This was not the case, however, in the south-west, where Tiumman, counting on the military strength of Elam, made continual hostile demonstrations.  He was scarcely settled on his throne before he hastened to form alliances with those Aramaean states which had so often invoked the aid of his predecessors against the ancestors of Assur-bani-pal.  The Kalda rejected his proposals, as did most of the tribes of the littoral; but the Gambula yielded to his solicitations, and their king, Dunanu, son of Bel-ikisha, entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with Elam.  Their defection left the eastern frontier of Karduniash unprotected, and, by opening to the Elamite the fords of the Tigris, permitted him to advance on Babylon unhindered by any serious obstacle.  As soon as the compact was sealed, Tiumman massed his battalions on the middle course of the Uknu, and, before crossing the frontier, sent two of his generals, the Susian Khumba-dara and the Chaldean Nabu-damiq, as the bearers of an insolent ultimatum to the court of Nineveh:  he offered the king the choice between immediate hostilities, or the extradition of the sons of Urtaku and Khumban-khaldash, as well as of their partisans who had taken refuge in Assyria.  To surrender the exiles would have been an open confession of inferiority, and such a humiliating acknowledgment of weakness promptly reported throughout the Eastern world might shortly have excited a general revolt:  hence Assur-bani-pal disdainfully rejected the proposal of the Elamite sovereign, which had been made rather as a matter of form than with any hope of its acceptance, but the issue of a serious war with Susa was so uncertain that his refusal was accompanied with serious misgivings.  It needed many favourable omens from the gods to encourage him to believe in his future success.  The moon-god Sin was the first to utter his prediction:  he suffered eclipse in the month of Tammuz, and for three successive days, at nightfall, showed himself in the sky surrounded by strange appearances which heralded the death of a king in Elam, and foretold calamity to that country.  Then Assur and Ishtar struck Tiumman with violent convulsions; they caused his lips and eyes to be horribly distorted, but he despised their warning, and as soon as his seizure had passed, set out to assume command of his army.  The news of his action reached Nineveh in the month of Ab, on the morning of the solemn festival of Ishtar.  Assur-bani-pal was at Arbela, celebrating the rites in honour of the goddess, when the messenger appeared before him and repeated, together with the terms of the declaration of war, the scornful words which Tiumman had uttered against him and his patroness:  “This prince whose wits have been crazed by Ishtar—­I will let him escape no more, when once I have gone forth and measured my strength against him!” This blasphemy filled the Assyrian king with horror.  That very evening he betook himself to the sanctuary, and there, prostrate before the image of the goddess,