statues of Merodach
and of his consort Zarpanit, which had been stolen, we know not how,
some time previously from Chaldaea.** Agumkakrime recovered them and
replaced them in their proper temple. This was an important event, and
earned him the good will of the priests.

* The translation _black-headed_, i.e. dark-haired and
complexioned, _Guti_, is uncertain; Jensen interprets the
epithet _nishi saldati_ to mean "the Guti, stupid (foolish?
culpable?) people." The Guti held both banks of the lower
Zab, in the mountains on the east of Assyria. Delitzsch has
placed Padan and Alman in the mountains to the east of the
Diyaleh; Jensen places them in the chain of the Khamrin, and
Winckler compares Alman or Halman with the Holwan of the
present day.

** The Khani have been placed by Delitzsch in the
neighbourhood of Mount Khana, mentioned in the accounts of
the Assyrian campaigns, that is to say, in the Amanos,
between the Euphrates and the bay of Alexandretta: he is
inclined to regard the name as a form of that of the Khati.

The king reorganised public worship; he caused new fittings for the
temples to be made to take the place of those which had disappeared, and
the inscription which records this work enumerates with satisfaction the
large quantities of crystal, jasper, and lapis-lazuli which he lavished
on the sanctuary, the utensils of silver and gold which he dedicated,
together with the "seas" of wrought bronze decorated with monsters and
religious emblems.* This restoration of the statues, so flattering to
the national pride and piety, would have been exacted and insisted upon
by a Khammurabi at the point of the sword, but Agumkakrime doubtless
felt that he was not strong enough to run the risk of war; he therefore
sent an embassy to the Khani, and such was the prestige which the name
of Babylon still possessed, from the deserts of the Caspian to the
shores of the Mediterranean, that he was able to obtain a concession
from that people which he would probably have been powerless to extort
by force of arms.**

* We do not possess the original of the inscription which
tells us of these facts, but merely an early copy.

** Strictly speaking, one might suppose that a war took
place; but most Assyriologists declare unhesitatingly that
there was merely an embassy and a diplomatic negotiation.

The Egyptians had, therefore, no