This period of subjection and humiliation did not last long. Belkudurusur, who appears on the throne not long after Assurnirâri and his partner, resumed military operations against the Cossæans, but cautiously at first; and though he fell in the decisive engagement, yet Bammân-shumusur perished with him, and the two states were thus simultaneously left rulerless. Milishikhu succeeded Bammânshumusur, and Ninipahalesharra filled the place of Belkudurusur; the disastrous invasion of Assyria by the Chaldæans, and their subsequent retreat, at length led to an armistice, which, while it afforded evidence of the indisputable superiority of Milishikhu, proved no less plainly the independence of his rival. Mero-dachabaliddina I. replaced Milishikhu, Zamâniashu-middin followed Merodachabaliddina: Assurdân I., son of Ninipahalesharra, broke the treaty, captured the towns of Zabân, Irrîa, and Akarsallu, and succeeded in retaining them. The advantage thus gained was but a slight one, for these provinces lying between the two Zabs had long been subject to Assyria, and had been wrested from her since the days of Tukulti-ninip: however, it broke the run of ill luck which seemed to have pursued her so relentlessly, and opened the way for more important victories. This was the last Cossæan war; at any rate, the last of which we find any mention in history: Bel-nadînshumu II. reigned three years after Zamâmashu-middin, but when he died there was no man of his family whom the priests could invite to lay hold of the hand of Merodach, and his dynasty ended with him. It included thirty-six kings, and had lasted five hundred and seventy-six years and six months.*

* The following is a list of some of the kings of this dynasty according to the canon discovered by Pinches.

It had enjoyed its moments of triumph, and at one time had almost seemed destined to conquer the whole of Asia; but it appears to have invariably failed just as it was on the point of reaching the goal, and it became completely exhausted by its victories at the end of every two or three generations. It had triumphed over Elam, and yet Elam remained a constant peril on its right. It had triumphed over Assyria, yet Assyria, after driving it back to the regions of the Upper Tigris, threatened to bar the road to the Mediterranean by means of its Masian colonies: were they once to succeed in this attempt, what hope would there be left to those who ruled in Babylon of ever after re-establishing the traditional empire of the ancient Sargon and Khammurabi? The new dynasty sprang from a town in Pashê, the geographical position of which is not known. It was of Babylonian origin, and its members placed, at the be ginning of their protocols, formula which were intended to indicate, in the clearest possible manner, the source from which they sprang: they declared themselves to be scions of Babylon, its vicegerents, and supreme masters. The names of the first two we do not know: the third, Nebuchadrezzar, shows himself to have been one of the most remarkable men of all those who flourished during this troubled era. At no time, perhaps, had Chaldæa been in a more abject state, or assailed by more active foes. The Elamite had just succeeded in wresting from her Namar, the region from whence the bulk of her chariot-horses were obtained, and this success had laid the provinces on the left bank of the Tigris open to their attacks. They had even crossed the river, pillaged Babylon, and carried away the statue of Bel and that of a goddess named Eria, the patroness of Khussi: “Merodach, sore angered, held himself aloof from the country of Akkad;” the kings could no longer “take his hands” on their coming to the throne, and were obliged to reign without proper investiture in consequence of their failure to fulfil the rite required by religious laws.*

Nebuchadrezzar arose “in Babylon,—roaring like a lion, even as Bammân roareth,—and his chosen nobles, roared like lions with him.—To Merodach, lord of Babylon, rose his prayer:—‘How long, for me, shall there be sighing and groaning?—How long, for my land, weeping and mourning?—How long, for my countries, cries of grief and tears? Till what time, O lord of Babylon, wilt thou remain in hostile regions?—Let thy heart be softened, and make Babylon joyful,—and let thy face be turned toward Eshaggil which thou lovest!’” Merodach gave ear to the plaint of his servant: he answered him graciously and promised his aid. Namar, united as it had been with Chaldæa for centuries, did not readily become accustomed to its new masters. The greater part of the land belonged to a Semitic and Cossæan feudality, the heads of which, while admitting their suzerain’s right to exact military service from them, refused to acknowledge any further duty towards him. The kings of Susa declined to recognise their privileges: they subjected them to a poll-tax, levied the usual imposts on their estates, and forced them to maintain at their own expense the troops quartered on them for the purpose of guaranteeing their obedience.*

