Ziggurat of Nineveh

36.3597°N, 43.1528°E.

The principal ziggurat at Nineveh — ancient Ninua, the last great Assyrian capital — in modern Nineveh Governorate, Iraq. Original construction began ~2300 BCE and the structure was rebuilt multiple times through the Middle Assyrian period, reaching its largest scale under Sennacherib (~700 BCE) as part of his expansion of Nineveh into the largest city in the world at the time, with a population of approximately 120,000 within a 12-kilometre defensive wall. Original base of the ziggurat approximately 47 metres per side; original height around 30 metres on multiple terraces. Excavated in part by Layard between 1845 and 1851 and by subsequent British and Iraqi missions through the twentieth century. Nineveh was the city of the prophet Jonah in the Hebrew Bible; the supposed tomb of Jonah at Nebi Yunus was a major pilgrimage site through the medieval and Ottoman periods until its demolition by Islamic State in July 2014.

The ziggurat in the city named in the Old Testament as the seat of the empire, in a precinct adjacent to a tomb traditionally identified as the prophet Jonah's, both partially erased within the same decade.