From this examination of the two accounts as to their separate contents, let us now proceed to inquire whether the statements in them agree with what has come down to us from other sources, and can be deduced from the last monuments of Assyria. The narrative of Ctesias is based on the view that the Assyrian kingdom was arranged in satrapies, like the kingdom of the Achæmenids: the inscriptions of the kings of Asshur have made it sufficiently clear that this was not the case. We have already seen that neither the statement of Ctesias about the duration of the Assyrian kingdom, nor that of Herodotus about the strength of their dominion, is tenable (II. 27, 46); not more tenable is the date given by Ctesias for the fall of Assyria. According to Ctesias, Arbaces overthrew the Assyrian kingdom in the year 883 or 878 B.C. (p. 262), and set up the dominion of himself and his descendants, the kings of Media, in the place of the dominion of the Assyrians. But we found above that Assurnasirpal, the son of Tiglath Adar, ascended the throne of Assyria in 883 B.C.--that his campaigns reached the coasts of Syria, that at his time Media was not yet subject to the Assyrian kingdom, that with him the long series of royal princes begins who raised Assyria to the height of her power, and that it was the army of his immediate successors which first trod the land of Media. Herodotus represents the kings of the Medes as reigning over Asia for 128 years, "deducting the time during which the Scythians ruled."[530] His figures for the reigns of the Median kings, from Deioces to Phraortes, give 150 years from the beginning of Deioces down to the overthrow of Astyages.[531] The overthrow of Astyages took place in the year 558 B.C., and, therefore, Deioces began to reign in 708 B.C. How long before this the Medes liberated themselves from the dominion of Assyria, how long they lived in their free but lawless condition before electing Deioces king, Herodotus does not state. Enough that the Medes must, according to his statement, have liberated themselves in the second half of the eighth century B.C. But at this very time Tiglath Pilesar II. and Sargon ruled over Assyria; at this time the first advanced to Arachosia, repeatedly imposed tribute on the chiefs and cities of the land of Media (p. 3), while Sargon receives tribute from 22, then from 28, and finally from 45, chiefs of the Medes (p. 101). He boasts to be ruler over Media as far as the distant city of Simaspati, in the East; and the Hebrew Scriptures told us that the Israelites carried away after the capture of Samaria (722 B.C.) were settled in the cities of the Medes (p. 85). But not only did the kings of Asshur receive or compel acts of obedience from the tribes of the Medes at the time when, according to Herodotus' statement, Deioces ascended the throne of Media; Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) imposes tribute on the distant regions of Media; Esarhaddon removes distant tribes of Media,