page_title: Nineveh
section_title: Neo-Assyrians
hierarchical_section_title: Nineveh / History / Imperial Nineveh / Neo-Assyrians
caption_attribution_description: English: The Royal Lion Hunt at the British Museum from the North Palace Nineveh 645-635BC. The king is shooting arrows while attendants repulse an attack from a wounded lion.
context_page_description: Nineveh was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located on the outskirts of Mosul in modern-day northern Iraq. It is located on the eastern bank of the Tigris River and was the capital and largest city of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, as well as the largest city in the world for several decades. Today, it is a common name for the half of Mosul that lies on the eastern bank of the Tigris, and the country’s Nineveh Governorate takes its name from it.
  It was the largest city in the world for approximately fifty years until the year 612 BC when, after a bitter period of civil war in Assyria, it was sacked by a coalition of its former subject peoples, the Babylonians, Medes, Chaldeans, Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians. The city was never again a political or administrative centre, but by Late Antiquity it was the seat of a Christian bishop. It declined relative to Mosul during the Middle Ages and was mostly abandoned by the 13th century AD.
  Its ruins lie across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul, in Iraq's Nineveh Governorate.
context_section_description: During the Neo-Assyrian Empire, particularly from the time of Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883–859 BC) onward, there was considerable architectural expansion. Successive monarchs such as Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal maintained and founded new palaces, as well as temples to Sîn, Ashur, Nergal, Shamash, Ninurta, Ishtar, Tammuz, Nisroch and Nabiu.
caption: Relief of Ashurbanipal hunting a Mesopotamian lion,[15] from the Northern Palace in Nineveh, as seen at the British Museum.
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