y thrown up in one of the last geological
upheavals which affected this part of the country: in some places it
resembles a perpendicular wall, while in others it recedes in natural
terraces which present the appearance of a gigantic flight of steps. The
summit is often wooded, and the spurs covered with vineyards and fields,
which flourish vigorously in the vicinity of streams; when these fail,
however, the table-land resumes its desolate aspect, and stretches
in bare and sandy undulations to the horizon, broken only where it
is crossed by the Thartar, the sole river in this region which is not
liable to be dried up, and whose banks may be traced by the scanty line
of vegetation which it nourishes.

[Illustration: 145.jpg THE VOLCANIC CONE OF KOKAB]

Drawn by Boudier, from the cut in Layard.

In a country thus unequally favoured by nature, the towns are
necessarily distributed in a seemingly arbitrary fashion. Most of them
are situated on the left bank of the Tigris, where the fertile nature
of the soil enables it to support a dense population. They were all
flourishing centres of population, and were in close proximity to each
other, at all events during the centuries of Assyrian hegemony.*

* We find, for example, in the inscription of Bavian, a long
enumeration of towns and villages situated almost within the
suburbs of Nineveh, on the banks of the Khoser.

Three of them soon eclipsed their rivals in political and religious
importance; these were Kalakh and Nina on the Tigris, and Arbailu,
lying beyond the Upper Zab, in the broken plain which is a continuation
eastwards of the first spurs of the Zagros.* On the right bank, however,
we find merely some dozen cities and towns, scattered about in places
where there was a supply of water sufficient to enable the inhabitants
to cultivate the soil; as, for example, Assur on the banks of the Tigris
itself, Singara near the sources of the Thartar, and Nazibina near those
of the Kharmis, at the foot of the Masios. These cities were not all
under the rule of one sovereign when Thutmosis III. appeared in Syria,
for the Egyptian monuments mention, besides the kingdom of Assyria, that
of Singara** and Araphka in the upper basin of the Zab.***

* The name of Arbeles is written in a form which appears to
signify "the town of the four gods."

** This kingdom of Singara is mentioned in the Egyptian
lists of Thutmosis III. Schrader was do