Several of the nobles abandoned everything rather than submit to such tyranny, and took refuge with Nebuchadrezzar: others entered into secret negotiations with him, and promised to support him if he came to their help with an armed force. He took them at their word, and invaded Namar without warning in the month of Tamuz, while the summer was at its height, at a season in which the Elamites never even dreamt he would take the field. The heat was intense, water was not to be got, and the army suffered terribly from thirst during its forced march of over a hundred miles across a parched-up country. One of the malcontents, Eittimerodach, lord of Bitkarziabku, joined Nebuchadrezzar with all the men he could assemble, and together they penetrated as far as Ulaî. The King of Elam, taken by surprise, made no attempt to check their progress, but collected his vassals and awaited their attack on the banks of the river in front of Susa. Once “the fire of the combat had been lighted between the opposing forces, the face of the sun grew dark, the tempest broke forth, the whirlwind raged, and in this whirlwind of the struggle none of the characters could distinguish the face of his neighbour.” Nebuchadrezzar, cut off from his own men, was about to surrender or be killed, when Eittimerodach flew to his rescue and brought him off safely. In the end the Chaldæans gained the upper hand.*

The Elamites renounced their claims to the possession of Namar, and restored the statues of the gods: Nebuchadrezzar “at once laid hold of the hands of Bel,” and thus legalised his accession to the throne. Other expeditions against the peoples of Lulurne and against the Cossæans restored his supremacy in the regions of the north-east, and a campaign along the banks of the Euphrates opened out the road to Syria. He rewarded generously those who had accompanied him on his raid against Elam. After issuing regulations intended to maintain the purity of the breed of horses for which Namar was celebrated, he reinstated in their possessions Shamuâ and his son Shamaî, the descendants of one of the priestly families of the province, granting them in addition certain domains near Upi, at the mouth of the Turnât. He confirmed Rittimerodach in possession of all his property, and reinvested him with all the privileges of which the King of Elam had deprived him. From that time forward the domain of Bitkarziabku was free of the tithe on corn, oxen, and sheep; it was no longer liable to provide horses and mares for the exchequer, or to afford free passage to troops in time of peace; the royal jurisdiction ceased on the boundary of the fief, the seignorial jurisdiction alone extended over the inhabitants and their property. Chaldæan prefects ruled in Namar, at Khalman, and at the foot of the Zagros, and Nebuchadrezzar no longer found any to oppose him save the King of Assyria.

The long reign of Assurdân in Assyria does not seem to have been distinguished by any event of importance either good or bad: it is true he won several towns on the south-east from the Babylonians, but then he lost several others on the north-west to the Mushku,* and the loss on the one side fully balanced the advantage gained on the other.

His son Mutakkilnusku lived in Assur at peace,* but his grandson, Assurîshishî, was a mighty king, conqueror of a score of countries, and the terror of all rebels: he scattered the hordes of the Akhlamê and broke up their forces; then Ninip, the champion of the gods, permitted him to crush the Lulumê and the G-uti in their valleys and on their mountains covered with forests. He made his way up to the frontiers of Elam,** and his encroachments on territories claimed by Babylon stirred up the anger of the Chaldæans against him; Nebuchadrezzar made ready to dispute their ownership with him.

