Assyrian history, as we have seen, begins with the _patesis_ or viceroys of the city of Assur. We know little about them except their names; contemporaneous annals do not commence until Assyria has ceased to be the dependency of a foreign power, and has become an independent kingdom. It was in the 17th or 16th century before the Christian era that Bel-kapkapi first gave himself the title of king. For two or three centuries afterwards our chief information about the monarchy he founded is derived from the relations, sometimes hostile and sometimes peaceable, which his successors had with Babylonia. One of them, however, Rimmon-nirari I by name (about B.C. 1320), has left us an inscription in which he recounts the wars he waged against the Babylonians, the Kurds, the Aramæans, and the Shuites, nomad tribes who extended along the western bank of the Euphrates. It was his son, Shalmaneser I, to whom the foundation of Calah is ascribed. For six generations his descendants followed one another on the throne; then came Tiglath-Pileser I, who may be regarded as the founder of the first Assyrian Empire. He carried his arms as far as Cilicia and Malatiyeh on the west, and the wild tribes of Kurdistan on the east; he overthrew the Moschi or Meshech, defeated the Hittites and their Colchian allies, and erected a memorial of his conquests at the sources of the Tigris. The Hittite city of Pethor, at the junction of the Euphrates and Sajur, was garrisoned with Assyrian soldiers, and at Arvad the Assyrian monarch symbolised his subjection of the Mediterranean by embarking in a ship and killing a dolphin in the sea. In Nineveh he established a botanical garden, which he filled with the strange trees he had brought back with him from his campaigns. In B.C. 1130 he marched into Babylonia, and, after a momentary repulse at the hands of the Babylonian king, defeated his antagonists on the banks of the Lower Zab. Babylonia was ravaged, and Babylon itself was captured.