The season was already well advanced when the Assyrians set out on this expedition, and November set in while they were ravaging the plain:  but the weather was still so fine that Sennacherib determined to take advantage of it to march upon Madaktu.  Hardly had he scaled the heights when winter fell upon him with its accompaniment of cold and squally weather.  “Violent storms broke out, it rained and snowed incessantly, the torrents and streams overflowed their banks,” so that hostilities had to be suspended and the troops ordered back to Nineveh.  The effect produced, however, by these bold measures was in no way diminished:  though Kutur-nakhunta had not had the necessary time to prepare for the contest, he was nevertheless discredited among his subjects for failing to bring them out of it with glory, and three months after the retreat of the Assyrians he was assassinated in a riot on the 20th of Ab, 692 B.C.*

* The Assyrian documents merely mention the death of Kutur- nakhunta less than three months after the return of Sennacherib to Nineveh.  Pinches’ Babylonian Chronicle only mentions the revolution in which he perished, and informs us that he had reigned ten months.  It contracts Umman-minanu, the name of the Elamite king, to Minanu.

His younger brother, Umman-minanu, assumed the crown, and though his enemies disdainfully refused to credit him with either prudence or judgment, he soon restored his kingdom to such a formidable degree of power that Mushezib-marduk thought the opportunity a favourable one for striking a blow at Assyria, from which she could never recover.  Elam had plenty of troops, but was deficient in the resources necessary to pay the men and their chiefs, and to induce the tribes of the table-land to furnish their contingents.  Mushezib-marduk, therefore, emptied the sacred treasury of E-sagilla, and sent the gold and silver of Bel and Zarpanit to Umman-minanu with a message which ran thus:  “Assemble thine army, and prepare thy camp, come to Babylon and strengthen our hands, for thou art our help.”  The Elamite asked nothing better than to avenge the provinces so cruelly harassed, and the cities consumed in the course of the last campaign:  he summoned all his nobles, from the least to the greatest, and enlisted the help of the troops of Parsuas, Ellipi, and Anzan, the Aramaean Puqudu and Gambulu of the Tigris, as well as the Aramaeans of the Euphrates, and the peoples of Bit-Adini and Bit-Amukkani, who had rallied round Sam una, son of Merodach-baladan, and joined forces with the soldiers of Mushezib-marduk in Babylon.  “Like an invasion of countless locusts swooping down upon the land, they assembled, resolved to give me battle, and the dust of their feet rose before me, like a thick cloud which darkens the copper-coloured dome of the sky.”  The conflict took place near the township of Khalule, on the banks of the Tigris, not far from the confluence of this river with the Turnat.*