These are the places in Iraq that this guide connects with a Bible passage. Each card gives the passage, the start of the site’s history and a link to its full profile, map location and sources.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE
Ur, at Tell el-Muqayyar about 16 kilometres south-west of Nasiriyah, was one of the great Sumerian city-states. Its patron was the moon god Nanna, and its great ziggurat was built under King Ur-Nammu around 2047–2030 BC, whose law code is among the oldest known.
BIBLICAL SITE
The prophet Nahum is known from a short biblical book foretelling the fall of Nineveh, the Assyrian capital. The book calls him "Nahum the Elkoshite" (Nahum 1:1), and tradition places his tomb inside the old synagogue at Alqosh, a Christian town in the Nineveh Plains, although other places, in Galilee among them, have also claimed to be his Elkosh.
BIBLICAL SITE
Nineveh, on the east bank of the Tigris opposite the old centre of Mosul, was the capital and largest city of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Around 700 BC King Sennacherib laid out new streets and squares, built a vast palace and ringed the city with walls pierced by fifteen great gates; the Nergal Gate marked here is one of them.
