to excite a hostile feeling against his neighbour, provided he ran no risk by his interference of being drawn into open warfare.  He accordingly despatched to the Prince of Sukhi the best of his Cossoan troops, commanded by his brother Zabdanu and one of the great officers of the crown, Bel-baliddin.  In the spring of 879 B.C., Assur-nazir-pal determined once for all to put an end to these intrigues.  He began by inspecting the citadels flanking the line of the Kharmish* and the Khabur,—­Tabiti,** Magarisi,*** Shadikanni, Shuru in Bit-Khafupi, and Sirki.****

     * The Kharmish has been identified with the Hirmas, the
     river flowing by Nisibis, and now called the Nahr-Jaghjagha.

** Tabiti is the Thebeta (Thebet) of Roman itineraries and Syrian writers, situated 33 miles from Nisibis and 52 from Singara, on the Nahr-Hesawy or one of the neighbouring wadys.

*** Magarisi ought to be found on the present Nahr- Jaghjagha, near its confluence with the Nahr-Jerrahi and its tributaries; unfortunately, this part of Mesopotamia is still almost entirely unexplored, and no satisfactory map of it exists as yet.

     **** Sirki is Circesium at the mouth of the Khabur.

Between the embouchures of the Khabur and the Balikh, the Euphrates winds across a vast table-land, ridged with marly hills; the left bank is dry and sterile, shaded at rare intervals by sparse woods of poplars or groups of palms.  The right bank, on the contrary, is seamed with fertile valleys, sufficiently well watered to permit the growth of cereals and the raising of cattle.  The river-bed is almost everywhere wide, but strewn with dangerous rocks and sandbanks which render navigation perilous.  On nearing the ruins of Halebiyeh, the river narrows as it enters the Arabian hills, and cuts for itself a regular defile of three or four hundred paces in length, which is approached by the pilots with caution.*

* It is at this defile of El-Hammeh, and not at that of Birejik at the end of the Taurus, that we must place the Khinqi sha Purati—­the narrows of the Euphrates—­so often mentioned in the account of this campaign.

Assur-nazir-pal, on leaving Sirki, made his way along the left bank, levying toll on Supri, Naqarabani, and several other villages in his course.  Here and there he called a halt facing some town on the opposite bank, but the boats which could have put him across had been removed, and the fords were too well guarded to permit of his hazarding an attack.  One town, however, Khindanu, made him a voluntary offering which, he affected to regard as a tribute, but Kharidi and Anat appeared not even to suspect his presence in their vicinity, and he continued on his way without having obtained from them anything which could be construed into a mark of vassalage.*