l
himself sufficiently secure of his throne to risk the chance of coming
into collision with his neighbour. He caused Nabu-ziru-kinish-lishir to
be slain, and Naid-marduk, the other son of Merodach-baladan, who had
shared his brother's flight, was so terrified at his murder that he at
once sought refuge in Nineveh; he was reinstated in his paternal
domain on condition of paying a tribute, and, faithful to his oath of
allegiance, he thenceforward came yearly in person to bring his dues and
pay homage to his sovereign (679). The Kalda rising had, in short, been
little more than a skirmish, and the chastisement of the Sidonians would
have involved neither time nor trouble, had not the desultory movements
of the barbarians obliged the Assyrians to concentrate their troops on
several points which were threatened on their northern frontier.
The Cimmerians and the Scythians had not suffered themselves to be
disconcerted by the rapidity with which the fate of Sharezer had been
decided, and after a moment's hesitation they had again set out in
various directions on their work of conquest, believing, no doubt, that
they would meet with a less vigorous resistance after so serious an
upheaval at Nineveh. The Cimmerians appear to have been the first to
have provoked hostilities; their king Tiushpa, who ruled over their
territory on the Black Sea, ejected the Assyrian garrisons placed on the
Cappadocian frontier, and his presence in that quarter aroused all
the insubordinate elements still remaining in the Cilician valleys.
Esarhaddon brought him to a stand on the confines of the plain of Saros,
defeated him in Khubushna,* and drove the remains of the horde back
across the Halys.

* Several Assyriologists have thought that Khubushna might
be an error for Khubushkhia, and have sought the seat of war
on the eastern frontier of Assyria: in reality the context
shows that the place under discussion is a district in Asia
Minor, identified with Kamisene by Gelzcr, but left
unidentified by most authorities. Jensen has shown that the
name is mot with as early as the inscriptions of Tiglath-
pileser III., where we should read Khubishna, and he places
the country in Northern Syria, or perhaps further north in
the western part of Taurus. The determinative proves that
there was a town of this name as well as a district, and
this consideration encourages mo to recognise in Khubushna