atiyeh to the
crossing of the Halys. The changes which had just taken place in
Kummukh and Nairi had fully aroused the numerous petty sovereigns of
the neighbourhood. The bonds which kept them together had not been
completely severed at the downfall of the Hittite empire, and a certain
sense of unity still lingered among them in spite of their continual
feuds; they constituted, in fact, a sort of loose confederation, whose
members never failed to help one another when they were threatened by a
common enemy. As soon as the news of an Assyrian invasion reached them,
they at once put aside their-mutual quarrels and combined to oppose
the invader with their united forces. Tiglath-pileser had, therefore,
scarcely crossed the Euphrates before he was attacked on his right flank
by twenty-three petty kings of Nairi,* while sixty other chiefs from the
same neighbourhood bore down upon him in front. He overcame the first
detachment of the confederates, though not without a sharp struggle; he
carried carnage into their ranks, "as it were the whirlwind of Eamman,"
and seized a hundred and twenty of the enemy's chariots. The sixty
chiefs, whose domains extended as far as the "Upper Sea,"** were
disconcerted by the news of the disaster, and of their own accord laid
down their arms, or offered but a feeble resistance.

* The text of the Annals of the Xth year give thirty instead
of twenty-three; in the course of five or six years the
numbers have already become exaggerated.

** The site of the "Upper Sea" has furnished material for
much discussion. Some believe it to be the Caspian Sea or
the Black Sea, others take it to be Lake Van, while some
think it to be the Mediterranean, and more particularly the
Gulf of Issus between Syria and Cilicia. At the present day
several scholars have returned to the theory which makes it
the Black Sea.

Tiglath-pileser presented some of them in chains to the god Shamash; he
extorted an oath of vassalage from them, forced them to give up their
children as hostages, and laid a tax upon them _en masse_ of 1200
stallions and 2000 bulls, after which he permitted them to return to
their respective towns. He had, however, singled out from among them to
grace his own triumph, Sini of Dayana, the only chief among them who had
offered him an obstinate resistance; but even he was granted his liberty
after he had been carried captive to Assur, and made to kneel