The earlier engagements went against the Assyrians; they were driven back in disorder, but the victor lost time before one of their strongholds, and, winter coming on before he could take it, he burnt his engines of war, set fire to his camp, and returned home. Next year, a rapid march carried him right under the walls of Assur; then Assurîshishî came to the rescue, totally routed his opponent, captured forty of his chariots, and drove him flying across the frontier. The war died out of itself, its end being marked by no treaty: each side kept its traditional position and supremacy over the tribes inhabiting the basins of the Turnât and Eadanu. The same names reappear in line after line of these mutilated Annals, and the same definite enumerations of rebellious tribes who have been humbled or punished. These kings of the plain, both Ninevite and Babylonian, were continually raiding the country up and down for centuries without ever arriving at any decisive result, and a detailed account of their various campaigns would be as tedious reading as that of the ceaseless struggle between the Latins and Sabines which fills the opening pages of Roman history. Posterity soon grew weary of them, and, misled by the splendid position which Assyria attained when at the zenith of its glory, set itself to fabricate splendid antecedents for the majestic empire established by the latter dynasties. The legend ran that, at the dawn of time, a chief named Ninos had reduced to subjection one after the other—Babylonia, Media, Armenia, and all the provinces between the Indies and the Mediterranean. He built a capital for himself on the banks of the Tigris, in the form of a parallelogram, measuring a hundred and fifty stadia in length, ninety stadia in width; altogether, the walls were four hundred and eighty stadia in circumference. In addition to the Assyrians who formed the bulk of the population, he attracted many foreigners to Nineveh, so that in a few years it became the most flourishing town in the whole world. An inroad of the tribes of the Oxus interrupted his labours; Ninos repulsed the invasion, and, driving the barbarians back into Bactria, laid siege to it; here, in the tent of one of his captains, he came upon Semiramis, a woman whose past was shrouded in mystery. She was said to be the daughter of an ordinary mortal by a goddess, the Ascalonian Derketô. Exposed immediately after her birth, she was found and adopted by a shepherd named Simas, and later on her beauty aroused the passion of Oannes, governor of Syria. Ninos, amazed at the courage displayed by her on more than one occasion, carried her off, made her his favourite wife, and finally met his death at her hands. No sooner did she become queen, than she founded Babylon on a far more extensive scale than that of Nineveh. Its walls were three hundred and sixty stadia in length, with two hundred and fifty lofty towers, placed here and there on its circuit, the roadway round the top of the ramparts being wide enough for six chariots to drive abreast. She made a kind of harbour in the Euphrates, threw a bridge across it, and built quays one hundred and sixty stadia in length along its course; in the midst of the town she raised a temple to Bel. This great work was scarcely finished when disturbances broke out in Media; these she promptly repressed, and set out on a tour of inspection through the whole of her provinces, with a view to preventing the recurrence of similar outbreaks by her presence. Wherever she went she left records of her passage behind her, cutting her way through mountains, quarrying a pathway through the solid rock, making broad highways for herself, bringing rebellious tribes beneath her yoke, and raising tumuli to mark the tombs of such of her satraps as fell beneath the blows of the enemy. She built Ecbatana in Media, Semiramocarta on Lake Van in Armenia, and Tarsus in Cilicia; then, having reached the confines of Syria, she crossed the isthmus, and conquered Egypt and Ethiopia. The far-famed wealth of India recalled her from the banks of the Nile to those of the Euphrates, en route for the remote east, but at this point her good fortune forsook her: she was defeated by King Stratobates, and returned to her own dominions, never again to leave them. She had set up triumphal stelae on the boundaries of the habitable globe, in the very midst of Scythia, not far from the Iaxartes, where, centuries afterwards, Alexander of Macedon read the panegyric of herself which she had caused to be engraved there. “Nature,” she writes, “gave me the body of a woman, but my deeds have put me on a level with the greatest of men. I ruled over the dominion of Ninos, which extends eastwards to the river Hinaman, southwards to the countries of Incense and Myrrh, and northwards as far as the Sacaa and Sogdiani. Before my time no Assyrian had ever set eyes on the sea: I have seen four oceans to which no mariner has ever sailed, so far remote are they. I have made rivers to flow where I would have them, in the places where they were needed; thus did I render fertile the barren soil by watering it with my rivers. I raised up impregnable fortresses, and cut roadways through the solid rock with the pick. I opened a way for the wheels of my chariots in places to which even the feet of wild beasts had never penetrated. And, amidst all these labours, I yet found time for my pleasures and for the society of my friends.” On discovering that her son Ninyas was plotting her assassination, she at once abdicated in his favour, in order to save him from committing a crime, and then transformed herself into a dove; this last incident betrays the goddess to us. Ninos and Semiramis are purely mythical, and their mighty deeds, like those ascribed to Ishtar and Gilgames, must be placed in the same category as those other fables with which the Babylonian legends strive to fill up the blank of the prehistoric period.*

The real facts were, as we know, far less brilliant and less extravagant than those supplied by popular imagination. It would be a mistake, however, to neglect or despise them on account of their tedious monotony and the insignificance of the characters who appear on the stage. It was by dint of fighting her neighbours again and again, without a single day’s respite, that Rome succeeded in forging the weapons with which she was to conquer the world; and any one who, repelled by their tedious sameness, neglected to follow the history of her early struggles, would find great difficulty in understanding how it came about that a city which had taken centuries to subjugate her immediate neighbours should afterwards overcome all the states on the Mediterranean seaboard with such magnificent ease. In much the same way the ceaseless struggles of Assyria with the Chaldaeans, and with the mountain tribes of the Zagros Chain, were unconsciously preparing her for those lightning-like campaigns in which she afterwards overthrew all the civilized nations of the Bast one after another. It was only at the cost of unparalleled exertions that she succeeded in solidly welding together the various provinces within her borders, and in kneading (so to speak) the many and diverse elements of her vast population into one compact mass, containing in itself all that was needful for its support, and able to bear the strain of war for several years at time without giving way, and rich enough in men and horses to provide the material for an effective army without excessive impoverishment of her trade or agriculture.

