"One of the most remarkable of their anniversary festivals was the Niloa, or invocation of the blessings of the inundation, offered to the tutelary deity of the Nile. According to Heliodorus, it was one of the principal festivals of the Egyptians. It took place about the summer solstice, when the river began to rise; and the anxiety with which they looked forward to a plentiful inundation, induced them to celebrate it with more than usual honour. Libanius asserts that these rites were deemed of so much importance by the Egyptians, that unless they were performed at the proper season, and in a becoming manner, by the persons appointed to this duty, they felt persuaded that the Nile would refuse to rise and inundate the land. Their full belief in the efficacy of the ceremony secured its annual performance on a grand scale. Men and women assembled from all parts of the country in the towns of their respective nomes, grand festivities were proclaimed, and all the enjoyments of the table were united with the solemnity of a holy festival. Music, the dance, and appropriate hymns, marked the respect they felt for the deity, and a wooden statue of the river god was carried by the priests through the villages in solemn procession, that all might appear to be honoured by his presence and aid, while invoking the blessings he was about to confer." Even at the present day the rejoicings with which the rise of the river is hailed by all classes and sects of the population of Egypt, are excessive, and are spoken of by every traveller who has visited the country.

NIMRAH, (Numb. 32. 3,36,) a city of the Amorites, east of the Dead Sea, was rebuilt by the Gadites, and possessed by them. It is now represented by a village called Nymrein, standing on a small stream called Wadi Shoeh, the "waters of Nimrim" of Jeremiah. Jeremiah says "the waters of Nimrim were desolate," when those who fished in them, or the inhabitants on the banks thereof were cut off, or carried into captivity by the Assyrians and Chaldæans. (Jerem. 48. 34.) The prophet Isaiah (15. 6.) likewise speaks of the waters of Nimrim being desolate, Nimrah, also called Beth Nimrah, is supposed to have derived its name from the leopards which roamed about in that district.

Professor Jahn observes, "After the dispersion which followed the unsuccessful attempt to build the tower of Babel, Nimrod, the celebrated hunter and hero, laid the foundation of the Babylonian kingdom. In consequence of the protection which he afforded to the people against wild beasts, he might have become by their own consent their leader and chief, or turning his weapons of hunting against men, he might have compelled them to submit to his dominion. His name seems to favour the latter supposition, Nimrod, from 7 mered, to rebel. His empire extended from Babylon in Mesopotamia, towards the north, over Calneh (Ctesiphon), as far as Accad (Nisibis), and Erech (Edessa), including the whole land of Shinar. But however powerful this empire was for those times, we cannot suppose it to have been either populous or well organ

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ized. Even the four cities which are mentioned as the strongholds of this kingdom were nothing more than small villages slightly fortified. As this was the first attempt to establish an extensive domain, it must have been universally disagreeable to the men of that period; consequently, we shall find that it was of short duration, and Nimrod's Babylon must not be regarded as the germ of that great universal monarchy which began in later age and among a different people."

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Mr. Crosthwaite likewise remarks, "We have in the Book of Genesis (10.8,) a brief but well-marked character of Nimrod, who appears to have been the first man among the posterity of Noah that deviated from the simplicity of the patriarchal institution, and sought to found more extensive authority on his personal talents and prowess. As his sphere of action was in or near the country since called Assyria, and as Babel is particularly mentioned as one of the places belonging to him, some authors have taken occasion from this circumstance to magnify him from a patriarchal shepherd chieftain into a mighty emperor; and to transform him from a hunter of wild beasts into a conqueror of kingdoms. They seem almost to have forgotten that Nimrod was the grandson of Ham, of a man who was married before the Deluge; and they have even gone so far as to confound him with Ninus, the great founder of the Assyrian empire, the conqueror of the East, who brought into the field nearly a million of soldiers.

"Dr. Hales speaks of Nimrod as a great conqueror, living in a populous age; but the Scripture, while it describes him as powerful in his day, explains this sufficiently, by calling him a great hunter, which character applies to a chieftain in the earliest stage of society, and to a country very thinly peopled; where wild beasts were the principal or only enemies, and the boldest hunter was the greatest hero. Nimrod's cities, if I mistake not, were what we should call walled villages; and probably not unlike many described by modern travellers in Asia and Africa.”

