other cities which they had previously sacked and
destroyed. The older name of the country was Kumussu, and it may be that
the language spoken in it was allied to that of the Hittites, since a
tablet in hieroglyphics of the Hittite type has been unearthed at Toprak
Kaleh. One of the newly-found inscriptions of Sarduris III. shows that
the name of the Assyrian god, hitherto read Ramman or Rimmon, was
really pronounced Hadad. It describes a war of the Vannic king against
Assur-nirari, son of Hadad-nirari (_A-da-di-ni-ra-ri_) of Assyria, thus
revealing not only the true form of the Assyrian name, but also the
parentage of the last king of the older Assyrian dynasty. From another
inscription, belonging to Rusas II., the son of Argistis, we learn that
campaigns were carried on against the Hittites and the Moschi in the
latter years of Sennacherib's reign, and therefore only just before the
irruption of the Kimmerians into the northern regions of Western Asia.

The two German explorers have also discovered the site and even the
ruins of Muzazir, called Ardinis by the people of Van. They lie on the
hill of Shkenna, near Topsana, on the road between Kelishin and Sidek.
In the immediate neighbourhood the travellers succeeded in deciphering
a monument of Rusas I., partly in Vannic, partly in Assyrian, from which
it appears that the Vannic king did not, after all, commit suicide when
the news of the fall of Muzazir was brought to him, as is stated by
Sargon, but that, on the contrary, he "marched against the mountains
of Assyria" and restored the fallen city itself. Urzana, the King of
Muzazir, had fled to him for shelter, and after the departure of the
Assyrian army he was sent back by Rusas to his ancestral domains. The
whole of the district in which Muzazir was situated was termed Lulu, and
was regarded as the southern province of Ararat. In it was Mount Nizir,
on whose summit the ark of the Chaldsean Noah rested, and which is
therefore rightly described in the Book of Genesis as one of "the
mountains of Ararat." It was probably the Rowandiz of to-day.

The discoveries made by Drs. Belck and Lehmann, however, have not been
confined to Vannic texts. At the sources of the Tigris Dr. Lehmann has
found two Assyrian inscriptions of the Assyrian king, Shalmaneser IL,
one dated in his fifteenth and the other in his thirty-first year, and
relating to his campaigns against Aram of Ararat. He has further found
that the two inscriptions p