from the time of Shalmaneser I. We gather from the passages in which it is mentioned that it was a hilly country, producing wine, rich in flocks, and lying at a short distance from Tushkhan; perhaps Mariru, mentioned on p. 28, was one of its towns.  I think we may safely place it on the north-western slopes of the Kashiari, in the modern caza of Tchernik, which possesses several vineyards held in high estimation.  Knudtzon, to whom we are indebted for the reading of this name, places the country rather further north, within the fork formed by the two upper branches of the Tigris.

He constructed a palace there, built storehouses for the reception of the grain of the province; and, in short, transformed the town into a stronghold of the first order, capable of serving as a base of operations for his armies.  The surrounding princes, in the meanwhile, rallied round him, including Ammibaal of Bit-Zamani, and the rulers of Shupria, Nairi, and Urumi;* the chiefs of Eastern Nirbu alone held aloof, emboldened by the rugged nature of their mountains and the density of their forests.  Assur-nazir-pal attacked them on his return journey, dislodged them from the fortress of Ishpilibria where they were entrenched, gained the pass of Buliani, and emerged into the valley of Luqia.**

* The position of Bit-Zamani on the banks of the Euphrates was determined by Delattre.  Urumi was situated on the right bank of the same river in the neighbourhood of Sumeisat, and the name has survived in that of Urima, a town in the vicinity so called even as late as Roman times.  Nirdun, with Madara as its capital, occupied part of the eastern slopes of the Kashiari towards Ortaveran.

** Hommel identifies the Luqia with the northern affluent of the Euphrates called on the ancient monuments Lykos, and he places the scene of the war in Armenia.  The context obliges us to look for this river to the south of the Tigris, to the north-east and to the east of the Kashiari.  The king coming from Nirbu, the pass of Buliani, in which he finds the towns of Kirkhi, must be the valley of Khaneki, in which the road winds from Mardin to Diarbekir, and the Luqia is probably the most important stream in this region, the Sheikhan-Su, which waters Savur, chief town of the caza of Avinch.  Ardupa must have been situated near, or on the actual site of, the present Mardin, whose Assyrian name is unknown to us; it was at all events a military station on the road to Nineveh, along which the king returned victorious with the spoil.

At Ardupa a brief halt was made to receive the ambassadors of one of the Hittite sovereigns and others from the kings of Khanigalbat, after which he returned to Nineveh, where he spent the winter.  As a matter of fact, these were but petty wars, and their immediate results appear at the first glance quite inadequate to account for the contemporary enthusiasm they excited.  The sincerity of it can be better understood when we