An inscription engraved on the object recorded the destruction of Khunusa, and threatened with every divine malediction the individual, whether an Assyrian or a stranger, who should dare to rebuild the city.  This victory terrified the Kumani, and their capital, Kibshuna, opened its gates to the royal troops at the first summons.  Tiglath-pileser completely destroyed the town, but granted the inhabitants their lives on condition of their paying tribute; he chose from among them, however, three hundred families who had shown him the most inveterate hostility, and sent them as exiles into Assyria.*

* The country of the Kumani or Kammanu is really the district of Comana in Cataonia, and not the Comana Pontica or the Khammanene on the banks of the Halys.  Delattre thinks that Tiglath-pileser penetrated into this region by the Jihun, and consequently seeks to identify the names of towns and mountains, e.g.  Mount Ilamuni with Jaur-dagh, the Kharusa with Shorsh-dagh, and the Tala with the Kermes-dagh; but it is difficult to believe that, if the king took this route, he would not mention the town of Marqasi-Marash, which lay at the very foot of the Jaur-dagh, and would have stopped his passage.  It is more probable that the Assyrians, starting from Melitene, which they had just subdued, would have followed the route which skirts the northern slope of the Taurus by Albistan; the scene of the conflict in this case would probably have been the mountainous district of Zeitun.

With this victory the first half of his reign drew to its close; in five years Tiglath-pileser had subjugated forty-two peoples and their princes within an area extending from the banks of the Lower Zab to the plains of the Khati, and as far as the shores of the Western Seas.  He revisited more than once these western and northern regions in which he had gained his early triumphs.  The reconnaissance which he had made around Carchemish had revealed to him the great wealth of the Syrian table-land, and that a second raid in that direction could be made more profitable than ten successful campaigns in Nairi or upon the banks of the Zab.  He therefore marched his battalions thither, this time to remain for more than a few days.  He made his way through the whole breadth of the country, pushed forward up the valley of the Orontes, crossed the Lebanon, and emerged above the coast of the Mediterranean in the vicinity of Arvad.

[Illustration:  230.jpg SACRIFICE OFFERED BEFORE THE ROYAL STELE]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the
     bronze gates of Balawat.

This is the first time for many centuries that an Oriental sovereign had penetrated so far west; and his contemporaries must have been obliged to look back to the almost fabulous ages of Sargon of Agade or of Khammurabi, to find in the long lists of the dynasties of the Euphrates any record of a sovereign who had planted his standards on the shores of the Sea of the Setting Sun.*