ire the
neighbouring states with uneasiness. Assur-nazir-pal speaks of it
incidentally as lying on the northern frontier of his empire,* but the
care he took to avoid arousing its hostility shows the respect in which
he held it.

* Arzashku, Arzashkun, seems to be the Assyrian form of an
Urartian name ending in _-ka_, formed from a proper name
Arzash, which recalls the name Arsene, Arsissa, applied by
the ancients to part of Lake Van. Arzashkun might represent
the Ardzik of the Armenian historians, west of Malasgert.

He was, indeed, as much afraid of Urartu as of Damascus, and though
he approached quite close to its boundary in his second campaign, he
preferred to check his triumphant advance rather than risk attacking
it. It appears to have been at that time under the undisputed rule of a
certain Sharduris, son of Lutipri, and subsequently, about the middle
of Assur-nazir-pal's reign, to have passed into the hands of Arame, who
styled himself King of Nairi, and whose ambition may have caused those
revolts which forced Assur-nazir-pal to take up arms in the eighteenth
year of his reign. On this occasion the Assyrians again confined
themselves to the chastisement of their own vassals, and checked
their advance as soon as they approached Urartu. Their success was but
temporary; hardly had they withdrawn from the neighbourhood, when the
disturbances were renewed with even greater violence, very probably
at the instigation of Arame. Shalmaneser III. found matters in a very
unsatisfactory state both on the west and south of Lake Van: some of the
peoples who had been subject to his father--the Khubushkia, the pastoral
tribes of the Gordaean mountains, and the Aramaeans of the Euphrates--had
transferred their allegiance elsewhere. He immediately took measures to
recall them to a sense of their duty, and set out from Calah only a few
days after succeeding to the crown. He marched at first in an easterly
direction, and, crossing the pass of Simisi, burnt the city of Aridi,
thus proving that he was fully prepared to treat rebels after the
same fashion as his father. The lesson had immediate effect. All
the neighbouring tribes, Khargaeans, Simisaeans, the people of Simira,
Sirisha, and Ulmania, hastened to pay him homage even before he had
struck his camp near Aridi. Hurrying across country by the shortest
route, which entailed the making of roads to enable his chariots and
cavalry to follow him, he fel