Deprived of the support of Elam, Babylon was doomed to fall.  The Aramaeans deserted her cause, and Nabu-bel-shumi, grandson of Merodach-baladan, despairing of ever recovering the heritage of his family, withdrew to his haunts among the reed beds of the Uknu, taking back with him as hostages the Assyrians whom he had forced to join his army at the beginning of the campaign.  Shamash-shumukin, however, was not disconcerted:  he probably hoped that his distant allies might yet effect a diversion in his favour, and thus oblige his brother to withdraw half of the forces employed against him.  Indeed, after the blockade had already begun, a band of Arabs under the two sheikhs Abiyate and Aamu forced a way through the besieging lines and entered the city.  This was the last succour which reached Babylon from without:  for many long months all communication between her citizens and the outer world was completely cut off.  The Assyrians laid waste the surrounding country with ruthless and systematic cruelty, burning the villages, razing to the ground isolated houses, destroying the trees, breaking down the dykes, and filling up the canals.  The year 649 B.C. was spent in useless skirmishes; the city offered an energetic and obstinate resistance, and as the walls were thick and the garrison determined, it would not have succumbed had not the supply of provisions finally failed.  Famine raged in the city, and the inhabitants devoured even their own children, while pestilence spreading among them mowed them down by thousands.

[Illustration:  228.jpg THE EASTERN WORLD IN THE REIGN OF ASSUR-BANI-PAL]

The Arab auxiliaries at this juncture deserted the cause of the defenders, and their sheikhs surrendered to Assur-bani-pal, who received and pardoned them; but the Babylonians themselves, knowing that they could expect no mercy, held out some time longer:  at length, their courage and their strength exhausted, they rose against their chiefs, whose ambition or patriotic pride had brought them to such a pass, and determined to capitulate on any terms.  Shamash-shumukm, not wishing to fall alive into the hands of his brother, shut himself up in his palace, and there immolated himself on a funeral pyre with his wives his children, his slaves, and his treasures at the moment when his conquerors were breaking down the gates and penetrating into the palace precincts.*

* G. Smith thought that the Babylonians, rendered furious by their sufferings, had seized Shamash-shumukin and burnt him to death.  It is, however, certain that Shamash-shumukin killed himself, according to the Eastern custom, to escape the tortures which awaited him if he fell alive into the hands of his enemies.  The memory of this event, transferred by the popular imagination to Assur-bani-pal, appears lu the concluding portion of the legendary history of Sardanapalus.

The city presented a terrible spectacle, and shocked even the Assyrians, accustomed as they were to horrors