tolerated within the temple of the eponymous god, for the purpose of celebrating the rites which the sovereign alone was empowered to perform.  Marduk-nadin-shumu, in recognising Shalmaneser’s right to act thus, thereby acknowledged that he himself was not only the king’s ally, but his liegeman.  This bond of supremacy doubtless did not weigh heavily upon him; as soon as his suzerain had evacuated the country, the two kingdoms remained much on the same footing as had been established by the treaties of the three previous generations.  Alliances were made between private families belonging to both, peace existed between the two sovereigns, interchange of commerce and amenities took place between the two peoples, but with one point of difference which had not existed formerly:  Assur protected Babel, and, by taking precedence of Marduk, he became the real head of the peoples of the Euphrates valley.  Assured of the subordination, or at least of the friendly neutrality of Babylon, Shalma-neser had now a free hand to undertake a campaign in the remoter regions of Syria, without being constantly haunted by the fear that his rival might suddenly swoop down upon him in the rear by the valleys of the Badanu or the Zabs.  He now ran no risks in withdrawing his troops from the south-eastern frontier, and in marshalling his forces on the slopes of the Armenian Alps or on the banks of the Orontes, leaving merely a slender contingent in the heart of Assyria proper to act as the necessary guardians of order in the capital.

Since the indecisive battle of Qarqar, the western frontier of the empire had receded as far as the Euphrates, and Shalmaneser had been obliged to forego the collection of the annual Syrian tribute.  It would have been an excellent opportunity for the Khati, while they enjoyed this accidental respite, to come to an understanding with Damascus, for the purpose of acting conjointly against a common enemy; but they let the right moment slip, and their isolation made submission inevitable.  The effort to subdue them cost Shalmaneser dear, both in time and men; in the spring of each year he appeared at the fords of Tul-barsip and ravaged the environs of Carchemish, then marched upon the Orontes to accomplish the systematic devastation of some fresh district, or to inflict a defeat on such of his adversaries as dared to encounter him in the open field.  In 850 B.C. the first blow was struck at the Khati; Agusi* was the next to suffer, and its king, Arame, lost Arnie, his royal city, with some hundred more townships and strongholds.**

* Historians have up to the present admitted that this campaign of the year 850 took place in Armenia.  The context of the account itself shows us that, in his tenth year, Shalmaneser advanced against the towns of Arame, immediately after having pillaged the country of the Khati, which inclines me to think that these towns were situated in Northern Syria.  I have no doubt that the Arame in question