Nineveh was an ancient city in Mesopotamia, near the modern city of Mosul, Iraq, flourishing in the 7th century B.C.E. Its appearance in the Old Testament of the Bible made it an important site for Christians, especially when it was excavated by British archaeologists in the 1840s. Many of the items found there were taken to British museums.
In 1855, an Amherst College graduate who had become a missionary to Assyria donated reliefs from Nineveh to his alma mater. Williams College had already been given two large reliefs from Nineveh in 1851, also donated by one of its graduates who had become a missionary. In recent years, questions have been raised about the ethics of removing art and artifacts from the culture that produced them.