le that troubles had arisen among the vassals of his own kingdom
which prevented him from interfering on behalf of his ally. Sargon took
account of all these circumstances in arranging his plan of campaign. He
divided his army into two forces, one of which, under his own command,
was to be directed against Merodach-baladan, while the other was to
attack the insurgent Aramaeans on the left bank of the Tigris, and was
to be manoeuvred so as to drive Shutruk-nakhunta back on the marshes of
the Uknu.*** The eastern force was the first to be set in movement, and
it pushed forward into the territory of the Gambulu. These latter had
concentrated themselves round Dur-Atkharas, one of their citadels;****
they had increased the height of the walls, and filled the ditches with
water brought from the Shurappu by means of a canal, and having received
a reinforcement of 600 horsemen and 4000 foot soldiers, they had drawn
them up in front of the ramparts.

* The date of the death of Khumban-igash is indirectly given
in the passage of the _Babylonian Chronicle of Pinches_,
where it is said that in the first year of Ashshur-nadin-
shumu, King of Babylon, Ishtar-khundu (= Shutruk-nakhunta)
was dethroned by his brother, Khallushu, after having
reigned over Elam eighteen years: these events actually took
place, as we shall see below, about the year 699 before our
era.

** Shutruk-nakhunta is the Susian form of the name; the
Assyrian texts distort it into Shutur-nankhundi, and the
_Babylonian Chronicle of Pinches_, into Ishtar-khundu, owing
to a faint resemblance in the sound of the name of the
goddess Ishtar with the form _Shutur, Sthur_, itself derived
from Shutruk, with which the name began.

*** The earlier historians of Assyria, misled in the first
place by the form in which the scribes have handed down the
account in the Annals and the _Fastes_, assumed the
existence of a single army, led by Sargon himself, and which
would have marched on all the above-mentioned places of the
country, one by one. Tiele was the first to recognise that
Sargon must have left part of his forces to the command of
one of his lieutenants, and Winckler, enlarging on this
idea, showed that there were then two armies, engaged at
different seats of war, but manoeuvring as far as possible
by mutual arrangement.

**** The site of