h mentioned by Tiglath-Pileser II, while the city of
Arvad or Arados (now Ruad) is repeatedly named in the Assyrian
inscriptions. So also is Hamath (now Hamah), which was conquered by
Sargon, and made by him the seat of an Assyrian governor.

The name of Elam has first received its explanation from the decipherment
of the Assyrian texts. It was the name of the mountainous region to the
east of Babylonia, of which Shushan or Susa was at one time the capital,
and is nothing more than the Assyrian word _elam_, "high." _Elam_ was
itself a translation of the Accadian _Numma_, under which the Accadians
included the whole of the highlands which bounded the plain of Babylonia
on its eastern side. It was the seat of an ancient monarchy which rivalled
in antiquity that of Chaldea itself, and was long a dangerous neighbour to
the latter. It was finally overthrown, however, by Assur-bani-pal, the
Assyrian king, about B.C. 645. The native title of the country was Anzan
or Ansan, and the name of its capital, Susan or Shushan, seems to have
signified "the old town" in the language of its inhabitants.

Asshur or Assur was originally the name of a city on the banks of the
Tigris, the ruins of which are now known as Kalah Sherghat. The name was
of Accadian derivation, and signified "water-bank." The city long
continued to be the capital of the district which was called after it
Assyria, but was eventually supplanted by Ninua or Nineveh. Nineveh lay
opposite the present town of Mosul, and it is from the remains of its
chief palace, now buried under the mounds of Kouyunjik, that most of the
Assyrian inscriptions in the British Museum have been brought. A few miles
to the south of Nineveh, on the site now known as Nimrud, was Calah, a
town built by Shalmaneser I, who lived B.C. 1300. Calah subsequently fell
into ruins, but was rebuilt in the ninth century before our era. "Between
Nineveh and Calah" stood Resen, according to Genesis. Resen is the
Assyrian _Ris-eni_, "head of the stream," which is once mentioned in an
inscription of Sennacherib. Rehoboth