* The Annals of Argistis are inscribed on the face of the rock which crowns the citadel of Van.  The inscription contains (as stated in note above) the history of the first fourteen yearly campaigns of Argistis.

** The site of these places is still undetermined.  Seriazis and Silius (or Tarius) lay to the north-east of Dayaini, and Urmias, Urme, recalls the modern name of Lake Urumiah, but was probably situated on the left bank of the Araxes.

On a single occasion, the assault on Ureyus, for instance, Argistis took prisoners 19,255 children, 10,140 men fit to bear arms, 23,280 women, and the survivors of a garrison which numbered 12,675 soldiers at the opening of the siege, besides 1104 horses, 35,016 cattle, and more than 10,000 sheep.  Two expeditions into the heart of the country, conducted between 784 and 782 B.C., had greatly advanced the work of conquest, when the accession of a new sovereign in Assyria made Argistis decide to risk a change of front and to concentrate the main part of his forces on the southern boundary of his empire.  Ramman-nirari, after his last contest in Khubushkia in 784, had fought two consecutive campaigns against the Aramaean tribes of Itua, near the frontiers of Babylon, and he was still in conflict with them when he died in 782 B.C.  His son, Shalmaneser IV., may have wished to signalise the commencement of his reign by delivering from the power of Urartu the provinces which the kings of that country had wrested from his ancestors; or, perhaps, Argistis thought that a change of ruler offered him an excellent opportunity for renewing the struggle at the point where Menuas had left it, and for conquering yet more of the territory which still remained to his rival.  Whatever the cause, the Assyrian annals show us the two adversaries ranged against each other, in a struggle which lasted from 781 to 778 B.C.  Argistis had certainly the upper hand, and though his advance was not rapid, it was never completely checked.  The first engagement took place at Nirbu, near the sources of the Supnat and the Tigris:  Nirbu capitulated, and the enemy pitilessly ravaged the Hittite states, which were subject to Assyria, penetrating as far as the heart of Melitene (781).  The next year the armies encountered each other nearer to Nineveh, in the basin of the Bitlis-tchai, at Khakhias; and, in 779, Argistis expressly thanks his gods, the Khaldises, for having graciously bestowed upon him as a gift the armies and cities of Assur.  The scene of the war had shifted, and the contest was now carried on in the countries bordering on Lake Urumiah, Bustus and Parsua.  The natives gained nothing by the change of invader, and were as hardly used by the King of Urartu as they had been by Shalmaneser III. or by Samsiramman:  as was invariably the case, their towns were given over to the flames, their fields ravaged, their cattle and their families carried into captivity.  Their resistance, however, was so determined