respite, Argistis hastened to complete the pacification of Bustus, Parsua, and the small portion of Man which had not been reduced to subjection by Menuas. When the Assyrians returned to the conflict, he defeated them again (776), and while they withdrew to the Amanus, where a rebellion had broken out (775), he reduced one by one the small states which clustered round the eastern and southern shores of Lake Urumiah. He was conducting a campaign in Namri, when Shalmaneser IV. made a last effort to check his advance; but he was again victorious (774), and from henceforth these troubled regions, in which Nineveh had so persistently endeavoured for more than a century to establish her own supremacy, became part of the empire of Urartu. Argistis's hold of them proved, however, to be a precarious and uncertain one, and before long the same difficulties assailed him which had restricted the power of his rivals. [Illustration: 164.jpg URARTIAN STELE ON THE ROCKS OF AK-KEUPBU] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. Ximones. He was forced to return again and again to these districts, destroying fortresses and pursuing the inhabitants over plain and mountain: in 773 we find him in Urmes, the territory of Bikhuras, and Bam, in the very heart of Namri; in 772, in Dhuaras, and Gurqus, among the Mannai, and at the city of Uikhis, in Bustus. Meanwhile, to the north of the Araxes, several chiefs had taken advantage of his being thus engaged in warfare in distant regions, to break the very feeble bond which held them vassals to Urartu. Btius was the fountain-head and main support of the rebellion; the rugged mountain range in its rear provided its chiefs with secure retreats among its woods and lakes and valleys, through which flowed rapid torrents. Argistis inflicted a final defeat on the Mannai in 771, and then turned his forces against Etius. He took by storm the citadel of Ardinis which defended the entrance to the country, ravaged Ishqigulus,* and seized Amegu, the capital of Uidharus: our knowledge of his wars comes to an end in the following year with an expedition into the land of Tarius. * Sayce shows that Ishqigulus was the district of Alexandropolis, to the east of Kars; its capital, Irdanius, is very probably either the existing walled village of Kalinsha or the neighbouring ruin of Ajuk-kaleh, on the Arpa-tohai.