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.**

* Sennacherib was obliged to arrest his march against Elam, owing to his inability to cross the torrents swollen by the rain; a similar contretemps must have met Assurbanipal on the banks of the Ididi.

     ** The Assyrian monarchs dwell with pleasure on the
     difficulties of the country which they have to overcome.

Bands of daring skirmishers, consisting of archers, slingers, and pikemen, cleared the way for the mass of infantry marching in columns, and for the chariots, in the midst of which the king and his household took up their station; the baggage followed, together with the prisoners and their escorts.*

     * Assurbanipal relates, for instance, that he put under his
     escort a tribe which had surrendered themselves as
     prisoners.

If they came to a river where there was neither ford nor bridge, they were not long in effecting a passage.

[Illustration:  189.jpg MAKING A BRIDGE FOR THE PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOTS]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze
     gates of Balawat.

Each soldier was provided with a skin, which, having inflated it by the strength of his lungs and closed the aperture, he embraced in his arms and cast himself into the stream.  Partly by floating and partly by swimming, a whole regiment could soon reach the other side.  The chariots could not be carried over so easily.

[Illustration:  190.jpg THE KING’S CHARIOT CROSSING A BRIDGE]

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

If the bed of the river was not very wide, and the current not too violent, a narrow bridge was constructed, or rather an improvised dyke of large stones and rude gabions filled with clay, over which was spread a layer of branches and earth, supplying a sufficiently broad passage for a single chariot, of which the horses were led across at walking pace.*

     * Flying bridges, titurati, were mentioned as far back as
     the time of Tiglath-pileser I.

But when the distance between the banks was too great, and the stream too violent to allow of this mode of procedure, boats were requisitioned from the neighbourhood, on which men and chariots were embarked, while the horses, attended by grooms, or attached by their bridles to the flotilla, swam across the river.* If the troops had to pass through a mountainous district intersected by ravines and covered by forests, and thus impracticable on ordinary occasions for a large body of men, the advance-guard were employed in cutting a passage through the trees with the axe, and, if necessary, in making with the pick pathways or rough-hewn steps similar to those met with in the Lebanon on the Phoenician coast.**