n calf
continued to be venerated, and doves were sacrificed to the local
Adonis.

It is not certain whether Adad-nirari penetrated farther than
Damascus. Possibly all the states which owed allegiance to the king of
that city became at once the willing vassals of Assyria, their
protector. The tribute received by Adad-nirari from Tyre, Sidon, the
land of Omri (Israel), Edom, and Palastu (Philistia) may have been
gifted as a formal acknowledgment of his suzerainty and with purpose
to bring them directly under Assyrian control, so that Damascus might
be prevented from taking vengeance against them.

Meagre details survive regarding the reign of the next king,
Shalmaneser IV (781-772 B.C). These are, however, supplemented by the
Urartian inscriptions. Although Adad-nirari boasted that he had
subdued the kingdom of Urartu in the north, he appears to have done no
more than limit its southern expansion for a time.

The Urarti were, like the Mitanni, a military aristocracy[501] who
welded together by conquest the tribes of the eastern and northern
Highlands which several Assyrian monarchs included in their Empire.
They acquired the elements of Assyrian culture, and used the Assyrian
script for their own language. Their god was named Khaldis, and they
called their nation Khaldia. During the reign of Ashur-natsir-pal
their area of control was confined to the banks of the river Araxes,
but it was gradually extended under a succession of vigorous kings
towards the south-west until they became supreme round the shores of
Lake Van. Three of their early kings were Lutipris, Sharduris I, and
Arame.

During the reign of Shamshi-Adad the Assyrians came into conflict with
the Urarti, who were governed at the time by "Ushpina of Nairi"
(Ishpuinis, son of Sharduris II). The Urartian kingdom had extended
rapidly and bordered on Assyrian territory. To the west were the
tribes known as the Mannai, the northern enemies of the Medes, a
people of Indo-European speech.

When Adad-nirari IV waged war against the Urarti, their king was
Menuas, the son of Ishpuinis. Menuas was a great war-lord, and was
able to measure his strength against Assyria on equal terms. He had
nearly doubled by conquest the area controlled by his predecessors.
Adad-nirari endeavoured to drive his rival northward, but all along
the Assyrian frontier from the Euphrates to the Lower Zab, Menuas
forced the outposts of Adad-nirari to retreat southward. The
Assyrians, in sh