tly renewed as fresh couriers brought in further
information. In 678 B.C. the Scythians determined to try their fortune,
and their king, Ishpakai,* took the field, followed by the Mannai. He
was defeated and driven back to the north of Lake Urumiah, the Mannai
were reduced to subjection, and Assyria once more breathed freely.
The victory, however, was not a final one, and affairs soon assumed as
threatening an aspect as before. The Scythian tribes came on the scene,
one after another, and allied themselves to the various peoples subject
either directly or indirectly to Nineveh.** On one occasion it was
Kashtariti, the regent of Karkashshi,*** who wrote to Mamitiarshu, one
of the Median princes, to induce him to make common cause with himself
in attacking the fortress of Kishshashshu on the eastern border of the
empire. At another time we find the same chief plotting with the Mannai
and the Saparda to raid the town of Kilman, and Esarhaddon implores the
god to show him how the place may be saved from their machinations.****

* This king's name seems to be of Iranian origin. Justi has
connected it with the name Aspakos, which is read in a Greek
inscription of the Cimmerian Bosphorus; both forms have been
connected with the Sanskrit Acvalca.

** This subdivision of the horde into several bodies seems
to be indicated by the number of different royal names among
the Scythians which are mentioned in the Assyrian documents.

*** The site of Karkashshi is unknown, but the list of
Median princes subdued by Sargon shows that it was situated
in Media. Kishshashshu is very probably the same as Kishisim
or Kishisu, the town which Sargon subdued, and which he
called Kar-nergal or Kar-ninib, and which is mentioned in
the neighbourhood of Parsuash, Karalla, Kharkhar, Media, and
Ellipi. I think that it would be in the basin of the Gave--
Rud; Billerbeck places it at the ruins of Siama, in the
upper valley of the Lesser Zab.

**** The people of Saparda, called by the Persians Sparda,
have been with good reason identified with the Sepharad of
the prophet Obadiah (ver. 20): the Assyrian texts show that
this country should be placed in the neighbourhood of the
Mannai of the Medes.

He opens negotiations in order to gain time, but the barbarity of his
adversary is such that he fears for his envoy's safety, and speculates
whether he