ipture, and which Ptolemy calls Chalcitis, and makes border on
Gauzanitis, may designate the tract upon the main stream, as it comes
down from Ras-el-Ain. The region about the upper sources of the Belik
has no special designation in Strabo, but in Scripture it seems to be
called Padan-Aram, a name which has been explained as "the flat Syria,"
or "the country stretching out from the foot of the hills." In the later
Roman times it was known as Osrhoene; but this name was scarcely in use
before the time of the Antonines.

The true heart of Assyria was the country close along the Tigris, from
lat. 35 deg. to 36 deg. 30'. Within these limits were the four great cities,
marked by the mounds at Khorsabad, Mosul, Nimrud, and Kileh-Sherghat,
besides a multitude of places of inferior consequence. It has been
generally supposed that the left bank of the river was more properly
Assyria than the right; and the idea is so far correct, as that the left
bank was in truth of primary value and importance, whence it naturally
happened that three out of the four capitals were built on that side of
the stream. Still the very fact that one early capital was on the right
bank is enough to show that both shores of the stream were alike
occupied by the race from the first; and this conclusion is abundantly
confirmed by other indications throughout the region. Assyrian ruins,
the remains of considerable towns, strew the whole country between the
Tigris and Khabour, both north and south of the Sin jar range. On the
banks of the Lower Khabour are the remains of a royal palace, besides
many other traces of the tract through which it runs having been
permanently occupied by the Assyrian people. Mounds, probably Assyrian,
are known to exist along the course of the Khabour's great western
affluent; and even near Seruj, in the country between Harlan and the
Euphrates some evidence has been found not only of conquest but of
occupation. Remains are perhaps more frequent on the opposite side of
the Tigris; at any rate they are more striking and more important.
Bavian, Khorsabad, Shereef-Khan, Neb-bi-Yunus, Koyunjik, and Nimrud,
which have furnished by far the most valuable and interesting of the
Assyrian monuments, all lie east of the Tigris; while on the west two
places only have yielded relics worthy to be compared with these, Arban
and Kileh-Sherghat.

It is curious that in Assyria, as in early Chaldaea, there is a special
pre-eminence of four cities.