s Majesty was filled with joy when he heard this
discourse: he bestowed upon them in abundance bread, beer, and all
manner of good things. After sojourning some days at the court of
Pharaoh their lord, they said to him, "Why stay we here, O prince
our master?" His Majesty replied, "Wherefore?" They answered then,
"Graciously permit us to return to our own cities, that we may give
commands to our subjects, and may bring thee our tribute offerings!"
They returned ere long, bringing the promised gifts, and the king
withdrew to Napata loaded with spoil.* The Delta proper at once ceased
to obey him, but Memphis, as well as Thebes, still acknowledged his sway
for some two or three years longer.**

* Tanuatamanu was at first identified by Haigh with the
person whose name Assyriologists read as Urdamani, but the
impossibility of recognising the name _Tanuatamanu_ in
_Urdamani_ decided E. de Rouge, and subsequently others, to
admit an Urdamani different from Tanuatamanu. The discovery
of the right reading of the name _Tandamanu_ by Steindorff
has banished all doubts, and it is now universally admitted
that the person mentioned in the Assyrian documents is
identical with the king who erected the _Stele of the Dream_
at Gebel Barkal.

** A monument still exists which was dedicated at Thebes in
the third year of Tanuatamanu.

It was neither indolence nor fear which had kept Assur-bani-pal from
marching to the succour of his subjects as soon as the movement under
Tanuatamanu became manifest, but serious complications had arisen in
the south-east which had for the moment obliged him to leave Egypt to
itself. Elam had at last laid aside the mask, and Urtaku, yielding
to the entreaties of the Aramaean sheikhs, who were urged on by
Marduk-shumibni, had crossed the Tigris. Shamash-shumukin, thus taken
unawares, could only shut himself up in Babylon, and in all haste send
information of his plight to his brother and suzerain. Assur-bani-pal,
preoccupied with the events taking place on the Nile, was for a moment
in doubt whether this incursion was merely a passing raid or the opening
of a serious war, but the reports of his scouts soon left no doubt as to
the gravity of the danger: "The Elamite, like a swarm of grasshoppers,
covers the fields, he covers Accad; against Babylon he has pitched his
camp and drawn out his lines." The city was too strong to be taken by
storm. The As