The race came of an old Semitic strain, somewhat crude as yet, and almost entirely free from that repeated admixture of foreign elements which had marred the purity of the Babylonian stock. The monuments show us a type similar in many respects to that which we find to-day on the slopes of Singar, or in the valleys to the east of Mossul.

The figures on the monuments are tall and straight, broad-shouldered and wide in the hips, the arms well developed, the legs robust, with good substantial feet. The swell of the muscles on the naked limbs is perhaps exaggerated, but this very exaggeration of the modelling suggests the vigour of the model; it is a heavier, more rustic type than the Egyptian, promising greater strength and power of resistance, and in so far an indisputable superiority in the great game of war. The head is somewhat small, the forehead low and flat, the eyebrows heavy, the eye of a bold almond shape, with heavy lids, the nose aquiline, and full at the tip, with wide nostrils terminating in a hard, well-defined curve; the lips are thick and full, the chin bony, while the face is framed by the coarse dark wavy hair and beard, which fell in curly masses over the nape of the neck and the breast. The expression of the face is rarely of an amiable and smiling type, such as we find in the statues of the Theban period or in those of the Memphite empire, nor, as a matter of fact, did the Assyrian pride himself on the gentleness of his manners: he did not overflow with love for his fellow-man, as the Egyptian made a pretence of doing; on the contrary, he was stiff-necked and proud, without pity for others or for himself, hot-tempered and quarrelsome like his cousins of Chaldæa, but less turbulent and more capable of strict discipline. It mattered not whether he had come into the world in one of the wretched cabins of a fellah village, or in the palace of one of the great nobles; he was a born soldier, and his whole education tended to develop in him the first qualities of the soldier—temperance, patience, energy, and unquestioning obedience: he was enrolled in an army which was always on a war footing, commanded by the god Assur, and under Assur, by the king, the vicegerent and representative of the god. His life was shut in by the same network of legal restrictions which confined that of the Babylonians, and all its more important events had to be recorded on tablets of clay; the wording of contracts, the formalities of marriage or adoption, the status of bond and free, the rites of the dead and funeral ceremonies, had either remained identical with those in use during the earliest years of the cities of the Lower Euphrates, or differed from them only in their less important details. The royal and municipal governments levied the same taxes, used the same procedure, employed the same magistrates, and the grades of their hierarchy were the same, with one exception. After the king, the highest office was filled by a soldier, the tartan who saw to the recruiting of the troops, and led them in time of war, or took command of the staff-corps whenever the sovereign himself deigned to appear on the scene of action.*

The more influential of these functionaries bore, in addition to their other titles, one of a special nature, which, for the space of one year, made its holder the most conspicuous man in the country; they became limmu, and throughout their term of office their names appeared on all official documents. The Chaldæans distinguished the various years of each reign by a reference to some event which had taken place in each; the Assyrians named them after the limmu.* The king was the ex-officio limmu for the year following that of his accession, then after him the tartan, then the ministers and governors of provinces and cities in an order which varied little from reign to reign. The names of the limmu, entered in registers and tabulated—just as, later on, were those of the Greek archons and Roman consuls—furnished the annalists with a rigid chronological system, under which the facts of history might be arranged with certainty.**

The king still retained the sacerdotal attributes with which Cossæan monarchs had been invested from the earliest times, but contact with the Egyptians had modified the popular conception of his personality. His subjects were no longer satisfied to regard him merely as a man superior to his fellow-men; they had come to discover something of the divine nature in him, and sometimes identified him—not with Assur, the master of all things, who occupied a position too high above the pale of ordinary humanity—but with one of the demi-gods of the second rank, Shamash, the Sun, the deity whom the Pharaohs pretended to represent in flesh and blood here below. His courtiers, therefore, went as far as to call him “Sun” when they addressed him, and he himself adopted this title in his inscriptions.*

