Tiglath-pileser I. (B.C. 1100) boasts of having sailed upon the Mediterranean in a ship of Arvad, and of there killing a dolphin, while his son, Assur-bil-kala, erected statues in the cities of ‘the land of the Amorites’ (W. A. I. i. 6, No. vi.). A little later Assur-irbi carved an image of himself on Mount Amanus, near the Gulf of Antioch, but the capture by the king of Aram of Mutkina, which guarded the ford over the Euphrates, subsequently cut him off from the west. Palestine is already called Ebir-nâri, ‘the land beyond the river,’ in an Assyrian inscription which Professor Hommel would refer to the age of Assur-bil-kala, the son of Tiglath-pileser I. (_The Ancient Hebrew Tradition_, p. 196). Professor D. H. Müller (_Die Propheten_, p. 215) conjecturally emends the Hebrew text of Numb. xxiii. 23, 24, and sees in it a reference to the kingdom of Samalla, to the north-east of the Gulf of Antioch. The two verses become in his translation, ‘[And he saw Samalla], and began his speech, and said, Alas, who will survive of Samalla? And ships [shall come] from the coast of Chittim, and Asshur shall oppress him, and Eber shall oppress him, and he himself is destined to destruction.’ Samalla, however, was only the Assyrian name of a district called by natives of Northern Syria Ya’di and Gurgum; nor is it easy to understand how Balaam could have ‘seen’ the north of Syria from Moab. Professor Hommel is more probably right in his view that Asshur here does not signify the Assyrians, but the Asshurim to the south of Palestine (Gen. xxv. 3, 18). Footnote 244: For the Messianic prophecy of Ameni, see above, p. 175. Footnote 245: Similar cities of refuge, called _puhonua_, existed in Hawaii. ‘A thief or a murderer might be pursued to the very gateway of one of those cities; but as soon as he crossed the threshold of that gate, even though the gate were open and no barrier hindered pursuit, he was safe as at the city altar. When once within the sacred city, the fugitive’s first duty was to present himself before the idol and return thanks for his protection’ (Trumbull, _The Threshold Covenant_, p. 151, quoting Ellis, _Through Hawaii_, pp. 155 _sq._, and Bird, _Six Months in the Sandwich Islands_, pp. 135 _sq._). For the _asyla_ of Asia Minor see Barth, _De Asylis Græcis_ (1888); Daremberg et Saglio, _Dictionnaire des Antiquités, Grecques et Romaines_, i. pp. 505 _sqq._; Pauly’s _Real-Encyclopädie_ (ed. Wissowa), iv. pp. 1884-5. Footnote 246: Erman, _Life in Ancient Egypt_ (Eng. tr.), p. 299. Footnote 247: Cornelius Nepos, _Them._ ii. 10. Footnote 248: