ral
specimens from the time of Asshur-izir-pal downwards. It consists of a
single figure in relief--a figure representing the king dressed in his
priestly robes, and wearing the sacred emblems round his neck, standing
with the right arm upraised, and enclosed in the customary arched frame.
This figure, which is somewhat larger than life, is cut on a single
solid block of stone, and then placed on another broader block, which
serves as a pedestal. It closely resembles the figure of
Asshur-izir-pal, whereof a representation has been already given.

The successor of Shamas-Vul was his son Vul-lush, the third monarch of
that name, who ascended the throne B.C. 810, and held it for twenty-nine
years, from B.C. 810 to B.C. 781. The memorials which we possess of this
king's reign are but scanty. They consist of one or two slabs found at
Nimrod, of a short dedicatory inscription on duplicate statues of the
god Nebo brought from the same place, of some brick inscriptions from
the mound of Nebbi Vunus, and of the briefest possible notices of the
quarters in which he carried on war, contained in one copy of the Canon.
As none of these records are in the shape of annals except the last, and
as only these and the slab notices are historical, it is impossible to
give any detailed account of this long and apparently important reign.
We can only say that Vul-lush III., was as warlike a monarch as any of
his predecessors, and that his efforts seem to have extended the
Assyrian dominion in almost every quarter. He made seven expeditions
across the Zagros range into Media, two into the Van country, and three
into Syria. He tells us that in one of these expeditions he succeeded in
making himself master of the great city of Damascus, whose kings had
defied (as we have seen) the repeated attacks of Shalmaneser. He reckons
as his tributaries in these parts, besides Damascus, the cities of Tyre
and Sidon, and the countries of Khumri or Samaria, of Palestine or
Philistia, and of Hudum (Idumaea or Edom). On the north and east he
received tokens of submission from the Nairi, the Minni, the Medes, and
the Partsu, or Persians. On the south, he exercised a power, which seems
like that of a sovereign, in Babylonia; where homage was paid him by the
Chaldaeans, and where, in the great cities of Babylon, Borsippa, and
Cutha (or Tiggaba), he was allowed'to offer sacrifice to the gods Bel,
Nebo, and Nergal. There is, further, some reason to suspect that, be