and daughters, and all the members of his family whom his successors had left under guard in the citadel. The siege had been pushed forward so rapidly that the king had not been able to make any attempt to relieve the defenders: besides this, a pretender had risen up against him, one Umbakhabua, who had been accepted as king by the important district of Bubilu. The fall of Bit-Imbi filled the two competitors with fear: they abandoned their homes and fled, the one to the mountains, the other to the lowlands on the shores of the Nar-Marratum. Tammaritu entered Susa in triumph and was enthroned afresh; but the insolence and rapacity of his auxiliaries was so ruthlessly manifested, that at the end of some days he resolved to rid himself of them by the sword. A traitor having revealed the design, Tammaritu was seized, stripped of his royal apparel, and cast into prison. The generals of Assur-bani-pal had no one whom they could proclaim king in his stead, and furthermore, the season being well advanced, the Elamites, who had recovered from their first alarm, were returning in a body, and threatened to cut off the Assyrian retreat: they therefore evacuated Susa, and regained Assyria with their booty. They burnt all the towns along the route whose walls were insufficient to protect them against a sudden escalade or an attack of a few hours' duration, and the country between the capital and the frontier soon contained nothing but heaps of smoking ruins (647 e.g.).* * The difficulty we experience in locating on the map most of the names of Elamite towns is the reason why we cannot determine with any certainty the whole itinerary followed by the Assyrian army.