tablet belonging to Dungi, which the
veteran Kudurnakhunta had stolen from the temple of Nipur nearly
a thousand years previously. This victory was followed by the
congratulations of most of his neighbours, with the exception of
Bamman-nirari II., who had succeeded Budilu in Assyria, and probably
felt some jealousy or uneasiness at the news. He attacked the Cossaeans,
and overthrew them at Sugagi, on the banks of the Salsallat; their
losses were considerable, and Kurigalzu could only obtain peace by the
cession to Assyria of a strip of territory the entire length of the
north-west frontier, from the confines of the Shubari country, near
the sources of the Khabur, to the suburbs of Babylon itself. Nearly the
whole of Mesopotamia thus changed hands at one stroke, but Babylon had
still more serious losses to suffer. Nazimaruttash, who attempted to
wipe out the disaster sustained by his father Kurigalzu, experienced two
crushing defeats, one at Kar-Ishtar and the other near Akarsallu, and
the treaty which he subsequently signed was even more humiliating for
his country than the preceding one. All that part of the Babylonian
domain which lay nearest to Nineveh was ceded to the Assyrians, from
Pilaski on the right bank of the Tigris to the province of Lulume in
the Zagros mountains. It would appear that the Cossaean tribes who had
remained in their native country, took advantage of these troublous
times to sever all connection with their fellow-countrymen established
in the cities of the plain; for we find them henceforward carrying on a
petty warfare for their own profit, and leading an entirely independent
life. The descendants of Gandish, deprived of territories in the north,
repulsed in the east, and threatened in the south by the nations of
the Persian Gulf, never recovered their former ascendency, and their
authority slowly declined during the century which followed these
events. Their downfall brought about the decadence of the cities over
which they had held sway; and the supremacy which Babylon had exercised
for a thousand years over the countries of the Euphrates passed into the
hands of the Assyrian kings.

Assyria itself was but a poor and insignificant country when compared
with her rival. It occupied, on each side of the middle course of the
Tigris, the territory lying between the 35th and 37th parallels of
latitude.*

* These are approximately the limits of the first Assyrian
empire, as given by th