The cases where we can prove that the editor of the Annals "improved" his original are few but striking. It is indeed curious that he has in a few cases lowered the numbers of his original, even to the extent of giving three fortified cities and twenty four villages [Footnote: Ann. 105.] where the tablet has twelve fortified cities and eighty four villages. [Footnote: Tabl. 89.] On the other hand, by a trick especially common among the Sargonide scribes, the 1,235 sheep of the tablet [Footnote: Tabl. 349.] has reached the enormous total of 100,225! [Footnote: Ann. 129; of. Thureau-Dangin, _op. cit._, 68, n. 4 for comparison of numbers. The same phenomenon can be constantly seen in the huge increases of the numbers of the Display inscription as compared with its original, the Annals.] More serious, because less likely to be allowed for, is the statement that Parda was captured [Footnote: Ann. 106.] when the original merely says that it was abandoned by its chief. [Footnote: Tabl. 84.] But the most glaring innovation of the scribe is where, in speaking of the fate of Rusash, the Haldian king, after his defeat, he adds "with his own iron dagger, like a pig, his heart he pierced, and his life he ended." [Footnote: Ann. 139.] This has long been doubted on general principles, [Footnote: Cf. Olmstead, _Sargon_, 111.] but now we have the proof that it is only history as the scribe would like it to have been written. For the new inscription, while giving the conventional picture of the despair of the defeated king, says not a word of any suicide. [Footnote: Tabl. 411ff.] However, the tablet does elsewhere mention the sickness of Rusash, [Footnote: _Ibid._ 115.] and it may well be that it is to this sickness that we must attribute his death later. [Footnote: Cf. Thureau-Dangin, _op. cit._, xix.] The complete misunderstanding of the whole campaign by earlier writers [Footnote: Compare, for example, the brief and inaccurate account in Olmstead, _Sargon_, 112 ff., with that in thureau-Dangin, _op. cit._ on the basis of the new tablet] furnishes the clearest indication of the unsatisfactory character of our recital so long as we must rely entirely on the Annals. It is the discovery of conditions like these which forces us to subject our official inscriptions to the most rigid scrutiny before we dare use them in our history. [Footnote: Botta, _Monuments de Ninive_, pi. 70 ff.; 104 ff.; 158f£.; Winckler, _Sargon_ II. pl. 1 ff. Oppert in Place, _Ninive_, II. 309 ff.; _Les Inscriptions de Dour Sarkayan_, 29 ff.; RP: VII. 21 ff.; Menant, 158 ff.; Winckler, _De inscriptione quae vocatur Annalium_, 1886; _Sargon_, I. 3 ff.] CHAPTER VI ANNALS AND DISPLAY INSCRIPTIONS (Sennacherib and Esarhaddon)