A register of the soldiers was kept, but it would seem that those who were in charge of it sometimes forgot to strike off the names of those who were dead or discharged, and pocketed their pay. At any rate, the following official document has come down to us:—“(The names) of the deserters and dead soldiers which have been overlooked in the paymaster’s account, the 8th day of Nisan, the eighth year of Cyrus, king of Babylon and of the world: Samas-akhi-iddin, son of Samas-ana-bitisu, deserted; Muse-zib-Samas, son of the Usian, _ditto_; Itti-Samas-eneya junior, of the family of Samas-kin-abli, _ditto_; Itti-Samas-baladhu, son of Samas-erba _ditto_; Taddannu, son of Rimut, _ditto_; Samas-yuballidh, his brother, _ditto_; Kalbâ, son of Samas-kin-abli, son of the painter(?), _ditto_; in all seven deserters. Libludh, son of Samas-edher, dead; Nebo-tuktê-tirri, _ditto_; Samas-mupakhkhiranni, _ditto_; Samas-akhi-erba, son of Samas-ana-bitisu, _ditto_; in all four dead. Altogether eleven soldiers who have deserted or are dead.” If Babylonia copied Assyria in military arrangements, the converse was the case as regards a fleet. “The cry of the Chaldeans,” according to the Old Testament, was “in their ships,” and in the earliest age of Babylonian history, Eridu, which then stood on the sea-coast, was already a sea-port. But Assyria was too far distant from the sea for its inhabitants to become sailors, and the rapid current of the Tigris made even river navigation difficult. In fact, the rafts on which the heavy monuments were transported, and which could float only down stream, or the small, round boats, resembling the _kufas_ that are still in use, were almost the only means employed for crossing the water. When the Assyrian army had to pass a river, either pontoons were thrown across it, or the soldiers swam across the streams with the help of inflated skins. The _kufa_ was made of rushes daubed with bitumen, and sometimes covered with a skin. So little accustomed were the Assyrians to navigation that, when Sennacherib determined to pursue the followers of Merodach-baladan across the Persian Gulf to the coast of Elam, he was obliged to have recourse to the Phœnician boat-builders and sailors. Two fleets were built for him by Phœnician and Syrian workmen, one at Tel-Barsip, near Carchemish, on the Euphrates, the other at Nineveh on the Tigris; these he manned with Syrian, Sidonian, and Ionian sailors, and after pouring out a libation to Ea, the god of the sea, set sail from the mouth of the Euphrates. It was probably for the support of this fleet that the 20 talents (£10,800) annually levied on the district of Assur were intended. The Phœnician ships employed by the Assyrians were biremes, with two tiers of oars.