n: 077.jpg SHALMANESER III.]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Mansell, taken from
the original stele in the British Museum.

Assur-nazir-pal left to his successor an overflowing treasury, a valiant
army, a people proud of their progress and fully confident in their own
resources, and a kingdom which had recovered, during several years of
peace, from the strain of its previous conquests. Shalmaneser III.* drew
largely on the reserves of men and money which his father's foresight
had prepared, and his busy reign of thirty-five years saw thirty-two
campaigns, conducted almost without a break, on every side of the empire
in succession. A double task awaited him, which he conscientiously and
successfully fulfilled.

* [The Shalmaneser III. of the text is the Shalmaneser II.
of the notes.--TR.]

Assur-nazir-pal had thoroughly reorganised the empire and raised it to
the rank of a great power: he had confirmed his provinces and vassal
states in their allegiance, and had subsequently reduced to subjection,
or, at any rate, penetrated at various points, the little buffer
principalities between Assyria and the powerful kingdoms of Babylon,
Damascus, and Urartu; but he had avoided engaging any one of these
three great states in a struggle of which the issue seemed doubtful.
Shalmaneser could not maintain this policy of forbearance without loss
of prestige in the eyes of the world: conduct which might seem prudent
and cautious in a victorious monarch like Assur-nazir-pal would in
him have argued timidity or weakness, and his rivals would soon have
provoked a quarrel if they thought him lacking in the courage or the
means to attack them. Immediately after his accession, therefore, he
assumed the offensive, and decided to measure his strength first
against Urartu, which for some years past had been showing signs of
restlessness. Few countries are more rugged or better adapted for
defence than that in which his armies were about to take the field. The
volcanoes to which it owed its configuration in geological times, had
become extinct long before the appearance of man, but the surface of the
ground still bears evidence of their former activity; layers of basaltic
rock, beds of scorias and cinders, streams of half-disintegrated mud
and lava, and more or less perfect cones, meet the eye at every turn.
Subterranean disturbances have not entirely ceased even now, for certain
craters--that of Tandurek, for exa