but Elam had lost much of its prestige in the last few years. The aged Khumban-igash had died in 717,* and his successor, Shutruk-nakhunta, had not apparently inherited all the energy of his father,** and it is possible that troubles had arisen among the vassals of his own kingdom which prevented him from interfering on behalf of his ally. Sargon took account of all these circumstances in arranging his plan of campaign. He divided his army into two forces, one of which, under his own command, was to be directed against Merodach-baladan, while the other was to attack the insurgent Aramaeans on the left bank of the Tigris, and was to be manoeuvred so as to drive Shutruk-nakhunta back on the marshes of the Uknu.*** The eastern force was the first to be set in movement, and it pushed forward into the territory of the Gambulu. These latter had concentrated themselves round Dur-Atkharas, one of their citadels;**** they had increased the height of the walls, and filled the ditches with water brought from the Shurappu by means of a canal, and having received a reinforcement of 600 horsemen and 4000 foot soldiers, they had drawn them up in front of the ramparts. * The date of the death of Khumban-igash is indirectly given in the passage of the _Babylonian Chronicle of Pinches_, where it is said that in the first year of Ashshur-nadin- shumu, King of Babylon, Ishtar-khundu (= Shutruk-nakhunta) was dethroned by his brother, Khallushu, after having reigned over Elam eighteen years: these events actually took place, as we shall see below, about the year 699 before our era. ** Shutruk-nakhunta is the Susian form of the name; the Assyrian texts distort it into Shutur-nankhundi, and the _Babylonian Chronicle of Pinches_, into Ishtar-khundu, owing to a faint resemblance in the sound of the name of the goddess Ishtar with the form _Shutur, Sthur_, itself derived from Shutruk, with which the name began. *** The earlier historians of Assyria, misled in the first place by the form in which the scribes have handed down the account in the Annals and the _Fastes_, assumed the existence of a single army, led by Sargon himself, and which would have marched on all the above-mentioned places of the country, one by one. Tiele was the first to recognise that Sargon must have left part of his forces to the command of one of his lieutenants, and Winckler, enlarging on this idea, showed that there were then two armies, engaged at different seats of war, but manoeuvring as far as possible by mutual arrangement.