Assur, of Anu, Bamman, and of Ishtar. Winter
obliged him to suspend operations. When he again resumed them at the
beginning of his third year, both the Kummukh and the Kurkhi were so
peaceably settled that he was able to carry his expeditions without fear
of danger further north, into the regions of the Upper Euphrates between
the Halys and Lake Van, a district then known as Nairi. He marched
diagonally across the plain of Diarbekir, penetrated through dense
forests, climbed sixteen mountain ridges one after the other by paths
hitherto considered impracticable, and finally crossed the Euphrates by
improvised bridges, this being, as far as we know, the first time that
an Assyrian monarch had ventured into the very heart of those countries
which had formerly constituted the Hittite empire.

He found them occupied by rude and warlike tribes, who derived
considerable wealth from working the mines, and possessed each their
own special sanctuary, the ruins of which still appear above ground,
and invite the attention of the explorer. Their fortresses must have all
more or less resembled that city of the Pterians which flourished for so
many ages just at the bend of the Halys;* its site is still marked by
a mound rising to some thirty feet above the plain, resembling the
platforms on which the Chaldaean temples were always built--a few walls
of burnt brick, and within an enclosure, among the debris of rudely
built houses, the ruins of some temples and palaces consisting of large
irregular blocks of stone.

* The remains of the palace of the city of the Pterians, the
present Euyuk, are probably later than the reign of Tiglath-
pileser, and may be attributed to the Xth or IXth century
before our era; they, however, probably give a very fair
idea of what the towns of the Cappadocian region were like
at the time of the first Assyrian invasions.

[Illustration: 216.jpg GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUINS OF EUYUK]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph.

[Illustration: 217.jpg THE SPHINX ON THE RIGHT OF EUYUK]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph.

Two colossal sphinxes guard the gateway of the principal edifice,
and their presence proves with certainty how predominant was Egyptian
influence even at this considerable distance from the banks of the Nile.
They are not the ordinary sphinxes, with a human head surmounting the
body of a lion couchant on its stone pedestal; but, like the Assyrian