of this sort.  Most of the numerous victims to pestilence or famine lay about the streets or in the public squares, a prey to the dogs and swine; such of the inhabitants and of the soldiery as were comparatively strong had endeavoured to escape into the country, and only those remained who had not sufficient strength left to drag themselves beyond the walls.  Assur-bani-pal pursued the fugitives, and, having captured nearly all of them, vented on them the full fury of his vengeance.  He caused, the tongues of the soldiers to be torn out, and then had them clubbed to death.  He massacred the common folk in front of the great winged bulls which had already witnessed a similar butchery half a century before, under his grandfather Sennacherib; the corpses of his victims remained long unburied, a prey to all unclean beasts and birds.  When the executioners and the king himself were weary of the slaughter, the survivors were pardoned; the remains of the victims were collected and piled up in specified places, the streets were cleansed, and the temples, purified by solemn lustrations, were reopened for worship.* Assur-hani-pal proclaimed himself king in his brother’s room:  he took the hands of Bel, and, according to custom, his Babylonian subjects gave him a new name, that of Kandalanu, by which he was henceforth known among them.**

* The date of 648-647 B.C. for the taking of Babylon and the death of Shamash-shumukin is corroborated by the Canon of Ptolemy and the fragments of Berosus, both of which attribute twenty or twenty-one years to the reign of Saosdukhm (Sammughes).  Lehmann points out a document dated in the XXth year of Shamash-shumukin, which confirms the exactitude of the information furnished by the Greek chronologists.

** The Canon of Ptolemy gives as the successor of Saosdukhm a certain Kineladan, who corresponds to Kandalanu, whose date has been fixed by contemporary documents.  The identity of Kineladan with Assur-bani-pal was known from the Greek chronologists, for whereas Ptolemy puts Kineladan after Saosdukhm, the fragments of Berosus state that the successor of Sammughes was his brother; that is to say, Sardanapalus or Assur-bani-pal.  This identification had been proposed by G. Smith, who tried to find the origin of the form Kineladan in the name of Sinidinabal, which seems to be borne by Assur-bani-pal in Tablet K 195 of the British Museum, and which is really the name of his elder brother; it found numerous supporters as soon as Pinches had discovered the tablets dated in the reign of Kandalanu, and the majority of Assyriologists and historians hold that Kandalanu and Assur- bani-pal are one and the same person.

Had he been wise, he would have completed the work begun by famine, pestilence, and the sword, and, far from creating, a new Babylon, he would have completed the destruction of the ancient city.  The same religious veneration which had disarmed so many of