* _Pinches' Babylonian Chronicle_ attributes the victory to the Elamites, and says that the year in which the battle was fought was unknown. The testimony of this chronicle is so often marred by partiality, that to prefer it always to that of the Ninevite inscriptions shows deficiency of critical ability: the course of events seems to me to prove that the advantage remained with the Assyrians, though the victory was not decisive. The date, which necessarily falls between 692 and 689 B.C., has been decided by general considerations as 691 B.C., the very year in which the _Taylor Cylinder_ was written. Years might have elapsed before Sennacherib could have ventured to recommence hostilities: he was not deluded by the exaggerated estimate of his victory in the accounts given by his court historians, and he recognised the fact that the issue of the struggle must be uncertain as long as the alliance subsisted between Elam and Chaldaea. But fortune came to his aid sooner than he had expected. Umman-minanu was not absolute in his dominions any more than his predecessors had been, and the losses he had sustained at Khalule, without obtaining any compensating advantages in the form of prisoners or spoil, had lowered him in the estimation of his vassals; Mushezib-marduk, on the other hand, had emptied his treasuries, and though Karduniash was wealthy, it was hardly able, after such a short interval, to provide further subsidies to purchase the assistance of the mountain tribes. Sennacherib's emissaries kept him well informed of all that occurred in the enemy's court, and he accordingly took the field again at the beginning of 689 B.C., and on this occasion circumstances seemed likely to combine to give him an easy victory.* * The Assyrian documents insert the account of the capture of Babylon directly after the battle of Khalule, and modern historians therefore concluded that the two events took place within a few months of each other. The information afforded by _Pinches' Babylonian Chronicle_ has enabled us to correct this mistake, and to bring down the date of the taking of Babylon to 689 B.C.