shur, although the early form of his name,
Ashir, presents a difficulty in this connection. Asshur was the first
capital of Assyria. Its city god may have become the national god on
that account.

At an early period, perhaps a thousand years before Thothmes III
battled with the Mitannians in northern Syria, an early wave of one of
the peoples of Aryan speech may have occupied the Assyrian cities. Mr.
Johns points out in this connection that the names of Ushpia, Kikia,
and Adasi, who, according to Assyrian records, were early rulers in
Asshur, "are neither Semitic nor Sumerian". An ancient name of the
goddess of Nineveh was Shaushka, which compares with Shaushkash, the
consort of Teshup, the Hittite-Mitanni hammer god. As many of the
Mitannian names "are", according to Mr. Johns, "really Elamitic", he
suggests an ethnic connection between the early conquerors of Assyria
and the people of Elam.[300] Were the pre-Semitic Elamites originally
speakers of an agglutinative language, like the Sumerians and
present-day Basques, who were conquered in prehistoric times by a
people of Aryan speech?

The possibility is urged by Mr. Johns's suggestion that Assyria may
have been dominated in pre-Semitic times by the congeners of the Aryan
military aristocracy of Mitanni. As has been shown, it was Semitized
by the Amoritic migration which, about 2000 B.C., brought into
prominence the Hammurabi Dynasty of Babylon.

A long list of kings with Semitic names held sway in the Assyrian
cities during and after the Hammurabi Age. But not until well on in
the Kassite period did any of them attain prominence in Western Asia.
Then Ashur-bel-nish-eshu, King of Asshur, was strong enough to deal on
equal terms with the Kassite ruler Kara-indash I, with whom he
arranged a boundary treaty. He was a contemporary of Thothmes III of
Egypt.

After Thothmes III had secured the predominance of Egypt in Syria and
Palestine he recognized Assyria as an independent power, and supplied
its king with Egyptian gold to assist him, no doubt, in strengthening
his territory against their common enemy. Gifts were also sent from
Assyria to Egypt to fan the flame of cordial relations.

The situation was full of peril for Saushatar, king of Mitanni.
Deprived by Egypt of tribute-paying cities in Syria, his exchequer
must have been sadly depleted. A standing army had to be maintained,
for although Egypt made no attempt to encroach further on his
territory, the Hittite