Nimrod is said to have introduced the Zabian idolatry, or worship of the heavenly host; and after his death to have been deified, and supposed to be translated into the constellation of Orion, where attended by his hounds, Sirius and Canicula, he still pursued his favourite game, the Great Bear. It is highly probable also that the Assyrian Nimrod or Hindoo Bula, was also the prototype of the Grecian Hercules with his club and lion's skin. The Jerusalem paraphrast interprets the expression, "a mighty hunter before the Lord," as of persecution, a sinful hunting after the sons of men to turn them off from the true religion; but its more literal

sense is no doubt the correct one.

NINEVEH, Sept. Nivevi, Niveun, (Gen. 10. 11,) the capital of the Assyrian empire, was by the Greeks and Romans called Ninus. It was founded by Nimrod, or, as the text of Genesis 10. 11 is in the margin rendered, by Asshur, the son of Shem. The exact spot where Nineveh stood cannot now be ascertained, according to the prophecy of Nahum 1. 8; 3. 17, "With an overrunning flood, God has made an utter end of the place of it; its crowned have become like locusts, and its captains like the grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges in the cold day; but when the sun arises, they flee away, and their place is not known where they have been." The most probable opinion as to its situation, however, is that it lay on the east of the Tigris, not far from the river Lycus, a tributary of that stream, about three hundred miles north of Babylon. It seems that the city extended its length along the

eastern bank of the Tigris, while its breadth reached from the river to the eastern hills. Most ancient writers agree with Jonah in describing Nineveh as an "exceeding great city;" but as none of these writers lived till after its destruction their accounts are necessarily brief and incomplete. The best account we have is that furnished by Diodorus, who states that Ninus having surpassed all his ancestors in the glory and success of his arms, resolved to build a city, of such state and grandeur, that it should not only be the greatest in the world, but such as no sovereign coming after him should be easily able to exceed. Accordingly, having brought a vast number of his forces together, and provided the necessary treasure, and everything which his design required, he built near the Tigris a city very famous for its walls and fortifications. Its length was 150 stadia, its breadth 90, and its circumference 480. Diodorus adds that the founder was not disappointed in his expectations, for no one ever after built a town equal to it for the extent of its circumference and the stateliness of its walls. These were 100 feet high, and so wide that three chariots might be driven upon them abreast. There were 1500 towers upon the walls, all of them 200 feet high. Ninus appointed the city to be inhabited chiefly by the richest of the Assyrians; and freely allowed people from other nations to dwell there. He also granted to the citizens a large surrounding territory, and gave his own name Ninus to the city. Strabo and some other writers assert that Nineveh was more extensive than even Babylon. If we compare the dimensions assigned by Diodorus to Nineveh, with those which Herodotus (and Pliny after him) gives to Babylon, this is not correct, both having 480 stadia of circumference. But if we take any other measurement of Babylon than that of Herodotus, its circuit becomes ten or twelve miles less than that which Diodorus gives to Nineveh; for Ctesias makes the circumference of Babylon but 360 stadia; Clitarchus, 365; Curtius, 368; and Strabo, 385.

There appears to have been a Nineveh on the Euphrates, as well as one on the Tigris; but the former arose out of the latter. On the destruction by the Medes of the Nineveh built by Nimrod, there arose another city at no great distance from it, and this arising as it were from the very ruins of the other, was called by the same name. The prophet Jonah (3. 3; 4. 11,) gives us some idea of the popula

tion of Nineveh, when he informs us that there were "more than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand.” Taking this as a proverbial expression, denoting children under the age of three or five years, we may, according to the usual rate of calculation, estimate the entire population at two millions. This is not by any means an extraordinary population for a town of such extent; the case is, indeed, so much otherwise, as to show that the great ancient cities of the East covered a vast extent of ground in proportion to their population, as in the present day do Pekin, Ispahan, and other modern cities. The great European capitals, too, taken in their largest extent, comprehending their environs, which include extensive parks, fields, gardens, and open grounds, furnish something like an equal number of people; for in 1831, London contained not less than 1,776,500 persons within a circle with a radius of eight miles from St. Paul's; and in 1829, Paris contained 1,013,000 persons within a circle of equal extent; and the population of both has since greatly increased.

