d by
Hamdy-Beg and Th. Reinach.

The Lotanu were gone, the Khati were gone, and gone, too, were
Carchemish, Arpad, and Qodshu, much of thSec.ir domain having been
swallowed up again by the desert for want of hands to water and till it;
even Assyria itself seemed but a shadow half shrouded in the mists of
oblivion. Sangara, Nisibis, Resaina, and Edessa still showed some signs
of vigour, but on quitting the slopes of the Masios and proceeding
southwards, piles of ruins alone marked the sites of those wealthy
cities through which the Ninevite monarchs had passed in their
journeyings towards Syria. Here wide tracts of arid and treeless
country were now to be seen covered with aromatic herbage, where the
Scenite Arabs were wont to pursue the lion, wild ass, ostrich, bustard,
antelope, and gazelle; a few abandoned forts, such as Korsorte, Anatho,
and Is (Hit) marked the halting-places of armies on the banks of the
Euphrates. In the region of the Tigris, the descendants of Assyrian
captives who, like the Jews, had been set free by Cyrus, had rebuilt
Assur, and had there grown wealthy by husbandry and commerce,* but in
the district of the Zab solitude reigned supreme.** Calah and Nineveh
were alike deserted, and though their ruins still littered the sites
where they had stood, their names were unknown in the neighbouring
villages. Xenophon, relying on his guides, calls the former place
Larissa, the second Mespila.***

* This seems to be indicated by a mutilated passage in the
_Cylinder of Gyrus_, where Assur is mentioned in the list of
towns and countries whose inhabitants were sent back to
their homes by Cyrus after the capture of Babylon. Xenophon
calls it Esense, this being, possibly, a translation of the
name given to it by its inhabitants. Nothing could be more
natural than for exiles to call the villages founded by them
on their return "new." The town seems to have been a large
and wealthy one.

** Xenophon calls this country Media, a desert region which
the Ten Thousand took six days to cross.

*** The name Larissa is, possibly, a corruption of some name
similar to that of the city of Larsam in Chaldaea; Mespila
may be a generic term. [Mespila is Muspula, "the low ground"
at the foot of Kouyunjik; Larissa probably Al Resen or
Res-eni, between Kouyunjik and Nebi Yunus.--Ed.]

Already there were historians who took the ziggurat at N