The air was still and hot, and the colours of a Kurdish morning slowly started to emerge. People were already gathering in Babatub Square to sit and chat as we got back into the taxi and made our way to the outskirts of the city. We followed the small foothills along the eastern banks of the Tigris to the Al-Shamal bus garage, which was apparently located near the site of one of the gates of the ancient city of Nineveh. The low mountains were adorned with hillside anemones that struggled to grow amidst the larger gum trees. Every now and then little rivers of crystal clear water broke through the surface and began their long journey south to the deltas of the Persian Gulf. A couple of times, I saw bright flashes of light in the far off hills, and couldn’t help thinking that the villagers were signalling to each other, details of our movements in the foothills. Although, I knew deep inside that the flashes were probably beams of sunlight being reflected from the tiles of the local mosque, it still left one feeling that we were being continually watched. Soubi noticed my apprehension and laughingly said, "Kurdistani telephones!"

After about thirty minutes we reached a part of the wall called the Nergal Gate, still flanked with its original bull colosses, which apparently had recently been restored. After we had parked the taxi, Soubi allowed me to lie down for a short while in the morning sunshine on a small mound by the gum trees at the gate. It was a unique moment, trying to gather my thoughts in perspective before finally entering the remains of the last capital of the Assyrian Empire, a city biblically famed to be one of the greatest enemies of Israel. The sun rose even higher in the sky, the wind stopped, the surroundings seemed familiar and for a while the distances between our millennia didn’t appear so enormous….

In King Sennacherib's day the wall around Nineveh was supposedly fifty feet high and it was built four kilometres along the Tigris River and for thirteen kilometres around the inner city. The city then had fifteen main gates, each guarded by two stone bull statues. King Sennacherib had created a wondrous place, adorned with parks, a botanical garden, even a zoo and it is said he built a water system containing the oldest aqueduct in history at Jerwan, down across the Gomel River. The prophet Jonah in his time had gone to Nineveh and when he saw the wickedness of the city he assembled the populace and asked for their repentance. In response to one of the greatest stories of atonement in history, "God saw their works, and He relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it" (Jonah 3:10). The prophet Nahum came later and when he felt the people had relapsed, and he predicted the destruction of the city in the book that bears his name. He foretold that an "overflowing flood" would "make an utter end of its place" (Nah. 1:8) and that the city would never recover, for their "injury has no healing" (Nah. 3:19)

In 612 B.C. the Babylonian army laid siege to Nineveh, but the walls of the city were too strong for their battering rams, so they decided to try and starve the people out. A famous oracle had been given that "Nineveh should never be taken until the river became its enemy." After a three-month siege, "rain fell in such abundance that the waters of the Tigris inundated part of the city and overturned one of its walls for a distance of twenty stades".

The King, convinced that the oracle was accomplished, constructed in his palace an immense funeral pyre and placed all his gold and silver treasures on it. He despaired of falling alive into his enemy's hands, so he set fire to himself and his wives and eunuchs. Nineveh then opened its gates to the besiegers, but the King’s action did little to save the proud city. Nineveh was pillaged and burned, and then razed to the ground as ruthlessly and completely as the cruel Assyrian government had once ravaged Babylon. The once great city was put to the torch, its population was slaughtered or enslaved, and the new palace of Ashurbanipal was completely destroyed. In one blow, Assyria disappeared from history and nothing remained of her except battle tactics and ideas of war. The Near East remembered her for a while as a merciless unifier of lesser states; and the Jews recalled Nineveh vengefully as 'the bloody city, full of lies and robbery.' In a short while all but the mightiest of the Great Kings were forgotten, and all their royal palaces were in ruins under the drifting sands.

Two hundred years later, Xenophon's Ten Thousand marched over the mounds of Nineveh, and nobody even suspected that they were the site of an ancient metropolis that had ruled half the world. King Sennacherib's palace lay undiscovered until 1845, when the young British adventurer Austen Henry Layard found it during an excavation at the ruins of Nineveh. For years sceptics questioned the very existence of the city since it was so badly destroyed it literally could not be found. Layard rediscovered the cuneiform writings on the colossal sculptures in the doorway of the throne room, depicting King Sennacherib's own account of his siege of Jerusalem. It differed in detail from the biblical version, but it created a great deal of public interest, because many Christian people felt this discovery vindicated their faith. It also gave theologians an independent eyewitness corroboration of an actual biblical event, possibly written in the doorway of the very room where Sennacherib may have issued his order to attack.

Again the landscapes and the hillsides became familiar, and as the ever-burning sun climbed even higher in the sky, I suddenly became aware of Soubi’s hand on my shoulder. "Patrick!, wake up" he said "Come inside now or we’ll never make it across the mountains to Sulimaniyah!"