The time of the prophet Jonah's preaching at Nineveh, and the magnitude of the city at that time, ought not to pass here unnoticed; that prophet is historically noticed in 2Kings 14. 25, about 825 B.C., but whether his mission to Nineveh was before or after that time we are nowhere informed. It may be asked, upon the supposition that the Assyrian greatness began about 840 to 860 years before the Christian era, how Nineveh could be so great and extensive in the time of Jonah? "The answer," Mr. Crosthwaite observes, "is found in the state of society, and the nature of an eastern government. A monarch like Belus, or Ninus, or Nebuchadnezzar, or Sesostris, returned from the conquest of several kingdoms, with a mountain of spoil and a host of captives, was not long in erecting a city of whatever size he pleased, on a navigable river, to facilitate the carriage of materials from places however distant."

The fortifications of Nineveh corresponded with its magnitude. So strong was this city from its situation and defences, that it was believed to be impregnable; which belief may indeed have been strengthened by an old prediction, that the city could never be taken unless the river became its enemy. Relying on this prediction, Sardanapalus made it his stronghold in his war with Arbaces the Mede. For three years it stood out the siege, but at length the river broke in, demolishing part

of the wall, twenty stadia in length; whereupon Sardanapalus was thrown into such despair, that abandoning his capital to the enemy, he set fire to the palace, and perished amid his treasures, about B.C. 717. Diodorus says that Sardanapalus caused a large pile of wood to be raised in his palace, and heaping thereon all his gold, silver, and apparel, and collecting his eunuchs and concubines, he set fire to the pile, whereby all these persons, with himself, his treasures, and his palace were utterly consumed.

Under Tiglath Pileser Nineveh again became a royal city; but about 601 B.C. the Assyrian empire was finally subverted, when ruled by Chynaladan, on which occasion Nineveh was utterly destroyed. Smaller cities bearing the same name, have arisen on parts of its ancient site, but they have now all perished, and have left behind nothing but a few shapeless mounds scattered over the plain near Musul, so that the threatening is indeed fulfilled, “The Lord will make an utter end of the place thereof." (Nahum 1. 8.)

"The situation of Nineveh," says Rosenmüller, "was favourable for commerce. The Tigris, which communicated with the Euphrates by canals, and afterwards joined it before entering the Persian Gulf, opened up to Nineveh the whole of the south of Asia and the Southern Ocean. Hence the prophet Nahum says, (3. 16,) that Nineveh had more merchants than there are stars in the sky. And as Michaëlis remarks, the commercial intercourse between Eastern and Western Asia must have almost entirely been carried on by way of Nineveh, inasmuch as there were the bridges over the Tigris, a river, which at few other points admitted of their convenient erection. But, as is the case in all large and wealthy cities, there reigned here the greatest corruption of morals, on account of which the Hebrew prophets Nahum (3. 1 et seq.) and Zephaniah (2. 13-15,) foretold its destruction, (comp. Tobit 14. 13.)"

Like Babylon, Nineveh was employed by God as an instrument to chastise his people for their sins. Shalmaneser, one of its kings, after having reduced Samaria, the capital of the kingdom of Israel, carried away its inhabitants, and located them in distant provinces in his empire; and thus extinguished the kingdom of Israel, after it had existed separately from Judah about two hundred and fifty years. (2Kings ch. 17.) Sennacherib reduced to subjection Jerusalem, the capital of the kingdom of Judah, exhausted all its treasures, and grievously oppressed its inhabitants. (2Kings ch. 18.) Esarhaddon, another of its kings, having possessed himself of the land of Israel, sent some of his generals, with part of his army, into Judæa, to reduce that country likewise to subjection to him. They defeated Manasseh, took him prisoner, and carried him with them to Babylon. This will serve to account for the prominence of Nineveh in the prophecies of Holy Writ.

