the Assyrian frontier, where the king’s troops would be able to capture him.  His offer was not accepted, and a second embassy, headed by Tammaritu, who was once more in favour, arrived to propose more trenchant terms.  The Elamite might have gone so far as to grant the extradition of Nabo-bel-shumi, but if he had yielded the point concerning Nana, a rebellion would have broken out in the streets of Susa:  he preferred war, and prepared in desperation to carry it on to the bitter end.  The conflict was long and sanguinary, and the result disastrous for Elam.  Bit-Imbi opened its gates, the district of Kashi surrendered at discretion, followed by the city of Khamanu and its environs, and the Assyrians approached Madaktu:  Khumban-khaldash evacuated the place before they reached it, and withdrew beneath the walls of Dur-Undasi, on the western bank of the Ididi.  His enemies pursued him thither, but the stream was swift and swollen by rain, so that for two days they encamped on its bank without daring to cross, and were perhaps growing discouraged, when Ishtar of Arbela once more came to the rescue.  Appearing in a dream to one of her seers, she said, “I myself go before Assur-bani-pal, the king whom my hands have created;” the army, emboldened by this revelation, overcame the obstacle by a vigorous effort, and dashed impetuously over regions as yet unvisited by any conqueror.  The Assyrians burnt down fourteen royal cities, numberless small towns, and destroyed the cornfields, the vines, and the orchards; Khumban-khaldash, utterly exhausted, fled to the mountains “like a young dog.”  Banunu and the districts of Tasarra, twenty cities in the country of Khumir, Khaidalu, and Bashimu, succumbed one after another, and when the invaders at length decided to retrace their steps to the frontier, Susa, deserted by her soldiers and deprived of her leaders, lay before them an easy prey.  It was not the first time in the last quarter of a century that the Assyrians had had the city at their mercy.  They had made some stay in it after the battle of Tulliz, and also after the taking of Bit-Imbi in the preceding year; but on those occasions they had visited it as allies, to enthrone a king owing allegiance to their own sovereign, and political exigencies had obliged them to repress their pillaging instincts and their long-standing hatred.  Now that they had come as enemies, they were restrained by no considerations of diplomacy:  the city was systematically pillaged, and the booty found in it was so immense that the sack lasted an entire month.  The royal treasury was emptied of its gold and silver, its metals and the valuable objects which had been brought to it from Sumir, Accad, and Karduniash at successive periods from the most remote ages down to that day, in the course of the successful invasions conducted by the princes of Susa beyond the Tigris; among them, the riches of the Babylonian temples, which Shamash-shumukin had lavished on Tiumman to purchase his support, being