to give any detailed account of this long and apparently important reign.  We can only say that Vul-lush III., was as warlike a monarch as any of his predecessors, and that his efforts seem to have extended the Assyrian dominion in almost every quarter.  He made seven expeditions across the Zagros range into Media, two into the Van country, and three into Syria.  He tells us that in one of these expeditions he succeeded in making himself master of the great city of Damascus, whose kings had defied (as we have seen) the repeated attacks of Shalmaneser.  He reckons as his tributaries in these parts, besides Damascus, the cities of Tyre and Sidon, and the countries of Khumri or Samaria, of Palestine or Philistia, and of Hudum (Idumaea or Edom).  On the north and east he received tokens of submission from the Nairi, the Minni, the Medes, and the Partsu, or Persians.  On the south, he exercised a power, which seems like that of a sovereign, in Babylonia; where homage was paid him by the Chaldaeans, and where, in the great cities of Babylon, Borsippa, and Cutha (or Tiggaba), he was allowed’to offer sacrifice to the gods Bel, Nebo, and Nergal.  There is, further, some reason to suspect that, before quitting Babylonia, he established one of his sons as viceroy over the country; since he seems to style himself in one place “the king to whose son Asshur, the chief of the gods, has granted the kingdom of Babylon.”

It thus appears that by the time of Vul-lush III., or early in the eighth century u.e., Assyria had with one hand grasped Babylonia, while with the other she had laid hold of Philistia and Edom.  She thus touched the Persian Gulf on the one side, while on the other she was brought into contact with Egypt.  At the same time she had received the submission of at least some portion of the great nation of the Medes, who were now probably moving southwards from Azerbijan and gradually occupying the territory which was regarded as Media Proper by the Greeks and Romans.  She held Southern Armenia, from Lake Van to the sources of the Tigris; she possessed all Upper Syria, including Commagene and Amanus she had tributaries even on the further side of that mountain range; she bore sway over the whole Syrian coast from Issus to Gaza; her authority was acknowledged, probably, by all the tribes and kingdoms between the coast and the desert, certainly by the Phoenicians, the Hamathites, the Patena, the Hittites, the Syrians of Damascus, the people of Israel, and the Idumaeans, or people of Edom.  On the east she had reduced almost all the valleys of Zagros, and had tributaries in the great upland on the eastern side of the range.  On the south, if she had not absorbed Babylonia, she had at least made her influence paramount there.  The full height of her greatness was not indeed attained till a century later; but already the “tall cedar” was “exalted above all the trees of the field; his boughs were multiplied; his branches had become long; and under his shadow dwelt great nations.”