NIMROD or Nimrud, a chief mentioned in Genesis x. 8-12, as a mighty hunter ruling in Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar, and Reseu between Nineveh and Calah. George Smith supposed him to be Izdhubar, a local Babylonian chief, ruling at Erech, the modern Warka, over the country from the Armenian mountains to the Persian Gulf. Professor Sayce says (Fresh Light, p. 51) that his name has not yet been discovered in the cuneiform records. A mound about 9 miles from Baghdad, a ponderous mass of ruin, is called by the Arabs Tull Aker kouf, and by the Turks Nimrud Tapasi, both which appellations signify the of Nimrud. The ruined city near the mouth of the Upper lab, now usually known by the name of iNlirmod, is called Ashur by the Arabic geographers, and in A thur we recognise the old name of Assyria, which Dio Cassius writes Atyria, remarking that the bar barians changed the Sigma into Tan. Xenophon, in his account of the Retreat of the 10,000, makes mention of a pyramid in a town called by him Larissa. It is probable that the mound marks
the site of that place, which the Turks generally believe to have been Nimrod's own city ; and one or two of the better informed-with whom Rich conversed at Mosul, said it was Al-Athur or Ashur, from which the whole country was denominated. Assyriologists, however, mention Calah as a large city about 20 miles south of Nineveh, now repre sented by the mounds of Nimrud Resen, a city lying between Calah sad Nineveh, supposed to be represented by the modern Salamiyah. Professor Sayce says (Fresh Light, p. 50) a few miles to the south of Nineveh, on the site now known as Nimrud, was Calah, a town built by Shalmaneser i., who lived n.e. 1300. Calah subsequently fell into ruins, but was rebuilt in the 9th century --Mignan's Tr. p. 102.