ing into the palace
precincts.*

* G. Smith thought that the Babylonians, rendered furious by
their sufferings, had seized Shamash-shumukin and burnt him
to death. It is, however, certain that Shamash-shumukin
killed himself, according to the Eastern custom, to escape
the tortures which awaited him if he fell alive into the
hands of his enemies. The memory of this event, transferred
by the popular imagination to Assur-bani-pal, appears lu the
concluding portion of the legendary history of Sardanapalus.

The city presented a terrible spectacle, and shocked even the Assyrians,
accustomed as they were to horrors of this sort. Most of the numerous
victims to pestilence or famine lay about the streets or in the public
squares, a prey to the dogs and swine; such of the inhabitants and of
the soldiery as were comparatively strong had endeavoured to escape into
the country, and only those remained who had not sufficient strength
left to drag themselves beyond the walls. Assur-bani-pal pursued the
fugitives, and, having captured nearly all of them, vented on them the
full fury of his vengeance. He caused, the tongues of the soldiers to
be torn out, and then had them clubbed to death. He massacred the common
folk in front of the great winged bulls which had already witnessed
a similar butchery half a century before, under his grandfather
Sennacherib; the corpses of his victims remained long unburied, a prey
to all unclean beasts and birds. When the executioners and the king
himself were weary of the slaughter, the survivors were pardoned; the
remains of the victims were collected and piled up in specified
places, the streets were cleansed, and the temples, purified by solemn
lustrations, were reopened for worship.* Assur-hani-pal proclaimed
himself king in his brother's room: he took the hands of Bel, and,
according to custom, his Babylonian subjects gave him a new name, that
of Kandalanu, by which he was henceforth known among them.**

* The date of 648-647 B.C. for the taking of Babylon and the
death of Shamash-shumukin is corroborated by the Canon of
Ptolemy and the fragments of Berosus, both of which
attribute twenty or twenty-one years to the reign of
Saosdukhm (Sammughes). Lehmann points out a document dated
in the XXth year of Shamash-shumukin, which confirms the
exactitude of the information furnished by the Greek
chronologists.

**