More than a year was consumed in preparations. The united cities of Chaldaea being unable to furnish the transports required to convey such a large host across the Nar-Marratum, it was necessary to construct a fleet, and to do so in such a way that the enemy should have no suspicion of danger. Sennacherib accordingly set up his dockyards at Tul-barsip on the Euphrates and at Nineveh on the Tigris, and Syrian shipwrights built him a fleet of vessels after two distinct types. Some were galleys identical in build and equipment with those which the Mediterranean natives used for their traffic with distant lands. The others followed the old Babylonian model, with stem and stern both raised, the bows being sometimes distinguished by the carving of a horse's head, which justified the name of _sea-horse_ given to a vessel of this kind. They had no masts, but propelling power was provided by two banks of oars one above the other, as in the galleys. The two divisions of the fleet were ready at the beginning of 694 B.C., and it was arranged that they should meet at Bit-Dakkuri, to the south of Babylon. [Illustration: 049.jpg THE FLEET OF SENNACHERIB ON THE NAR-MARRATUM] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard. The fleet from Tul-barsip had merely to descend the Euphrates to reach the meeting-place,* but that from Nineveh had to make a more complicated journey. * The story of the preparations, as it has been transmitted to us in Sennacherib's inscriptions, is curiously similar to the accounts given by the Greek historians of the vessels Alexander had built at Babylon and Thap-sacus by Phoenician workmen, which descended the Euphrates to join the fleet in the Persian Gulf. This fleet consisted of quinquiremos, according to Aristobulus, who was present at their construction: Quintus-Curtius makes them all vessels with seven banks of oars, but he evidently confuses the galleys built at Thapsacus with those which came in sections from Phoenicia and which Alexander had put together at Babylon.