[Illustration: 145.jpg THE VOLCANIC CONE OF KÔKAB] Drawn by Boudier, from the cut in Layard. In a country thus unequally favoured by nature, the towns are necessarily distributed in a seemingly arbitrary fashion. Most of them are situated on the left bank of the Tigris, where the fertile nature of the soil enables it to support a dense population. They were all flourishing centres of population, and were in close proximity to each other, at all events during the centuries of Assyrian hegemony.* * We find, for example, in the inscription of Bavian, a long enumeration of towns and villages situated almost within the suburbs of Nineveh, on the banks of the Khôser. Three of them soon eclipsed their rivals in political and religious importance; these were Kalakh and Nina on the Tigris, and Arbaîlu, lying beyond the Upper Zab, in the broken plain which is a continuation eastwards of the first spurs of the Zagros.* On the right bank, however, we find merely some dozen cities and towns, scattered about in places where there was a supply of water sufficient to enable the inhabitants to cultivate the soil; as, for example, Assur on the banks of the Tigris itself, Singara near the sources of the Thartar, and Nazibina near those of the Kharmis, at the foot of the Masios. These cities were not all under the rule of one sovereign when Thûtmosis III. appeared in Syria, for the Egyptian monuments mention, besides the kingdom of Assyria, that of Singara** and Araphka in the upper basin of the Zab.*** * The name of Arbeles is written in a form which appears to signify “the town of the four gods.” ** This kingdom of Singara is mentioned in the Egyptian lists of Thûtmosis III. Schrader was doubtful as to its existence, but one of its kings is mentioned in a letter from the King of Alasia to Amenôthes IV.; according to Niebuhr, the state of which Singara was the capital must have been identical, at all events at one period, with the Mitanni of the Egyptian texts. *** The Arapakha of the Egyptian monuments has been identified with the Arrapakhitis of the Greeks.