ab, and they would even have urged their horses up to the very
walls of Nineveh had the occasion presented itself.

* The importance of the event and the amount of the spoil
captured are apparent, if we notice that Esarhaddon does not
usually record the booty taken after each campaign; he does
so only when the number of objects and of prisoners taken
from the enemy is extraordinary. The _Babylonian Chronicle
of Pinches_ places the capture of Sidon in the second, and
the death of Abdimilkot in the fifth year of his reign.
Hence Winckler has concluded that Abdimilkot held out for
fully two years after the loss of Sidon. The general tenor
of the account, as given by the inscriptions, seems to me to
be that the capture of the king followed closely on the fall
of the town: Abdimilkot and Sanduarri probably spent the
years between 679 and 676 in prison.

** One of the oracles of Shamash speaks of the captives as
dwelling in a canton of the Mannai.

Esarhaddon, warned of their intrigues by the spies which he sent among
them, could not bring himself either to anticipate their attack or to
assume the offensive, but anxiously consulted the gods with regard to
them: "O Shamash," he wrote to the Sun-god, "great lord, thou whom I
question, answer me in sincerity! From this day forth, the 22nd day of
this month of Simanu, until the 21st day of the month of Duzu of this
year, during these thirty days and thirty nights, a time has been
foreordained favourable to the work of prophecy. In this time thus
foreordained, the hordes of the Scythians who inhabit a district of the
Mannai, and who have crossed the Mannian frontier,--will they succeed in
their undertaking? Will they emerge from the passes of Khubushkia at
the towns of Kharrania and Anisuskia; will they ravage the borders
of Assyria and steal great booty, immense spoil? that doth thy high
divinity know. Is it a decree, and in the mouth of thy high divinity, O
Shamash, great lord, ordained and promulgated? He who sees, shall he see
it; he who hears, shall he hear it?"*

* The town of Anisuskia is not mentioned elsewhere, but
Kharrania is met with in the account of the thirty-first
campaign of Shalmaneser III. with Kharrana as its variant.

The god comforted his faithful servant, but there was a brief delay
before his answer threw light on the future, and the king's questions
were constan