hat the Scythian invasion had overthrown the
empire of the Sargonids: it had swept over it like a whirlwind, but
had not torn from it one province, nor, indeed, even a single city. The
nations, already exhausted by their struggles for independence, were
incapable of displaying any energy when the barbarians had withdrawn,
and continued to bow beneath the Ninevite yoke as much from familiarity
with habitual servitude as from inability to shake themselves free.
Assur-bani-pal had died about the year 625 B.C., after a reign of
forty-two years, and his son Assur-etililani had assumed the double
crown of Assyria and Babylon without opposition.**

* Herodotus speaks of these Scythians as having lived at
first on good terms with Cyaxares.

** The date of Assur-bani-pal's death is not furnished by
any Assyrian monument, but is inferred from the Canon of
Ptolemy, where Saosduchin or Shamash-shumukin and Chinaladan
or Assur-bani-pal each reigns forty-two years, from 668 or
667 to 626 or 625 B.C. The order of succession of the last
Assyrian kings was for a long time doubtful, and Sin-shar-
ishkun was placed before Assur-etililani; the inverse order
seems to be now conclusively proved. The documents which
seemed at one time to prove the existence of a last king of
Assyria named Esarhaddon, identical with the Saracos of
classical writers, really belong to Esarhaddon, the father
of Assur-bani-pal. [Another king, Sin-sum-lisir, is
mentioned in a contract dated at Nippur in his accession
year. He may have been the immediate predecessor of
Sarakos.--? Ed.]

Nineveh had been saved from pillage by the strength of her ramparts,
but the other fortresses, Assur, Calah, and Dur-Sharrukin, had been
destroyed during the late troubles; the enemy, whether Medes or
Scythians, had taken them by storm or reduced them by famine, and they
were now mere heaps of ruin, deserted save for a few wretched remnants
of their population. Assur-etililani made some feeble attempts to
restore to them a semblance of their ancient splendour. He erected at
Calah, on the site of the palaces which had been destroyed by fire, a
kind of castle rudely built, and still more rudely decorated, the rooms
of which were small and low, and the walls of sun-dried brick were
panelled only to the height of about a yard with slabs of limestone
roughly squared, and without sculpture or inscripti