Formerly he had only attained this apotheosis after death, later on he was permitted to aspire to it during his lifetime. The Chaldæans adopted the same attitude, and in both countries the royal authority shone with the borrowed lustre of divine omnipotence. With these exceptions life at court remained very much the same as it had been; at Nineveh, as at Babylon, we find harems filled with foreign princesses, who had either been carried off as hostages from the country of a defeated enemy, or amicably obtained from their parents. In time of war, the command of the troops and the dangers of the battle-field; in time of peace, a host of religious ceremonies and judicial or administrative duties, left but little leisure to the sovereign who desired to perform conscientiously all that was required of him. His chief amusement lay in the hunting of wild beasts: the majority of the princes who reigned over Assyria had a better right than even Amenôthes III. himself to boast of the hundreds of lions which they had slain. They set out on these hunting expeditions with quite a small army of charioteers and infantry, and were often away several days at a time, provided urgent business did not require their presence in the palace. They started their quarry with the help of large dogs, and followed it over hill and dale till they got within bowshot: if it was but slightly wounded and turned on them, they gave it the finishing stroke with their lances without dismounting.

Occasionally, however, they were obliged to follow their prey into places where horses could not easily penetrate; then a hand-to-hand conflict was inevitable. The lion would rise on its hind quarters and endeavour to lay its pursuer low with a stroke of its mighty paw, but only to fall pierced to the heart by his lance or sword.

This kind of encounter demanded great presence of mind and steadiness of hand; the Assyrians were, therefore, trained to it from their youth up, and no hunter was permitted to engage in these terrible encounters without long preliminary practice. Seeing the lion as they did so frequently, and at such close quarters, they came to know it quite as well as the Egyptians, and their sculptors reproduce it with a realism and technical skill which have been rarely equalled in modern times. But while the Theban artist generally represents it in an attitude of repose, the Assyrians prefer to show it in violent action in all the various attitudes which it assumes during a struggle, either crouching as it prepares to spring, or fully extended in the act of leaping; sometimes it rears into an upright position, with arched back, gaping jaws, and claws protruded, ready to bite or strike its foe; at others it writhes under a spear-thrust, or rolls over and over in its dying agonies. In one instance, an arrow has pierced the skull of a male lion, crashing through the frontal bone a little above the left eyebrow, and protrudes obliquely to the right between his teeth: under the shock of the blow he has risen on his hind legs, with contorted spine, and beats the air with his fore paws, his head thrown back as though to free himself of the fatal shaft. Not far from him the lioness lies stretched out upon its back in the rigidity of death.

The “rimu,” or urus, was, perhaps, even a more formidable animal to encounter than any of the felido, owing to the irresistible fury of his attack. No one would dare, except in a case of dire necessity, to meet him on foot. The loose flowing robes which the king and the nobles never put aside—not even in such perilous pastimes as these—were ill fitted for the quick movements required to avoid the attack of such an animal, and those who were unlucky enough to quit their chariot ran a terrible risk of being gored or trodden underfoot in the encounter. It was the custom, therefore, to attack the beast by arrows, and to keep it at a distance. If the animal were able to come up with its pursuer, the latter endeavoured to seize it by the horn at the moment when it lowered its head, and to drive his dagger into its neck. If the blow were adroitly given it severed the spinal cord, and the beast fell in a heap as if struck by lightning. A victory over such animals was an occasion for rejoicing, and solemn thanks were offered to Assur and Ishtar, the patrons of the chase, at the usual evening sacrifice.

The slain beasts, whether lion or urus, were arranged in a row before the altar, while the king, accompanied by his flabella, and umbrella-bearers, stood alongside them, holding his bow in his left hand. While the singers intoned the hymn of thanksgiving to the accompaniment of the harp, the monarch took the bowl of sacred wine, touched his lips with it, and then poured a portion of the contents on the heads of the victims. A detailed account of each hunting exploit was preserved for posterity either in inscriptions or on bas-reliefs.*

The chase was in those days of great service to the rural population; the kings also considered it to be one of the duties attached to their office, and on a level with their obligation to make war on neighbouring nations devoted by the will of Assur to defeat and destruction.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Hommel.

