the nobles of his court, and placed on the vacant throne one of his own partisans, while he celebrated festivals in honour of his own supremacy at Babylon, Kuta, and Borsippa.  Karduniash made no attempt to rebel against Assyria during the next half-century.  Bamman-nirari proved himself an energetic and capable sovereign, and the thirty years of his reign were by no means inglorious.  We learn from the eponym lists what he accomplished during that time, and against which countries he waged war; but we have not yet recovered any inscription to enable us to fill in this outline, and put together a detailed account of his reign.  His first expeditions were directed against Media (810), Gozan (809), and the Mannai (808-807); he then crossed the Euphrates, and in four successive years conducted as many vigorous campaigns against Arpad (806), Kkazaiu (808), the town of Baali (804), and the cities of the Phoenician sea-board (803).  The plague interfering with his advance in the latter direction, he again turned his attention eastward and attacked Khubushkia in 802, 792, and 784; Media in 801-800, 794-793, and 790-787; Lushia in 799; Namri in 798; Diri in 796-795 and 785; Itua in 791, 783-782; Kishki in 785.  This bare enumeration conjures up a vision of an enterprising and victorious monarch of the type of Assur-nazir-pal or Shalmaneser III., one who perhaps succeeded even where his redoubtable ancestors had failed.  The panoramic survey of his empire, as unfolded to us in one of his inscriptions, includes the mountain ranges of Illipi as far as Mount Sihina, Kharkhar, Araziash, Misu, Media, the whole of Gizilbunda, Man, Parsua, Allabria, Abdadana, the extensive territory of Istairi, far-off Andiu, and, westwards beyond the Euphrates, the Khati, the entire country of the Amorites, Tyre, Sidon, Israel, Edom, and the Philistines.  Never before had the Assyrian empire extended so far east in the direction of the centre of the Iranian tableland, nor so far to the south-west towards the frontiers of Egypt.*

* Allabria or Allabur is on the borders of Parsua and of Karalla, which allows us to locate it in the basins of the Kerkhorah and the Saruk, tributaries of the Jagatu, which flow into Lake Urumiah.  Abdadana, which borders on Allabria, and was, according to Ramman-nirari, at the extreme end of Nairi, was a little further to the east or north-east; if I am not mistaken, it corresponds pretty nearly to Uriad, on the banks of the Kizil-Uzen.

In two only of these regions, namely, Syria and Armenia, do native documents add any information to the meagre summary contained in the Annals, and give us glimpses of contemporary rulers.  The retreat of Shalmaneser, after his partial success in 839, had practically left the ancient allies of Ben-hadad II. at the mercy of Hazael, the new King of Damascus, but he did not apparently attempt to assert his supremacy over the whole of Coele-Syria, and before long several of its cities acquired considerable importance, first Mansuate,