Babylon from that other horde of Aramaeans which harassed it on the east, while the Kalda were already threatening its southern frontier.  It is not quite clear whether Nabunazir who then occupied the throne implored his help:* at any rate, he took the field as soon as he felt that his own crown was secure, overthrew the Aramaeans at the first encounter, and drove them back from the banks of the Lower Zab to those of the Uknu:  all the countries which they had seized to the east of the Tigris at once fell again into the hands of the Assyrians.

     * Nabunazir is the Nabonassar who afterwards gave his name
     to the era employed by Ptolemy.

This first point gained, Tiglath-pileser crossed the river, and made a demonstration in force before the Babylonian fortresses.  He visited, one after another, Sippar, Nipur, Babylon, Borsippa, Kuta, Kishu, Dilbat, and Uruk, “cities without peer,” and offered in all of them sacrifices to the gods,—­to Bel, to Zirbanit, to Nebo, to Tashmit, and to Nirgal.  Karduniash bowed down before him, but he abstained from giving any provocation to the Kalda, and satisfied with having convinced Nabunazir that Assyria had lost none of her former vigour, he made his way back to his hereditary kingdom.*

* Most historians believe that Tiglath-pileser entered Karduniash as an enemy:  that he captured several towns, and allowed the others to ransom themselves on payment of tribute.  The way in which the texts known to us refer to this expedition seems to me, however, to prove that he set out as an ally and protector of Nabonazir, and that his visit to the Babylonian sanctuaries was of a purely pacific nature.

The lightly-won success of this expedition produced the looked-for result.  Tiglath-pileser had set out a king de facto; but now that the gods of the ancient sanctuaries had declared themselves satisfied with his homage, and had granted him that religious consecration which had before been lacking, he returned a king de jure as well (745 B.C.).  His next campaign completed what the first had begun.  The subjugation of the plain would have been of little advantage if the highlands had been left in the power of tribes as yet unconquered, and allowed to pour down with impunity bands of rapacious freebooters on the newly liberated provinces:  security between the Zab and the Uknu could only be attained by the pacification of Namri, and it was, therefore, to Namri that the sea of war was transferred in 744 B.C.  All the Cossaean and Babylonian races intermingled in the valleys on the frontier were put to ransom one after another.

[Illustration:  216.jpg MAP OF CAMPAIGNS OF TIGLATH-PILESER III.  IN MEDIA]