The uncertainty as to the site of so great a city as Nineveh is a striking corroboration of prophecy. The now generally received opinion fixes its site on the eastern bank of the Tigris, opposite Musul, and is supported by the traces of an extensive ancient city, marked by hills and ridges of ruin, the same as Babylon and other ancient towns of Assyria and Chaldæa. The long-continued state of desolation in which Nineveh has remained for ages might be illustrated from the successive notices of travellers and historians. Thus we are told of an occasion in A.D. 627, when the Emperor Heraclius defeated the Persians in a great action fought on the convenient battle-field afforded by the vacant site of Nineveh. Benjamin of Tudela likewise says that Al Mutsul (Musul) was separated only by a bridge from the ancient Nineveh; but Nineveh was utterly destroyed, although there were some streets

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and many castles within the ancient circuit, implying modern erections within the limits of the ancient city.. Haitho, the Armenian, about A.D. 1300, also mentions Nineveh as being in total ruin. "Master John Cart-. wright," who was there in the latter part of the sixteenth century, after giving the substance of the ancient accounts of the great Nineveh, adds, "Now it is destroyed (as God foretold it should be, by the Chaldæans,). being nothing else than a sepulchre of herselfe." In a later age, Thevenot mentioned the great extent of its ruins; and Tavernier described the remains as "a heap of rubbish only." Kinneir says, "I examined these remains in November, 1810, and found them to consist of a rampart and fosse, forming an oblong square, not exceeding four miles in compass, if so much. I saw neither stones nor rubbish of any kind. The wall is, on an average, twenty feet high; and as it is covered with grass, the whole has a striking resemblance to some of the Roman entrenchments which are extant in England.” The dimensions of the square as given by Major Kinneir, appear to be much too small; these mounds, however, do not by any means form the only indications of ancient ruin, for there are appearances of mounds and ruins extending for several miles to the southward, and others still more distinctly seen to the northward, though both are less marked than the mounds of the centre. The alleged tomb of Jonah is on the southernmost of these central mounds, which extends nearly east and west from the neighbourhood of the river. A Mohammedan village has been formed around the tomb. It seems that when openings are made in the soil-covered mounds, sections of sun-dried brick-work are exposed. The space between and about the central mounds is a level plain, over every part of which broken pottery and the other usual débris of ruined cities in this region are seen scattered about. Buckingham thus speaks of the view over the site obtained from the most northern of the central mounds: "As far as I could perceive from an elevated point of view, on the highest summit of Tel Ninoa, there were mounds of ruins similar to those near us, but less distinctly marked, as far as the eye could reach to the northward; and the plain to the eastward of us, or between the river and the mountains, had a mixture of large brown patches, like heaps of rubbish, seen at intervals, scattered over a cultivated soil."

Mr. Rich considers that it is impossible to determine what part of this site was occupied by the ancient Nineveh; he remarks that "In such a country it is not easy to say what are ruins and what are not, what is art, converted by the lapse of ages into a semblance of nature, and what is merely nature broken by the hand of time into ruins approaching in their appearance those of art." The remains obtained from the mounds are similar to those afforded by the mounds of Babylon; and this extends even to fragments of cuneiform inscriptions on stone, resembling, in every respect, those which Babylon offers. Mr. Rich is of opinion that these remains belonged to the same age and character, but "whether they belonged to Nineveh or some other city, is another question, and one not so easily determined."

Keith remarks, "The Book of Nahum was avowedly prophetic of the destruction of Nineveh; and it is there foretold that the gates of the river shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved.' 'Nineveh of old, like a pool of water, with an overflowing flood, he will make an utter end of the place thereof.' The historian describes the facts by which the other predictions of the prophet were as literally fulfilled. He relates that the king of Assyria, elated with his former victories, and ignorant of the revolt of the Bactrians, had abandoned himself to scandalous inaction; had appointed a

NO, NO-AMON. See THEBES.

NOAH, the son of Lamech, (Gen. 5. 29,) was the father of the post-diluvian world. Amidst the general corruption of mankind he found favour in the eyes of the Lord, and received a Divine command to build an ark for the saving of his house from the general deluge which the Lord was about to bring upon the earth. Influenced by faith in the Divine commands, he obeyed. See ARK; DELUGE.

