nu with a message which ran thus: "Assemble thine
army, and prepare thy camp, come to Babylon and strengthen our hands,
for thou art our help." The Elamite asked nothing better than to avenge
the provinces so cruelly harassed, and the cities consumed in the course
of the last campaign: he summoned all his nobles, from the least to the
greatest, and enlisted the help of the troops of Parsuas, Ellipi, and
Anzan, the Aramaean Puqudu and Gambulu of the Tigris, as well as
the Aramaeans of the Euphrates, and the peoples of Bit-Adini and
Bit-Amukkani, who had rallied round Sam una, son of Merodach-baladan,
and joined forces with the soldiers of Mushezib-marduk in Babylon.
"Like an invasion of countless locusts swooping down upon the land, they
assembled, resolved to give me battle, and the dust of their feet rose
before me, like a thick cloud which darkens the copper-coloured dome of
the sky." The conflict took place near the township of Khalule, on the
banks of the Tigris, not far from the confluence of this river with the
Turnat.*

* Haupt attributes to the name the signification _holes,
bogs_, and this interpretation agrees well enough with the
state of the country round the mouths of the Diyala, in the
low-lying district which separates that river from the
Tigris; he compares it with the name Haulayeh, quoted by
Arab geographers in this neighbourhood, and with that of the
canton of Haleh, mentioned in Syrian texts as belonging to
the district of Radhan, between the Adhem and the Diyala.

At this point the Turnat, flowing through the plain, divides into
several branches, which ramify again and again, and form a kind of delta
extending from the ruins of Nayan to those of Reshadeh. During the whole
of the day the engagement between the two hosts raged on this unstable
soil, and their leaders themselves sold their lives dearly in the
struggle. Sennacherib invoked the help of Assur, Sin, Shamash, Nebo,
Bel, Nergal, Ishtar of Nineveh, and Ishtar of Arbela, and the gods heard
his prayers. "Like a lion I raged, I donned my harness, I covered my
head with my casque, the badge of war; my powerful battle-chariot, which
mows down the rebels, I ascended it in haste in the rage of my heart;
the strong bow which Assur entrusted to me, I seized it, and the
javelin, destroyer of life, I grasped it: the whole host of obdurate
rebels I charged, shining like silver or like the day, and I roared as
Kam