Ninus
Ninus (Greek: Νίνος), according to Greek historians writing in the Hellenistic period and later, was the founder of Nineveh (also called Νίνου πόλις "city of Ninus" in Greek), ancient capital of Assyria. The figure or figures with which he corresponds in Assyrian records is uncertain; an association or identification with Ninurta has been proposed.[citation needed] An identification with Shamshi-Adad I, Shamshi-Adad V, and/or a conflation of the two have also been suggested.[1]
In Hellenic historiography
Many early accomplishments are attributed to Ninus, such as training the first hunting dogs, and taming horses for riding.[citation needed] For this accomplishment, he is sometimes represented in Greek mythology as a centaur.
The figures of King Ninus and Queen
He was said to have been the son of
As the story goes, Ninus, having conquered all neighboring Asian countries apart from India and
Ctesias (as known from Diodorus) also related that after the death of Ninus, his widow Semiramis, who was rumored to have murdered Ninus, erected to him a temple-tomb, 9
Identifications
A number of historians, beginning with the Roman Cephalion (c. AD 120) asserted that Ninus' opponent, the king of Bactria, was actually Zoroaster (or first of several to bear this name), rather than Oxyartes.
Ninus was first identified in the Recognitions (part of
More recently, the identification in Recognitions of Nimrod with Ninus (and also with Zoroaster, as in Homilies) formed a major part of Alexander Hislop's thesis in the 19th century tract The Two Babylons.
Historicity
The decipherment of a vast quantity of cuneiform texts has allowed modern
In culture
The story of Ninus and Semiramis is narrated in a 1st-century AD
In his 7th-century compendium, the Etymologiae, Isidore of Seville claimed that idolatry was the invention of Ninus, who had a gold statue made of his father Belus, which he worshipped. This claim was highly influential throughout the medieval period into the Early Modern.[8][9]
Two major works from late-16th-century England refer to Ninus in passing. William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream has the story of Pyramus and Thisbe as a play-within-a-play. The actors constantly mispronounce the location "Ninus' Tomb" as "Ninny's Tomb," though they are corrected initially, and in vain, by "director" Peter Quince. At the same time, Edmund Spencer's epic poem The Faerie Queene refers to Ninus’ pride in Canto V, verse XLVIII:
- And after him old Ninus farre did pas
- In princely pompe, of all the world obayd
- There also was that mightie Monarch layd
- Low under all, yet above all in pride
In 1846 London, the Italian opera Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi and Temistocle Solera was rewritten as Nino due to British censorship; to avoid depicting Biblical scenes, the enslaved Hebrews under Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar were changed to enslaved Babylonians under Assyrian King Ninus.[10]
Sources
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ninus". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 706. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- Full account in Diodorus
- ^ Soultanian, Gabriel (2011). The History of the Armenians and Moses Khorenats'i. Bennett & Bloom. p. 126.
- ^ "Like a Bird in a Cage": The Invasion of Sennacherib, Lester L. Grabbe (2003), p. 121-122
- ^ "Ninus | Greek mythology". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2017-04-25.
- ^ Duncker, Max (1882-01-01). The History of Antiquity. R. Bentley & son.
- ^ The King James Version of verses 8-12 has "And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city." But verse 11 can be interpreted as "Out of that land went forth Asshur. And he (that is, Nimrod) builded Nineveh..."
- ISBN 0-674-99076-5
- ^ Doro Levi, "The Novel of Ninus and Semiramis" Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 87:5, Papers on Archaeology, Ecology, Ethnology, History, Paleontology, Physics, and Physiology (May 5, 1944), pp. 420-428
- ^ Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art, Cambridge, 1991: 50-51.
- ^ The euhemeristic tradition according to which pagan idolatry began with the veneration of a statue erected by Ninus to his father Belus was accepted by Thomas Aquinas in his discussion of idolatry, Summa, II, II, Q. 94, art. 1-4.
- ^ Marvin, Roberta Montemorra (November 2001). "The Censorship of Verdi's Operas in Victorian London". Music & Letters. 82 (4): 591–592. Retrieved 2023-11-27.