* Formerly these barbarians were identified with the remains of the Scythian hordes, and this hypothesis has been recently revived by Prashek.  G. Rawlinson long ago recognised that the reference must be to the Chaldaeans, who were perhaps joined by the Susians.

** The Cylinder of Nabonichs, the only original document in which allusion is made to the destruction of Nineveh, speaks of the Umman-Manda and their king, whom it does not name, and it has been agreed to recognise Cyaxares in this sovereign.  On the other hand, the name of Umman-Manda certainly designates in the Assyrian texts the wandering Iranian tribes to whom the Greeks gave the name of Sakse or Scythians; the result, in the opinions of several Assyriologists of the present day, is that neither Astyages nor Cyaxares were Medes in the sense in which we have hitherto accepted them as such on the evidence of Herodotus, but that they were Scythians, the Scythians of the great invasion.  This conclusion does not seem to me at present justified.  The Babylonians, who up till then had not had any direct intercourse either with the Madai or the Umman-Manda, did as the Egyptians had done whether in Saite or Ptolemaic times, continuing to designate as Khari, Kafiti, Lotanu, and Khati the nations subject to the Persians or Macedonians; they applied a traditional name of olden days to present circumstances, and I see, at present, no decisive reason to change, on the mere authority of this one word, all that the classical writers have handed down concerning the history of the epoch according to the tradition current in their days.

*** The name of the princess is written Amuhia, Amyitis.  The classical sources, the only ones which mention her, make her the daughter of Astyages, and this has given rise to various hypotheses.  According to some, the notice of this princess has no historical value.  According to others, the Astyages mentioned as her father is not Cyaxares the Mede, but a Scythian prince who came to the succour of Nabopolassar, perhaps a predecessor of Cyaxares on the Median throne, and in this case Phraortes himself under another name.  The most prudent course is still to admit that Abydenus, or one of the compilers of extracts to whom we owe the information, has substituted the name of the last king of Media for that of his predecessor, either by mistake, or by reason of some chronological combinations.  Amyitis, transported into the harem of the Chaldaean monarch, served, like all princesses married out of their own countries, as a pledge for the faithful observance by her relatives of the treaty which had been concluded.

The western provinces of the empire did not permit themselves to be drawn into the movement, and Judah, for example, remained faithful to its suzerain till the last moment,* but Sin-shar-ishkun received no help from them, and was obliged to fight his last battles single-handed.  He shut himself up in Nineveh,