* Shur is mentioned on the return to Nairi, possibly on the road leading from Amidi and Tushkhan to Nineveh. Hommel believes that the country of Khamanu was the Amanos in Cilicia, and he admits, but unwillingly, that Assur-nazir- pal made a detour beyond the Euphrates. I should look for Shura, and consequently for Khamanu, in the Tur-Abdin, and should identify them with Saur, in spite of the difference of the two initial articulations. However high we may rate the value of this campaign, it was eclipsed by the following one. The Aramaeans on the Khabur and the middle Euphrates had not witnessed without anxiety the revival of Ninevite activity, and had begged for assistance against it from its rival. Two of their principal tribes, the Sukhi and the Laqi, had addressed themselves to the sovereign then reigning at Babylon. He was a restless, ambitious prince, named Nabu-baliddin, who asked nothing better than to excite a hostile feeling against his neighbour, provided he ran no risk by his interference of being drawn into open warfare. He accordingly despatched to the Prince of Sukhi the best of his Cossoan troops, commanded by his brother Zabdanu and one of the great officers of the crown, Bel-baliddin. In the spring of 879 B.C., Assur-nazir-pal determined once for all to put an end to these intrigues. He began by inspecting the citadels flanking the line of the Kharmish* and the Khabur,--Tabiti,** Magarisi,*** Shadikanni, Shuru in Bit-Khafupi, and Sirki.**** * The Kharmish has been identified with the Hirmas, the river flowing by Nisibis, and now called the Nahr-Jaghjagha. ** Tabiti is the Thebeta (Thebet) of Roman itineraries and Syrian writers, situated 33 miles from Nisibis and 52 from Singara, on the Nahr-Hesawy or one of the neighbouring wadys. *** Magarisi ought to be found on the present Nahr- Jaghjagha, near its confluence with the Nahr-Jerrahi and its tributaries; unfortunately, this part of Mesopotamia is still almost entirely unexplored, and no satisfactory map of it exists as yet. **** Sirki is Circesium at the mouth of the Khabur. Between the embouchures of the Khabur and the Balikh, the Euphrates winds across a vast table-land, ridged with marly hills; the left bank is dry and sterile, shaded at rare intervals by sparse woods of poplars or groups of palms. The right bank, on the contrary, is seamed with fertile valleys, sufficiently well watered to permit the growth of cereals and the raising of cattle. The river-bed is almost everywhere wide, but strewn with dangerous rocks and sandbanks which render navigation perilous. On nearing the ruins of Halebiyeh, the river narrows as it enters the Arabian hills, and cuts for itself a regular defile of three or four hundred paces in length, which is approached by the pilots with caution.*