scholars. I believe it to be possible to
determine its position with still further precision. Parsua
on one side lay on the border of Namri, which comprises the
districts to the east of the Diyalah in the direction of
Zohab, and was contiguous to the Medes on the other side,
and also to the Mannai, who occupied the southern regions of
Lake Urumiah; it also lies close to Bit-Khamban, the
principal of the Cossaean tribes, as it would appear. I can
find only one position on the map which would answer to all
these requirements: this is in the main the basin of the
Gave-rud and its small affluents, the Ardelan and the
sources of the Kizil-Uzen, and I shall there place Parsua
until further information is forthcoming on the subject.
Skirting Misi, Amadai, Araziash,* and Kharkhar, and most of the
districts lying on the middle heights of the table-land of Iran, he at
length came up with Ianzu, whom he seized and brought back prisoner to
Assyria, together with his family and his idols.
* Amadai is a form of Madai, with a prothetical _a_, like
Agusi or Azala, by the side of Guzi and Zala. The
inscription of Shalmaneser III. thus gives us the first
mention of the classical Medes. Araziash, placed too far to
the east in Sagartene by Fr. Lenormant, has been located
further westwards by Schrader, near the upper course of the
Kerkha; but the documents of all periods show us that on one
side it adjoined Kharkhar, that is the basin of the Gamas-
ab, on the other side Media, that is the country of Hamadan.
It must, therefore, be placed between the two, in the
northern part of the ancient Cambadene in the present
Tchamabadan. Kharkhar in this case would be in the southern
part of Cambadene, on the main road which leads from the
gates of the Zagros to Hamadan; an examination of the
general features of the country leads me to believe that the
town of Kharkhar should occupy the site of Kirmanshahan, or
rather of the ancient city which preceded that town.
It was at this juncture, perhaps, that he received from the people of
Muzri the gift of an elephant and some large monkeys, representations of
which he has left us on one of his bas-reliefs. Elephants were becoming
rare, and it was not now possible to kill them by the hundred, as
formerly, in Syria: this particular animal, therefore, excited
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