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Nineveh
Nineveh , ancient city, capital of the Assyrian Empire, on the Tigris River opposite the site of modern Mosul, Iraq. A shaft dug at Nineveh has yielded a pottery sequence that can be equated with the earliest cultural development in N Mesopotamia. The old capital, Assur, was replaced by Calah, which...
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Nahum
Nahum , 7th of the books of the Minor Prophets of the Bible. It contains oracles of doom against Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire, delivered by one Nahum of Elkosh, who is otherwise unknown. The book can be divided into two sections: an acrostic announcing the coming of divine vengeance on Ni...
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Ahasuerus
Ahasuerus , Hebrew form of the name Xerxes, as used in the Bible. The Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther is probably Xerxes I. That in the Book of Tobit may be Cyaxares I, destroyer of Nineveh. The name of the father of Darius the Mede is also given as Ahasuerus.
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Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal (d. c.626 bc) (Assurbanipal) Last great king of Assyria (669–633 bc). During his reign, Assyria reached its largest extent, encompassing Upper Egypt, before a rapid decline. Excavations at Nineveh after 1850 revealed an advanced civilization....
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Jonah
Jonah , prophetic book of the Bible. It tells the story of a prophet called by God to preach repentance to the city of Nineveh. According to the Second Book of Kings, Jonah lived during the reign (c.786 BC-c.746 BC) of Jeroboam II. In the story, Jonah flees because he does not want Nineveh to be spa...
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Sardanapalus
Sardanapalus , in the Persica of Ctesias , an Assyrian monarch who lived in great luxury. He was besieged in Nineveh by the Medes for two years, at the end of which time he set fire to his palace and burned himself and his court to death. Byron wrote a tragedy on the theme. The identity of Sardan...
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Media
Media , ancient country of W Asia whose actual boundaries cannot be defined, occupying generally what is now W Iran and S Azerbaijan. It extended from the Caspian Sea to the Zagros Mts. The Medes were an Indo-European people who spoke an Iranian language closely akin to old Persian. Some scholars cl...
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William Henry Fox Talbot
William Henry Fox Talbot 1800-1877, English inventor of photographic processes (see photography, still ). A man of enormously versatile intelligence, he invented the "photogenic drawing" process in 1834. From 1841 on he patented his numerous processes for making negatives and positive prints, ...
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Assurbanipal
Assurbanipal or Ashurbanipal , d. 626? BC, king of ancient Assyria (669-633 BC), son and successor of Esar-Haddon . The last of the great kings of Assyria, he drove Taharka out of Egypt and firmly established Necho in power there only to have Necho's son Psamtik revolt in 660 BC and wrest E...
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Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh , in Babylonian legend, king of Uruk . He is the hero of the Gilgamesh epic, a work of some 3,000 lines, written on 12 tablets c.2000 BC and discovered among the ruins at Nineveh. The epic was lost when the the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal was destroyed in 612 BC The library'...
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