I
besieged and took by assault, their inhabitants I led into captivity, I
demolished them and reduced them to ashes: I caused the smoke of their
burning to rise into the wide heaven, like the smoke of one great
sacrifice." Kutur-nakhunta, still insecurely seated on the throne of
Susa, retreated with his army towards Khaidalu, in the almost unexplored
regions which bordered the Banian plateau,* and entrenched himself
strongly in the heart of the mountains.

* Khaidalu is very probably the present Dis Malkan.

The season was already well advanced when the Assyrians set out on this
expedition, and November set in while they were ravaging the plain:
but the weather was still so fine that Sennacherib determined to take
advantage of it to march upon Madaktu. Hardly had he scaled the heights
when winter fell upon him with its accompaniment of cold and squally
weather. "Violent storms broke out, it rained and snowed incessantly,
the torrents and streams overflowed their banks," so that hostilities
had to be suspended and the troops ordered back to Nineveh. The effect
produced, however, by these bold measures was in no way diminished:
though Kutur-nakhunta had not had the necessary time to prepare for the
contest, he was nevertheless discredited among his subjects for failing
to bring them out of it with glory, and three months after the retreat
of the Assyrians he was assassinated in a riot on the 20th of Ab, 692
B.C.*

* The Assyrian documents merely mention the death of Kutur-
nakhunta less than three months after the return of
Sennacherib to Nineveh. Pinches' _Babylonian Chronicle_ only
mentions the revolution in which he perished, and informs us
that he had reigned ten months. It contracts Umman-minanu,
the name of the Elamite king, to Minanu.

His younger brother, Umman-minanu, assumed the crown, and though his
enemies disdainfully refused to credit him with either prudence or
judgment, he soon restored his kingdom to such a formidable degree of
power that Mushezib-marduk thought the opportunity a favourable one for
striking a blow at Assyria, from which she could never recover. Elam had
plenty of troops, but was deficient in the resources necessary to pay
the men and their chiefs, and to induce the tribes of the table-land
to furnish their contingents. Mushezib-marduk, therefore, emptied the
sacred treasury of E-sagilla, and sent the gold and silver of Bel and
Zarpanit to Umman-mina