searching examination of the entire region has taken place, it is idle
to attempt an assignment to particular localities of these comparatively
obscure names.

In Western Assyria, or the tract on the right bank of the Tigris, while
there is reason to believe that population was as dense, and that cities
were as numerous, as on the opposite side of the river, even fewer sites
can be determinately fixed, owing to the early decay of population in
those parts, which seem to have fallen into their present desert
condition shortly after the destruction of the Assyrian empire by the
conquering Medes. Besides Asshur, which is fixed to the ruins at
Kileh-Sherghat, we can only locate with certainty some half-dozen
places. These are Nazibina, which is the modern Nisibin, the Nisibis of
the Greeks; Amidi, which is Amida or Diarbekr; Haran, which retains its
name unchanged; Sirki, which is the Greek Circesium, now Kerkesiyeh;
Anat, now Anah, on an island in the Euphrates; and Sidikan, now Arban,
on the Lower Khabour. The other known towns of this region, whose exact
position is more or less uncertain, are the following:--Tavnusir, which
is perhaps Dunisir, near Mardin; Guzana, or Gozan, in the vicinity of
Nisibin; Razappa, or Rezeph, probably not far from Harran; Tel Apni,
about Orfah or Ras-el-Ain; Tabiti and Magarisi, on the Jerujer, or
river of Nisibin; Katni and Beth-Khalupi, on the Lower Khabour; Tsupri
and Nakarabani, on the Euphrates, between its junction with the Khabour
and Allah; and Khuzirina, in the mountains near the source of the
Tigris. Besides these, the inscriptions contain a mention of some scores
of towns wholly obscure, concerning which we cannot even determine
whether they lay west or east of the Tigris.

Such are the chief geographical features of Assyria. It remains to
notice briefly the countries by which it was bordered. To the east lay