[Illustration:  050.jpg CAMPAIGNS OF ASSUR-NAZIR-PAL IN SYRIA]

Of these states, the most famous, though not then the most redoubtable, was that with which the name of the Khati is indissolubly connected, and which had Carchemish as its capital.  This ancient city, seated on the banks of the Euphrates, still maintained its supremacy there, but though its wealth and religious ascendency were undiminished, its territory had been curtailed.  The people of Bit-Adini had intruded themselves between this state and Kummukh, Arazik hemmed it in on the south, Khazazu and Khalman confined it on the west, so that its sway was only freely exercised in the basin of the Sajur.  On the north-west frontier of the Khati lay Gurgum, whose princes resided at Marqasi and ruled over the central valley of the Pyramos together with the entire basin of the Ak-su.  Mikhri,* Iaudi, and Samalla lay on the banks of the Saluara, and in the forests of the Amanos to the south of Gurgum.  Kui maintained its uneventful existence amid the pastures of Cilicia, near the marshes at the mouth of the Pyramos.  To the south of the Sajur, Bit-Agusi** barred the way to the Orontes; and from their lofty fastness of Arpad, its chiefs kept watch over the caravan road, and closed or opened it at their will.

     * Mikhri or Ismikhri, i.e. “the country of larches,” was the
     name of a part of the Amanos, possibly near the Pyramos.

** The real name of the country was Iakhanu, but it was called Bit-Gusi or Bit-Agusi, like Bit-Adini, Bit-Bakhiani, Bit-Omri, after the founder of the reigning dynasty.  We must place Iakhanu to the south of Azaz, in the neighbourhood of Arpad, with this town as its capital.

They held the key of Syria, and though their territory was small in extent, their position was so strong that for more than a century and a half the majority of the Assyrian generals preferred to avoid this stronghold by making a detour to the west, rather than pass beneath its walls.  Scattered over the plateau on the borders of Agusi, or hidden in the valleys of Amanos, were several less important principalities, most of them owing allegiance to Lubarna, at that time king of the Patina and the most powerful sovereign of the district.  The Patina had apparently replaced the Alasia of Egyptian times, as Bit-Adini had superseded Mitani; the fertile meadow-lands to the south of Samalla on the Afrin and the Lower Orontes, together with the mountainous district between the Orontes and the sea as far as the neighbourhood of Eleutheros, also belonged to the Patina.

[Illustration:  052.jpg BAS-RELIEF FROM A BUILDING AT SINJIRLI]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Perrot and Chipiez.