The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Nineveh \Nineveh\ prop. n.
   An ancient Assyrian city.
   [WordNet 1.5]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

Nineveh
    n 1: an ancient Assyrian city on the Tigris across from the
         modern city of Mosul in the northern part of what is now
         known as Iraq

Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary:

Nineveh
   First mentioned in Gen. 10:11, which is rendered in the Revised
   Version, "He [i.e., Nimrod] went forth into Assyria and builded
   Nineveh." It is not again noticed till the days of Jonah, when
   it is described (Jonah 3:3; 4:11) as a great and populous city,
   the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire (2 Kings 19:36;
   Isa. 37:37). The book of the prophet Nahum is almost exclusively
   taken up with prophetic denunciations against this city. Its
   ruin and utter desolation are foretold (Nah.1:14; 3:19, etc.).
   Zephaniah also (2:13-15) predicts its destruction along with the
   fall of the empire of which it was the capital. From this time
   there is no mention of it in Scripture till it is named in
   gospel history (Matt. 12:41; Luke 11:32).

     This "exceeding great city" lay on the eastern or left bank of
   the river Tigris, along which it stretched for some 30 miles,
   having an average breadth of 10 miles or more from the river
   back toward the eastern hills. This whole extensive space is now
   one immense area of ruins. Occupying a central position on the
   great highway between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean,
   thus uniting the East and the West, wealth flowed into it from
   many sources, so that it became the greatest of all ancient
   cities.

     About B.C. 633 the Assyrian empire began to show signs of
   weakness, and Nineveh was attacked by the Medes, who
   subsequently, about B.C. 625, being joined by the Babylonians
   and Susianians, again attacked it, when it fell, and was razed
   to the ground. The Assyrian empire then came to an end, the
   Medes and Babylonians dividing its provinces between them.
   "After having ruled for more than six hundred years with hideous
   tyranny and violence, from the Caucasus and the Caspian to the
   Persian Gulf, and from beyond the Tigris to Asia Minor and
   Egypt, it vanished like a dream" (Nah. 2:6-11). Its end was
   strange, sudden, tragic. It was God's doing, his judgement on
   Assyria's pride (Isa. 10:5-19).

     Forty years ago our knowledge of the great Assyrian empire and
   of its magnificent capital was almost wholly a blank. Vague
   memories had indeed survived of its power and greatness, but
   very little was definitely known about it. Other cities which
   had perished, as Palmyra, Persepolis, and Thebes, had left ruins
   to mark their sites and tell of their former greatness; but of
   this city, imperial Nineveh, not a single vestige seemed to
   remain, and the very place on which it had stood was only matter
   of conjecture. In fulfilment of prophecy, God made "an utter end
   of the place." It became a "desolation."

     In the days of the Greek historian Herodotus, B.C. 400, it had
   become a thing of the past; and when Xenophon the historian
   passed the place in the "Retreat of the Ten Thousand," the very
   memory of its name had been lost. It was buried out of sight,
   and no one knew its grave. It is never again to rise from its
   ruins.

     At length, after being lost for more than two thousand years,
   the city was disentombed. A little more than forty years ago the
   French consul at Mosul began to search the vast mounds that lay
   along the opposite bank of the river. The Arabs whom he employed
   in these excavations, to their great surprise, came upon the
   ruins of a building at the mound of Khorsabad, which, on further
   exploration, turned out to be the royal palace of Sargon, one of
   the Assyrian kings. They found their way into its extensive
   courts and chambers, and brought forth form its hidded depths
   many wonderful sculptures and other relics of those ancient
   times.

     The work of exploration has been carried on almost
   continuously by M. Botta, Sir Henry Layard, George Smith, and
   others, in the mounds of Nebi-Yunus, Nimrud, Koyunjik, and
   Khorsabad, and a vast treasury of specimens of old Assyrian art
   has been exhumed. Palace after palace has been discovered, with
   their decorations and their sculptured slabs, revealing the life
   and manners of this ancient people, their arts of war and peace,
   the forms of their religion, the style of their architecture,
   and the magnificence of their monarchs. The streets of the city
   have been explored, the inscriptions on the bricks and tablets
   and sculptured figures have been read, and now the secrets of
   their history have been brought to light.

     One of the most remarkable of recent discoveries is that of
   the library of King Assur-bani-pal, or, as the Greek historians
   call him, Sardanapalos, the grandson of Sennacherib (q.v.). (See ASNAPPER.) This library consists of about ten thousand
   flat bricks or tablets, all written over with Assyrian
   characters. They contain a record of the history, the laws, and
   the religion of Assyria, of the greatest value. These strange
   clay leaves found in the royal library form the most valuable of
   all the treasuries of the literature of the old world. The
   library contains also old Accadian documents, which are the
   oldest extant documents in the world, dating as far back as
   probably about the time of Abraham. (See SARGON.)

     "The Assyrian royalty is, perhaps, the most luxurious of our
   century [reign of Assur-bani-pa]...Its victories and conquests,
   uninterrupted for one hundred years, have enriched it with the
   spoil of twenty peoples. Sargon has taken what remained to the
   Hittites; Sennacherib overcame Chaldea, and the treasures of
   Babylon were transferred to his coffers; Esarhaddon and
   Assur-bani-pal himself have pillaged Egypt and her great cities,
   Sais, Memphis, and Thebes of the hundred gates...Now foreign
   merchants flock into Nineveh, bringing with them the most
   valuable productions from all countries, gold and perfume from
   South Arabia and the Chaldean Sea, Egyptian linen and
   glass-work, carved enamels, goldsmiths' work, tin, silver,
   Phoenician purple; cedar wood from Lebanon, unassailable by
   worms; furs and iron from Asia Minor and Armenia" (Ancient Egypt
   and Assyria, by G. Maspero, page 271).

     The bas-reliefs, alabaster slabs, and sculptured monuments
   found in these recovered palaces serve in a remarkable manner to
   confirm the Old Testament history of the kings of Israel. The
   appearance of the ruins shows that the destruction of the city
   was due not only to the assailing foe but also to the flood and
   the fire, thus confirming the ancient prophecies concerning it.
   "The recent excavations," says Rawlinson, "have shown that fire
   was a great instrument in the destruction of the Nineveh
   palaces. Calcined alabaster, charred wood, and charcoal,
   colossal statues split through with heat, are met with in parts
   of the Nineveh mounds, and attest the veracity of prophecy."

     Nineveh in its glory was (Jonah 3:4) an "exceeding great city
   of three days' journey", i.e., probably in circuit. This would
   give a circumference of about 60 miles. At the four corners of
   an irregular quadrangle are the ruins of Kouyunjik, Nimrud,
   Karamless and Khorsabad. These four great masses of ruins, with
   the whole area included within the parallelogram they form by
   lines drawn from the one to the other, are generally regarded as
   composing the whole ruins of Nineveh.


Hitchcock's Bible Names Dictionary (late 1800's):

Nineveh, handsome; agreeable