ASSYR10L0GY AND THE ASSYRIAN MUSEUM TABLETS. 383 
I dug down: 120 tikpi " (handbreaths) "downwards I sank: the 
palace of my royalty, i.e. my royal palace, I set up in the midst 
thereof." 
This is the translation, as far as I am able to make it out, and I 
now proceed to make remarks on the contents. The contents tell 
us that the tablet is from the palace of Assurnazirpal, who, as 
usual in the inscriptions, is, like all Assyrian kings, entitled, "Great 
king, mighty king, king of multitudes, king of Assyria." He 
succeeded his father, Tukulti-ninip, on the throne in 885, and 
reigned twenty-five year-s. His grandfather's name was Bin-nirari. 
He himself was the father of Shalmaneser II., the king whose 
great deeds are recorded on the black obelisk to which I referred 
just now. 
In 879 B.C. Assurnazirpal made an attack on the Shuites (the 
people of IflE? in Ezekiel), and their prince sent to the Babylonian 
king for help, which he at once gave, in order to check the rival 
power of Assyria. And so we soon hear of a force being sent 
from Babylon to help the people of Shua, who lived along the 
river Euphrates, below its junction with the Khabur. Assurnazirpal 
attacked the combined forces, and after a battle which lasted two 
days he took their capital town. An agreement was subsequently 
arrived at between the two kings of Assyria and Babylonia, by 
which the frontiers of the two countries were to be definitely 
settled. 
The boundaries are those mentioned on the two tablets of your 
museum. On the Euphrates the boundary was the city Kapiku, 
about latitude 34° north ; on the east of the Tigris the line passing 
along by the cities of Tul-bari, the mounds of Zabtani and Abtani 
to the cities of Khirimu and Kharutu, these places all lying south 
of the river Lower Zab. Our text tells us that he had subjugated 
the land of Laki in its entirety, which extended from beyond the 
Tigris up to Lebanon, in the north of Palestine, and the Great 
Sea, that is, the Mediterranean. This king was constantly at war, 
and was generally successful in his attacks upon foreign powers. 
His wars were chiefly directed against neighbouring peoples and 
cities, the names of which are given in the text — names certainly 
many of them unfamiliar to us, inasmuch as they have all long 
since ceased to play any part in the world's history. Many of 
them were only petty but annoying provinces — provinces which 
would immediately rise up in revolt, provided they were only well 
2 b 2 
