The inscriptions extend the land of the Medes to the East as far as the copper mountains, or borders of the land of Bikni.[478] The people lived separately under a considerable number of chieftains. The five tribes of the Median nation, enumerated by Herodotus, if they also possessed separate territory, were not isolated groups, but on the contrary broken up into yet smaller divisions. The booty taken by the Assyrians from the Medes, the tribute imposed upon them, consists chiefly in oxen, asses, sheep, and horses. The number of horses given by the chieftains to Sargon allows on an average a hundred for each, and we also hear of other property, treasures, and the product of copper mines. We have repeated mention of the cities of Media and their governors; Sargon conquers thirty-four cities. Though we ought to regard these mainly as citadels, yet civic life cannot have been so unknown to the Medes as the narrative of Herodotus would compel us to suppose. Other elements of civilisation also are known to the Medes at this time, _i.e._ in the second half of the eighth and first half of the seventh century B.C. It has been proved above that at the beginning of this period the doctrine of Zoroaster must have reached them, and the names could be given of the men in Media who published it; and the priests of the new religion became formed during this century into an order which perpetuated in their families the knowledge of the good sayings and the customs of sacrifice. To this order we may also attribute what the Medes acquired of the superior civilisation and skill of Assyria, especially the knowledge of the Assyrian cuneiform writing, which underwent a change in the hands of the Magians, and assumed the form known to us from the Achæmenid inscriptions of the first class. When Herodotus ascribes the introduction of written process at law to Deioces, the tradition presupposes an established and extensive use of writing.