I had been deeply impressed when I first ascended the hill on which stood Homer’s Troy, but my emotion was not so great as when I found myself on the crumbling ruins of “Nineveh, that great city in which there were more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons that knew not how to distinguish between their right hand and their left.”[353] But this is easily explained. I was much younger when I became acquainted with the enchanting story of Nineveh than when I first conned the spell-weaving pages of the _Iliad_. My earlier impressions were more vivid and, because of the intimate relation of Assyria to the Holy Land, as exhibited in the Sacred Text, my interest was correspondingly greater. As I contemplated the remains of the great city which had in tender years been so frequently the subject of my dreams and in mature age had been the subject of so much study and reflection, I found a thousand thoughts presenting themselves to my mind regarding the great capital which for so long a period played so important a rôle during the dawn of civilization. _The days of old return;--I breathe the air_ _Of the young world;--I see her giant sons_ _Like a gorgeous pageant in the sky_ _Of summer’s evening, cloud on fiery cloud_ _Thronging upheaved,--before me rise the walls_ _Of the Titanic city--brazen gates,--_ _Imperial Nineveh, the earthly queen!_ _In all her golden pomp I see her now._ No region in the world has a more venerable historic past than that vast territory enclosed by the Euphrates and the Tigris, and no city in this region, with the possible exception of Babylon, was for centuries the center of greater power and influence than Nineveh. According to the book of Genesis,[354] it was built by Asur, who came from the land of Sennaar. How long ago this was is a matter of mere conjecture. Its first certain mention occurs in the code of Hammurabi, who ruled over Babylonia in the twenty-third century before our era, but it was doubtless in existence many centuries before the time of this great Babylonian lawgiver. It is, however, certain that from the time of its foundation, it gradually increased in size and importance until it became the celebrated capital of the Assyrian Empire--an empire which at one time embraced the whole of the civilized world. But when it was at the zenith of its greatness, when it was feared and hated from the Nile to the Persian Gulf and from the scorching deserts of Arabia to the Hittite lands to the north of the Taurus, it suddenly, in 707 B. C., collapsed under the combined attacks of the Medes and the Babylonians led by Cyaxares and Nabopolassar, who left it a smoking ruin, where, according to the victors, “the words of men, the tread of cattle and sheep and the sound of happy music” were heard no more.