Bit-Ishtar, he set up a pointed javelin dedicated to Ninip, on which he had engraved a panegyric of the virtues of his master Assur; near Shilkhazi, a town founded, in bygone days, by the Babylonians, he erected a statue of himself, and a pillar consecrated to Marduk in Til-ashshur. In the following year he again attacked Urartu and occupied the mountain province of Nal, which formed one of its outlying defences (736). The year after he entered on the final struggle with Sharduris, and led the flower of his forces right under the walls of Dhuspas,* the enemy's capital. * The name is written Turuspas in the inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III. Dhuspas really consisted of two towns joined together. One of these, extending over the plain by the banks of the Alais and in the direction of the lake, was surrounded by fertile gardens and villas, in which the inhabitants spent the summer at their ease. It was protected by an isolated mass of white and red nummulitic chalk, the steep sides of which are seamed with fissures and tunnelled with holes and caverns from top to bottom. [Illustration: 235.jpg THE ROCK AND CITADEL OF VAN AT THE PRESENT DAY] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Binder. The plateau in which it terminates, and which rises to a height of 300 feet at its loftiest point, is divided into three main terraces, each completely isolated from the other two, and forming, should occasion arise, an independent fortress, Ishpuinis, Menuas, Argistis, and Sharduris II. had laboured from generation to generation to make this stronghold impregnable, and they had succeeded in the attempt. [Illustration: 236.jpg ENTRANCE TO THE MODERN CITADEL OF VAN FROM THE WESTWARD] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Binder.