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We may conjecture that this place was the Resen, or Dase, of Holy Scripture, which is said to have been a large city, interposed between Nineveh and Calah. In the same latitude, but considerably further to the east, was the famous city of Arabil or Arbil, known to the Greeks as Arbela, and to this day retaining its ancient appellation.
Though he appears to have been one of the most indefatigable constructors of great works that Assyria produced, having erected during the short period over which his reign extended no fewer than four palaces and above thirty temples, yet it happens unfortunately that we are not as yet in a condition to pronounce a decisive judgment either on the plan of his buildings or on the merits of their ornamentation of his three great palaces, which were situated at Babylon, Calah, and Nineveh, one only that at Calah or Nimrud has been to any large extent explored.
From another inscription we learn that, in the course of another expedition, which seems to have been in the Mesopotamian desert, he destroyed 360 large lions, 257 large wild cattle, and thirty buffaloes, while he took and sent to Calah fifteen full-grown lions, fifty young lions, some leopards, several pairs of wild buffaloes and wild cattle, together with ostriches, wolves, red deer, bears, cheetas, and hyeenas.
He seems to have been the tutelary god of Is or Hit, which Isidore of Charax calls Aeipolis, or "Hea's city;" but there is no evidence that this was a very ancient place. The Assyrian kings built him temples at Asshur and Calah. Hoa had a wife Dav-Kina, of whom a few words will be said presently. Their most celebrated son was Merodach or Bel-Merodach, the Belus of Babylonian times.
We are told that out of his kingdom "one went forth into Assyria," and there "builded" Nineveh and Calah, The cuneiform inscriptions have informed us who this builder of Calah was. He was Shalmaneser I., who was also the restorer of Nineveh and its temples, and who is stated by Sennacherib to have reigned six hundred years before himself.
Asshur-lush, his successor, displayed even less of military vigor. During the eight years of his reign he took the field twice only, passing six years in complete inaction. At the end of this time, Calah, the second city in the kingdom, revolted; and the revolution was brought about which ushered in the splendid period of the Lower Empire.
The third Ishtar had her cult at Arbela, a town lying to the east of Calah about midway between the upper and lower Zab. It is not easy to determine which of these three Ishtars is the oldest.
Festivals in honor of Ninib were celebrated in Calah in the months of Elul the sixth month and Shabat the eleventh month. The sixth month, it will be recalled, is sacred to Ishtar. Ninib being a solar deity, his festival in Elul was evidently of a solar character.
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