IX. Treatment of the Dead. — It is strange that no representations of burial occur on the monuments, and that no tombs have been discovered in the mounds. Layard. iiulced, regards the great cone at Nimri'id as a royal tomb, but no human remains have been foiuid; and otlier tombs, such as those excavated at Kuyunjik by Rassam, the Russian vice-consul, are said to be "of undoubtedly post-Assyrian date." It is .as remarkable, on the other hand, that Chakhva is full of tombs, every mound between Niffar and Mugeyer being a burial-
NINEVITE
131
NINO
place. Arrian (^De Exped. A lexand. vii, 22) says that the tombs of the Assyrian kings were constructed in the marshes south of 13abylon, and Chaldiea appears really to have been the ancient necropolis of Assyria. Warka, the old Erech, is, in fact, a vast cemetery, and " the Avhole region of lower Chaldaea abounds in sepul- chral cities of immense extent" (Loftus, Chuldcca and Susiana, p. 198, 199).
X. Literature. — The chief authorities on the subject are Botta's Monument de Nineve (Paris, 1849-50); Lay- ard's Nineveh (Lond. 1851), and liis Nineveh and Babylon (1853), with his Monuments of Nineveh (ibid. 1851-3); Prof. Ra^vlinson's Four Great Empires and Notes to Ht^ rodotus ; Kich's Babylon and Persepoiis ; Chwolson, Ueber die Ueberreste der alt-babylonischen Literutur (St. Petersburg, 1859) ; Bonomi's Nineveh and its Palaces ; Fergusson's Palaces of Nineveh and Persepoiis Restored; Vaux's Nineveh and Persepoiis (Lond. 1850) ; Oppert's Elements de la Grammaire A ssyrienne (Paris, 18G0) ; Les Pastes de Sargon (ibid. 1863); Chronoloejie des Bah. et Assyr. (1857); Oppert et Menant, Grande Inscription de Khorsabad (ibid. 1865) ; " The Assyrian Verb," some papers by Dr. Hincks in the Journal of Sacred Litera- ture (1852, 1855) ; Brandis, Rerum Assyr. Temp. Emen- dat. (Bonn, 1853), and his Uber den histor. Geivinn, etc. ; Marc. Niebuhr, Geschichte Assurs; Fox Talbot, Assyr- ian Texts Explained (Lond. 1856) ; Slenant, Les Ecri- tures Cuneiformes (Paris, 1860, where the history of cu- neiform discovery is fully given) ; Jones's Topography of Nineveh, in Roy. As. Soc. Journal (1855) ; J. Black- burn, Rise and Ruin of Nineveh (Lond. 1852) ; T. W. Bo- sanquet. Full of Nineveh (ibid. 1853) ; Jour. Sac. Lit. April, 1851 ; April, 1858 ; April, 1860 ; Fletcher, Notes of Residence at Nineveh (Lond. 1850) ; G. V. Smith, Prophecies i-elating to Nineveh (ibid. 1857-8) ; Feer, Les Ruines de Ninive (Paris, 1864) ; Bretschneider, Ninive vnd Nahum (Munich, 1861) ; Tuch, De Nino urbe (Leips. 1849) ; Pole, Anc. Hist, and Mod. Expositors of Nineveh (Lond. 1854); Nichols, British Museum, p. 159 sq.; G. Smith, Hist, of A ssur-bani-pal (ibid. 1872); Assyria from the Earliest Time (ibid. 1875); Recent Assyrian Discoveries (ibid. 1875) ; and the literature cited in the last-named work, p. 6 sq., especially Col. Eawlinson's various monographs. See Blackwood's Magazine, 1854, i, 458, 462 ; 1856, ii, 729; Meth. Quar. Rev. Oct. 1849, art. ii; Newman, Thrones and Palaces of Babylon and Nin- eveh (N. Y. 1876); Lond. Qu. Rev. Dec. 1848; Eraser's Mag. April, 1849 ; North Brit. Rev. May, 1853. Comp. also the works cited under Assyria ; Cuneifoum.
Nin'evite Qiivevirrjc, Luke xi, 30; ''man of Nin- eveh," Matt, xii, 41), an inhabitant of Nineveh (q. v.).
Niniaii or Nynian, St., called in the Roman Martyr. "Ninianus," is the apostle who introduced Christianity among the Southern Picts [see Scot- land], and flourished in the latter half of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century. He was a Briton, and of noble birth ; but had been educated at Rome, and there ordained a bishop. The exact time of his preach- ing in Scotland is unknown. His labors appear to have commenced in Cumbria, and to have extended over the greater part of the district as far north as the Grampian Hills, his see being fixed at Candida Casa, or Whithorn, in the modern Wigtonshire. His death is placed by the Bollandists in 432; his festival is September 16. Whether Christianity had been introduced among the Picts before the time of Ninian has been a subject of controversy ; but although the details of the legen- dary account are uncertain, it seems, beyond all ques- tion, that some Christians were to be found, at least among the Southern Picts, in what is now known as the Lowlands of Scotland, from the end of the 2d cen- tury. Nevertheless, either their number was origi- nally very small, or the rising Church had fallen away under adverse circumstances; and it is certain that when Ninian appeared among them the Picts wore in the main a pagan people. Bede (^Hist, Eccl. iii, 4), speak-