Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the facsimile by Flandin.

Sargon, putting all the available Assyrian forces into the field, hurled them against the rebels, and this display of power had the desired effect upon the neighbouring kingdoms:  Busas and Mitatti did not dare to interfere, the two cities were taken by assault, burnt and razed to the ground, and the inhabitants of the surrounding districts of Sukkia, Bala, and Abitikna were driven into exile among the Khati.  The next year, however, the war thus checked on the Iranian table-land broke out in the north-west, in the mountains of Cilicia.  A Tabal chief, Kiakku of Shinukhta, refused to pay his tribute (718).  Sargon seized him and destroyed his city; his family and adherents, 7500 persons in all, were carried away captives to Assyria, and his principality was given to a rival chief, Matti of Atuna, on a promise from the latter of an increased amount of tribute.*

* The name of Atuna is a variant of the name Tuna, which is found in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III., and Tuna recalls the name of the old city of Tyana, or that of Tynna or Tunna, near Tyana, in the Taurus.  Shinukhta, not far from Atuna, must be the capital of a district situated on the Karmalas or the Saros, on the borders of Cilicia or Cataonia.

In 717 B.C. more serious dangers openly declared themselves.  The Khati had not forgotten that they had once been the allies of Urartu, and that their king, Pisiris, together with Matilu of Agusi, had fought for Sharduris against Tiglath-pileser III.  Pisiris conspired with Mita, chief of the Mushki, and proclaimed his independence; but vengeance swiftly and surely overtook him.  He succumbed before his accomplice had time to come to his assistance, and was sent to join Kiakku and his adherents in prison, while the districts which he had ruled were incorporated into Assyrian territory, and Carchemish became the seat of an Assyrian prefect who ranked among the limmi from whom successive years took their names.  The fall of Pisiris made no impression on his contemporaries.  They had witnessed the collapse of so many great powers—­Elam, Urartu, Egypt—­that the misfortunes of so insignificant a personage awakened but little interest; and yet with him foundered one of the most glorious wrecks of the ancient world.  For more than a century the Khati had been the dominant power in North-western Asia, and had successfully withstood the power of Thebes; crushed by the Peoples of the Sea, hemmed in and encroached upon by the rising wave of Aramaean invasion, they had yet disputed their territory step by step with the Assyrian generals, and the area over which they spread can be traced by the monuments and inscriptions scattered over Cilicia, Lycaonia, Cappadocia, and Northern Syria as far as the basins of the Orontes and the Litany.  So lasting had proved their influence on all around them, and so fresh was the memory of their greatness, that it would have seemed but natural that their vitality should survive this last blow, and that they should enjoy a prosperous future which should vie with their past.  But events proved that their national life was dead, and that no recuperative power remained:  as soon as Sargon had overthrown their last prince, their tribes became merged in the general body of Aramaeans, and their very name ere long vanished from the pages of history.