The god comforted his faithful servant, but there was a brief delay before his answer threw light on the future, and the king’s questions were constantly renewed as fresh couriers brought in further information.  In 678 B.C. the Scythians determined to try their fortune, and their king, Ishpakai,* took the field, followed by the Mannai.  He was defeated and driven back to the north of Lake Urumiah, the Mannai were reduced to subjection, and Assyria once more breathed freely.  The victory, however, was not a final one, and affairs soon assumed as threatening an aspect as before.  The Scythian tribes came on the scene, one after another, and allied themselves to the various peoples subject either directly or indirectly to Nineveh.** On one occasion it was Kashtariti, the regent of Karkashshi,*** who wrote to Mamitiarshu, one of the Median princes, to induce him to make common cause with himself in attacking the fortress of Kishshashshu on the eastern border of the empire.  At another time we find the same chief plotting with the Mannai and the Saparda to raid the town of Kilman, and Esarhaddon implores the god to show him how the place may be saved from their machinations.****

* This king’s name seems to be of Iranian origin.  Justi has connected it with the name Aspakos, which is read in a Greek inscription of the Cimmerian Bosphorus; both forms have been connected with the Sanskrit Acvalca.

     ** This subdivision of the horde into several bodies seems
     to be indicated by the number of different royal names among
     the Scythians which are mentioned in the Assyrian documents.

*** The site of Karkashshi is unknown, but the list of Median princes subdued by Sargon shows that it was situated in Media.  Kishshashshu is very probably the same as Kishisim or Kishisu, the town which Sargon subdued, and which he called Kar-nergal or Kar-ninib, and which is mentioned in the neighbourhood of Parsuash, Karalla, Kharkhar, Media, and Ellipi.  I think that it would be in the basin of the Gave—­ Rud; Billerbeck places it at the ruins of Siama, in the upper valley of the Lesser Zab.

**** The people of Saparda, called by the Persians Sparda, have been with good reason identified with the Sepharad of the prophet Obadiah (ver. 20):  the Assyrian texts show that this country should be placed in the neighbourhood of the Mannai of the Medes.

He opens negotiations in order to gain time, but the barbarity of his adversary is such that he fears for his envoy’s safety, and speculates whether he may not have been put to death.  The situation would indeed have become critical if Kashtariti had succeeded in bringing against Assyria a combined force of Medes, Scythians, Mannai, and Cimmerians, together with Urartu and its king, Eusas III.; but, fortunately, petty hatreds made the combination of these various elements an impossibility, and they were unable to