t, and pursued them hotly over hill and vale, pillaging the
fields, and encircling the towns with trophies of human heads taken
from the prisoners who had fallen into his hands; the survivors, to the
number of six thousand, laid down their arms, and were despatched to
Assyria.*

* The king, starting from Assur, must have followed the
route through Sindjar, Nisib, Mardin, and Diarbekir--a road
used later by the Romans, and still in existence at the
present day. As he did not penetrate that year as far as the
provinces of Alzi and Purukuzzi, he must have halted at the
commencement of the mountain district, and have beaten the
allies in the plain of Kuru-tchai, before Diarbekir, in the
neighbourhood of the Tigris.

The Kummukh contingents, however, had been separated in the rout from
the Mushku, and had taken refuge beyond the Euphrates, near to the
fortress of Shirisha, where they imagined themselves in safety behind a
rampart of mountains and forests. Tiglath-pileser managed, by cutting
a road for his foot-soldiers and chariots, to reach their retreat: he
stormed the place without apparent difficulty, massacred the defenders,
and then turning upon the inhabitants of Kurkhi,* who were on their way
to reinforce the besieged, drove their soldiers into the Nami, whose
waters carried the corpses down to the Tigris. One of their princes,
Kilite-shub, son of Kaliteshub-Sarupi, had been made prisoner during
the action. Tiglath-pileser sent him, together with his wives, children,
treasures, and gods,** to share the captivity of the Mushku; then
retracing his steps, he crossed over to the right bank of the Tigris,
and attacked the stronghold of Urrakhinas which crowned the summit of
Panari.

* The country of the Kurkhi appears to have included at this
period the provinces lying between the Sebbeneh-Su and the
mountains of Djudi, probably a portion of the Sophene, the
Anzanone and the Gordyenc of classical authors.

** The vanquished must have crossed the Tigris below
Diarbekir and have taken refuge beyond Mayafarrikin, so that
Shirisha must be sought for between the Silvan-dagh and the
Ak-dagh, in the basin of the Batman-tchai, the present Nami.

The people, terror-stricken by the fate of their neighbours, seized
their idols and hid themselves within the thickets like a flock of
birds. Their chief, Shaditeshub, son of Khatusaru,* ventured from ou