After having left the ark, Noah offered, as a burnt | sacrifice to the Lord, one of all the pure animals that had been preserved. His sacrifice was accepted, and the Lord promised to bring no more a deluge upon the earth. Noah lived after the deluge three hundred and fifty years, his whole life being nine hundred and fifty years. He died A.M. 2006, and left three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, by whom the whole earth was overspread or peopled. (Gen. 9. 18,19; 10. 32.) The Apostle Peter calls Noah a preacher of righteousness, (2Peter 2. 5,) because, before the deluge, he was incessantly declaring, not only by his discourses, and unblameable life, but by building the ark, in which he was employed one hundred and twenty years, the coming of the wrath of God. (Matt. 24. 37.)

Jewish writers pretend that there were seven precepts given by God to the sons of Noah. They are as follows: (1.) That men should abstain from idolatry; (2.) That they should worship the true God alone; (3.) That they should hold incest in abhorrence; (4.) That they should not commit murder; (5.) Nor rob or steal; (6.) That they should punish a murderer with death; (7.) That they should not eat blood, nor anything in which blood is, consequently, nothing strangled. "Every one," says a Jewish writer, "that observes these seven commandments is entitled to happiness. But to observe them merely from a sense of their propriety, is deemed by Maimonides insufficient to constitute a pious gentile, or to confer a title to happiness in the world to come; it is requisite that they be observed, because they are Divine commands."

Noah, in the ancient mythologies, has been confounded with Saturn, Deucalion, Ogyges, the god Calus or Ouranus, Janus, Proteus, Prometheus, Vertumnus, Bacchus, Osiris, Vadimon, and Xisuthrus; of these only Saturn, Deucalion, and Osiris seem to call for any notice here. The classical fable of Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha, is manifestly derived from the history of Noah. Deuca

Mr. Christmas, in his Universal Mythology, remarks, "The driving of Saturn from heaven to earth is an apt representation of Noah's passage from one world to another, from the antediluvian world, which the poets universally represent as a golden age, but the period immediately before the deluge was that in which Noah had just succeeded to the patriarchal government, and he was therefore the lord of the golden age. Saturn's devouring his children is but a disguised mode of telling us how all the sons of time were prematurely destroyed when that general and awful visitation took place; three escaped the rage of the one, three escaped the judgment of the other. Saturn was the god of husbandry, and as such, as much as because a personification of time, he bore the scythe or sickle in his hand; he taught men to plant vines, and was seldom represented without the flowers and fruits of the earth in his aged hands.

"All this corresponds exactly with the history of Noah; and Noah began to be an husbandman;' he planted the vine, and to his cost drank the produce; he was rightly spoken of as an old man, for at the time of the flood he was six hundred years old, and lived to an age much greater than any of his descendants. The very name of the mountain upon which the ark rested, gives us a further reason for the identity of Noah and Saturn. Har-irad, the mountain of descent, would well apply to the residence of a god, who, cast down from his celestial dominions, became a monarch upon earth. These reasons seem sufficient, but, if not, it may be added, that a ship in which he had made a wonderful voyage, was, by no means, an unfrequent symbol of Saturn. The sons of Saturn, then, are the sons of Noah, and in exact accordance with this hypothesis, we find them dividing between them the whole earth. Japetus, king of heaven and earth, who answers to Jupiter in a later mythos, bears in his name a similarity to that of Japheth too close to be overlooked. One of the sons of the same being, under another name, was called by the Egyptians, Hammon, or Amoun, and we shall presently show the identity of Ham and Pluto. Neptune or Poseidon, seems to have no other resemblance to Shem, than that which is derived from being the son of Saturn. The division among the brothers, of Saturn's dominions, seems to have been conducted in such a manner, that heaven and earth fell to the eldest, Jupiter, Zeus, Japetus, or Japheth; the sea to the second, Poseidon, Neptune, or Shem; and hell to the youngest, Hades, Pluto, or Ham; but there appears no other reason to make Shem the ruler of the sea, than this, that there was no other domain left for him. The appointment of Ham, whose sons Cush and Mizraim, Phut and Canaan, were the colonizers of Africa and the Asiatic countries adjacent, was much more appropriately imagined. Saturn be Noah, Pluto was one of his sons; and it is said, in a very ancient tradition, that Ham was a black man. Now, whether this legend be true or not, is not of the slightest consequence; opinions were built on

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