The army charged to carry out the will of the god had not yet acquired the homogeneity and efficiency which it afterwards attained, yet it had been for some time one of the most formidable in the world, and even the Egyptians themselves, in spite of their long experience in military matters, could not put into the field such a proud array of effective troops. We do not know how this army was recruited, but the bulk of it was made up of native levies, to which foreign auxiliaries were added in numbers varying with the times.* A permanent nucleus of troops was always in garrison in the capital under the “tartan,” or placed in the principal towns at the disposal of the governors.**

The contingents which came to be enrolled at these centres on the first rumour of war may have been taken from among the feudal militia, as was the custom in the Nile valley, or the whole population may have had to render personal military service, each receiving while with the colours a certain daily pay. The nobles and feudal lords were accustomed to call their own people together, and either placed themselves at their head or commissioned an officer to act in their behalf.*

These recruits were subjected to the training necessary for their calling by exercises similar to those of the Egyptians, but of a rougher sort and better adapted to the cumbrous character of their equipment. The blacksmith’s art had made such progress among the Assyrians since the times of Thûtmosis III. and Ramses IL, that both the character and the materials of the armour were entirely changed.

While the Egyptian of old entered into the contest almost naked, and without other defence than a padded cap, a light shield, and a leather apron, the Assyrian of the new age set out for war almost cased in metal. The pikemen and archers of whom the infantry of the line was composed wore a copper or iron helmet, conical in form, and having cheek-pieces covering the ears; they were clad in a sort of leathern shirt covered with plates or imbricated scales of metal, which protected the body and the upper part of the arm; a quilted and padded loin-cloth came over the haunches, while close-fitting trousers, and buskins laced up in the front, completed their attire. The pikemen were armed with a lance six feet long, a cutlass or short sword passed through the girdle, and an enormous shield, sometimes round and convex, sometimes arched at the top and square at the bottom. The bowmen did not encumber themselves with a buckler, but carried, in addition to the bow and quiver, a poignard or mace. The light infantry consisted of pikemen and archers—each of whom wore a crested helmet and a round shield of wicker-work—of slingers and club-bearers, as well as of men armed with the two-bladed battle-axe. The chariots were heavier and larger than those of the Egyptians. They had high, strongly made wheels with eight spokes, and the body of the vehicle rested directly on the axle; the panels were of solid wood, sometimes covered with embossed or carved metal, but frequently painted; they were further decorated sometimes with gold, silver, or ivory mountings, and with precious stones. The pole, which was long and heavy, ended in a boss of carved wood or incised metal, representing a flower, a rosette, the muzzle of a lion, or a horse’s head. It was attached to the axle under the floor of the vehicle, and as it had to bear a great strain, it was not only fixed to this point by leather thongs such as were employed in Egypt, but also bound to the front of the chariot by a crossbar shaped like a spindle, and covered with embroidered stuff—an arrangement which prevented its becoming detached when driving at full speed. A pair of horses were harnessed to it, and a third was attached to them on the right side for the use of a supplementary warrior, who could take the place of his comrade in case of accident, or if he were wounded. The trappings were very simple; but sometimes there was added to these a thickly padded caparison, of which the various parts were fitted to the horse by tags so as to cover the upper part of his head, his neck, back, and breast. The usual complement of charioteers was two to each vehicle, as in Egypt, but sometimes, as among the Khâti, there were three—one on the left to direct the horses, a warrior, and an attendant who protected the other two with his shield; on some occasions a fourth was added as an extra assistant. The equipment of the charioteers was like that of the infantry, and consisted of a jacket with imbricated scales of metal, bow and arrows, and a lance or javelin. A standard which served as a rallying-point for the chariots in the battle was set up on the front part of each vehicle, between the driver and the warrior; it bore at the top a disk supported on the heads of two bulls, or by two complete representations of these animals, and a standing figure of Assur letting fly his arrows. The chariotry formed, as in most countries of that time, the picked troops of the service, in which the princes and great lords were proud to be enrolled. Upon it depended for the most part the issue of the conflict, and the position assigned to it was in the van, the king or commander-in-chief reserving to himself the privilege of conducting the charge in person. It was already, however, in a state of decadence, both as regards the number of units composing it and its methods of manoeuvring; the infantry, on the other hand, had increased in numbers, and under the guidance of abler generals tended to become the most trustworthy force in Assyrian campaigns.*

Notwithstanding the weight of his equipment, the Assyrian foot-soldier was as agile as the Egyptian, but he had to fight usually in a much more difficult region than that in which the Pharaoh’s troops were accustomed to manouvre.

The theatre of war was not like Syria, with its fertile and almost unbroken plains furrowed by streams which offered little obstruction to troops throughout the year, but a land of marshes, arid and rocky deserts, mighty rivers, capable, in one of their sudden floods, of arresting progress for days, and of jeopardising the success of a campaign;* violent and ice-cold torrents, rugged mountains whose summits rose into “points like daggers,” and whose passes could be held against a host of invaders by a handful of resolute men.**