The annals of Shalmaneser say no more after this, either of the king of Damascus or of Israel.  They record, as his twenty-seventh campaign, a great war in Armenia that brought about the submission of all the districts of that country that still resisted the Assyrian monarch.  In the thirty-first campaign (873), the last mentioned on the obelisk, the King sent the general-in-chief of his armies, Tartan, again into Armenia, where he gave up to pillage fifty cities, among them Van; and during this time he himself went into Media, subjected part of the northern districts of that country, which were in a state of rebellion, chastised the people in the neighborhood of Mount Elwand, where in after-times Ecbatana was built, and finally made war on the Scythians of the Caspian Sea.

The official chronology of the Assyrians dates the termination of the reign of Shalmaneser IV in 870, the period of his death.  But during the last two years his power was entirely lost, and he was reduced to the possession of two cities, Nineveh and Calah.  His second son, Asshurdaninpal, in consequence of circumstances unknown to us, raised the standard of revolt against his father, assumed the royal title, and was supported by twenty-seven of the most important cities in the empire.  One of the monuments has preserved a list of these cities, and among them we find Arrapkha, capital of the province of Arrapachitis, Amida (now Diarbekr), Arbela, Ellasar, and all the towns of the banks of the Tigris.  War broke out between the father and his rebellious son; the army embraced the cause of the latter; he was recognized by all the provinces, and kept Shalmaneser until his death shut up and closely blockaded in his capital.

Shalmaneser died in B.C. 870; his son, Shamash-Bin, continued the legitimate line.  He succeeded in repressing the revolt of his brother Asshurdaninpal and in depriving him of the authority he had usurped.  The monument recording the exploits of his first years gives no details, however, of the civil war; it merely records, after enumerating the cities that had joined the revolt of Asshurdaninpal, “With the aid of the great gods, my masters, I subjected them to my sceptre.”

The usurpation of the second son of Shalmaneser and a civil war of five years had introduced many disorders into the empire and shaken the fidelity of many provinces.  The early years of Shamash-Bin were occupied in reducing the whole to order.  In the narrative which has been preserved, extending only to his fourth year, we find that the King overran and chastised with terrible severity Osrhoene or Aramaean Mesopotamia, where the people had been in rebellion, and reduced to obedience the mountainous districts, where are the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, and finally Armenia proper.  In his fourth year he marched against Mardukbalatirib, king of Babylon, who had taken advantage of the disorders in Assyria to assert his independence, and who was supported by the Susianians or Elamites.  He completely