* Annals of Tiglath-pileser I.  Mutakkilnusku himself has
     only left us one inscription, in which he declares that he
     had built a palace in the city of Assyria.

** Smith discovered certain fragments of Annals, which he attributed to Assurishishi.  The longest of these tell of a campaign against Elam.  Lotz attributed them to Tiglath- pileser I., and is supported in this by most Assyriologists of the day.

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 Assurishishi 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 Turnat 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 Derketo.  Exposed immediately after her birth, she was found and adopted by a shepherd named Simas, and later on her beauty aroused the passion