Beyond this, again, on the banks of the Lesser Zab and the confines of Lulumô, the principalities of Muraddash and of Saradaush refused to come to terms. Tiglath-pileser broke their lines within sight of Muraddash, and entered the town with the fugitives in the confusion which ensued; this took place about the fourth hour of the day. The success was so prompt and complete, that the king was inclined to attribute it to the help of Rammân, and he made an offering to the temple of this god at Assur of all the copper, whether wrought or in ore, which was found among the spoil of the vanquished. He was recalled almost immediately after this victory by a sedition among the Kurkhi near the sources of the Tigris. One of their tribes, known as the Sugi, who had not as yet suffered from the invaders, had concentrated round their standards contingents from some half-dozen cities, and the united force was, to the number of six thousand, drawn up on Mount Khirikhâ. Tiglath-pileser was again victorious, and took from them twenty-five statues of their gods, which he despatched to Assyria to be distributed among the sanctuaries of Belît at Assur, of Anu, Bammân, and of Ishtar. Winter obliged him to suspend operations. When he again resumed them at the beginning of his third year, both the Kummukh and the Kurkhi were so peaceably settled that he was able to carry his expeditions without fear of danger further north, into the regions of the Upper Euphrates between the Halys and Lake Van, a district then known as Naîri. He marched diagonally across the plain of Diarbekîr, penetrated through dense forests, climbed sixteen mountain ridges one after the other by paths hitherto considered impracticable, and finally crossed the Euphrates by improvised bridges, this being, as far as we know, the first time that an Assyrian monarch had ventured into the very heart of those countries which had formerly constituted the Hittite empire. He found them occupied by rude and warlike tribes, who derived considerable wealth from working the mines, and possessed each their own special sanctuary, the ruins of which still appear above ground, and invite the attention of the explorer. Their fortresses must have all more or less resembled that city of the Pterians which flourished for so many ages just at the bend of the Halys;* its site is still marked by a mound rising to some thirty feet above the plain, resembling the platforms on which the Chaldæan temples were always built--a few walls of burnt brick, and within an enclosure, among the débris of rudely built houses, the ruins of some temples and palaces consisting of large irregular blocks of stone.