** The date of Assur-bani-pal’s death is not furnished by any Assyrian monument, but is inferred from the Canon of Ptolemy, where Saosduchin or Shamash-shumukin and Chinaladan or Assur-bani-pal each reigns forty-two years, from 668 or 667 to 626 or 625 B.C.  The order of succession of the last Assyrian kings was for a long time doubtful, and Sin-shar- ishkun was placed before Assur-etililani; the inverse order seems to be now conclusively proved.  The documents which seemed at one time to prove the existence of a last king of Assyria named Esarhaddon, identical with the Saracos of classical writers, really belong to Esarhaddon, the father of Assur-bani-pal. [Another king, Sin-sum-lisir, is mentioned in a contract dated at Nippur in his accession year.  He may have been the immediate predecessor of Sarakos.—?  Ed.]

Nineveh had been saved from pillage by the strength of her ramparts, but the other fortresses, Assur, Calah, and Dur-Sharrukin, had been destroyed during the late troubles; the enemy, whether Medes or Scythians, had taken them by storm or reduced them by famine, and they were now mere heaps of ruin, deserted save for a few wretched remnants of their population.  Assur-etililani made some feeble attempts to restore to them a semblance of their ancient splendour.  He erected at Calah, on the site of the palaces which had been destroyed by fire, a kind of castle rudely built, and still more rudely decorated, the rooms of which were small and low, and the walls of sun-dried brick were panelled only to the height of about a yard with slabs of limestone roughly squared, and without sculpture or inscription:  the upper part of the walls was covered with a coating of uneven plaster.  We do not know how long the inglorious reign of Assur-etililani lasted, nor whether he was assassinated or died a natural death.  His brother, Sin-shar-ishkun,* who succeeded him about 620 B.C., at first exercised authority, as he had done, over Babylon as well as Nineveh,** and laboured, like his predecessor, to repair the edifices which had suffered by the invasion, making war on his neighbours, perhaps even on the Medes, without incurring serious losses.

* The name of this king was discovered by G. Smith on the fragments of a cylinder brought from Kouyunjik, where he read it as Bel-zakir-iskun.  The real reading is Sin-shar- ishkun, and the similarity of this name with that of Saracos, the last king of Assyria according to Greek tradition, strikes one immediately.  The relationship of this king to Assur-etililani was pointed out by Father Scheil from the fragment of a tablet on which Sin-shar-ishkun is declared to be the son of Assur-bani-pal, king of Assyria.

** This may be deduced from a passage of Abydenus, where Saracos or Sin-shar-ishkun sends Bussalossoros (that is, Nabopolassar) to defend Chaldae against the invasion of the peoples of the sea; so according to Abydenus, or rather Berosus,