nces of his provinces, but certain facts recorded here and there in
the texts show that he must have drawn very considerable amounts from
them. We notice that twenty or thirty years after his time, Carchemish
was assessed at a hundred talents, Arpad and Kui at thirty each, Megiddo
and Manzuatu at fifteen, though the purposes to which these sums were
applied is not specified.

[Illustration: 314.jpg A HERD OF HORSES BROUGHT IN AS TRIBUTE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bronze bas-reliefs
on the gates of Balawat. The breed here represented seems to
have been common in Urartu, as well as in Cappadocia and
Northern Syria.

On the other hand, we know the precise object to which the contributions
of several other cities were assigned; as, for instance, so much for the
maintenance of the throne in the palace, or for the divans of the ladies
of the harem; so much for linen garments, for dresses, and for veils;
twenty talents from Nineveh for the armaments of the fleet, and ten from
the same city for firewood. Certain provinces were expected to maintain
the stud-farms, and their contributions of horses were specially
valuable, now that cavalry played almost as important a part as infantry
in military operations. The most highly prized animals came, perhaps,
from Asia Minor; the nations of Mount Taurus, who had supplied chargers
to Israel and Egypt five centuries earlier, now furnished war-horses
to the squadrons of Nineveh. The breed was small, but robust, inured to
fatigue and hard usage, and in every way similar to that raised in these
countries at the present day. In war, horses formed a very considerable
proportion of the booty taken; in time of peace, they were used as part
of the payment of the yearly tribute, and a brisk trade in them was
carried on with Mesopotamia.

[Illustration: 315.jpg A TYPICAL CAPPADOCIAN HORSE]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Alfred Boissier.

After the king had deducted from his receipts enough to provide amply
for the wants of his family and court, the salaries of the various
functionaries and officials, the pay and equipment of his army, the
maintenance and construction of palaces and fortresses, he had still
sufficient left over to form an enormous reserve fund on which he and
his successors might draw in the event of their ordinary sources of
income being depleted by a series of repeated reverses.

Tiglath-pileser thus impressed upon Assyri