defeated him and compelled him to fly to the desert, killed very many of his army in the battle, took two hundred war chariots, and made seven thousand prisoners, of whom five thousand were put to death on the field of battle as an example.  Unfortunately our information ceases at that period and we know absolutely nothing of the greater part of the reign of Shamash-Bin, or of the expeditions to the west of Asia, Syria, and Palestine, that must have been made after the termination of the campaigns by which the royal authority was reestablished in all the ancient provinces of the empire.  This King remained on the throne until 857.  In 859 and 858 he had to repress a great revolt in Babylon and Chaldaea.

Binlikhish [or Binnirari] III, the next king, reigned twenty-nine years, from 857 to 828.  An inscription of his, engraved in the first years of his reign, describing the extent of the empire, says that he governed on one side “From the land of Siluna, toward the rising sun, the countries of Elam, Albania (at the foot of Caucasus), Kharkhar, Araziash, Misu, Media, Giratbunda (a portion of Atropatene, frequently mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions), the lands of Munna, Parsua (Parthia), Allabria (Hyrcania), Abdadana (Hecatompyla), Namri (the Caspian Scythians), even to all the tribes of the Andiu (a Turanian or Scythian people, whose country is far off), the whole of the mountainous country as far as the sea of the rising sun, the Caspian Sea; on the other side from the Euphrates, Syria, all Phoenicia, the land of Tyre, of Sidon, the land of Omri (Samaria), Edom, the Philistines, as far as the sea of the setting sun (the Mediterranean)”; on all these countries he says that “he imposed tribute.”

“I marched,” he says again, “against the land of Syria, and I took Marih, king of Syria, in Damascus, the city of his kingdom.  The great dread of Asshur, my master, persuaded him; he embraced my knees and made submission.”

Binlikhish III was a warlike prince; every year of his reign was marked by an expedition.  We have a summary of these in a chronological tablet in the British Museum, containing a fragment—­from the end of the reign of Shamash-Bin to that of Tiglath-pileser II—­of a canon of eponymes mentioning the principal events year by year.  They nearly all occurred in Southern Armenia and in the land of Van, where obedience was only maintained by incessant military demonstrations, and subsequently in the countries to the north of Media as far as the Caspian Sea.  Other expeditions were also made as far as Parthia, toward Ariana and the various countries that, to the Assyrians, were the extreme East.  We do not, however, know what that region was called by them, as it is always designated by a group of ideographic characters of unknown pronunciation.  By the defeat of Marih, king of Damascus, the submission of the western provinces was secured for the remainder of this reign, for there is no record of any other campaign there.