In reading the history of this campaign, its plan and the principal events which took place in it appear at times to be the echo of what had happened some centuries before.  The recapitulation of the halting-places near the sources of the Tigris and on the banks of the Upper Euphrates, the marches through the valleys of the Zagros or on the slopes of Kashiari, the crushing one by one of the Mesopotamian races, ending in a triumphal progress through Northern Syria, is almost a repetition, both as to the names and order of the places mentioned, of the expedition made by Tiglath-pileser in the first five years of his reign.  The question may well arise in passing whether Assur-nazir-pal consciously modelled his campaign on that of his ancestor, as, in Egypt, Ramses III. imitated Ramses II., or whether, in similar circumstances, he instinctively and naturally followed the same line of march.  In either case, he certainly showed on all sides greater wisdom than his predecessor, and having attained the object of his ambition, avoided compromising his success by injudiciously attacking Damascus or Babylon, the two powers who alone could have offered effective resistance.  The victory he had gained, in 879, over the brother of Nabu-baliddin had immensely flattered his vanity.  His panegyrists vied with each other in depicting Karduniash bewildered by the terror of his majesty, and the Chaldaeans overwhelmed by the fear of his arms; but he did not allow himself to be carried away by their extravagant flatteries, and continued to the end of his reign to observe the treaties concluded between the two courts in the time of his grandfather Ramman-nirari.*

     * His frontier on the Chaldaean side, between the Tigris and
     the mountains, was the boundary fixed by Ramman-nirari.

He had, however, sufficiently enlarged his dominions, in less than ten years, to justify some display of pride.  He himself described his empire as extending, on the west of Assyria proper, from the banks of the Tigris near Nineveh to Lebanon and the Mediterranean;* besides which, Sukhi was subject to him, and this included the province of Rapiku on the frontiers of Babylonia.**

* The expression employed in this description and in similar passages, ishtu ibirtan naru, translated from the ford over the river, or better, from the other side of the river, must be understood as referring to Assyria proper:  the territory subject to the king is measured in the direction indicated, starting from the rivers which formed the boundaries of his hereditary dominions. From the other bank of the Tigris means from the bank of the Tigris opposite Nineveh or Oalah, whence the king and his army set out on their campaigns.

     ** Rapiku is mentioned in several texts as marking the
     frontier between the Sukhi and Chaldaea.