identified him with Simmash-shikhu.

[Illustration: 037.jpg THE ZAB BELOW THE PASSES OF ALAN, THE ANCIENT
ILANIU]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by M. de Morgan.

The two campaigns of B.C. 882 and 881 had cost Assur-nazir-pal great
efforts, and their results had been inadequate to the energy expended.
His two principal adversaries, Nurrammân and Amika, had eluded him, and
still preserved their independence at the eastern extremities of their
former states. Most of the mountain tribes had acknowledged the king's
supremacy merely provisionally, in order to rid themselves of his
presence; they had been vanquished scores of times, but were in no sense
subjugated, and the moment pressure was withdrawn, they again took
up arms. The districts of Zamua alone, which bordered on the Assyrian
plain, and had been occupied by a military force, formed a province, a
kind of buffer state between the mountain tribes and the plains of the
Zab, protecting the latter from incursions.

Assur-nazir-pal, feeling himself tolerably safe on that side, made no
further demands, and withdrew his battalions to the westward part of his
northern frontier. He hoped, no doubt, to complete the subjugation of
the tribes who still contested the possession of various parts of
the Kashiari, and then to push forward his main guard as far as the
Euphrates and the Arzania, so as to form around the plain of Amidi a
zone of vassals or tutelary subjects like those of Zamua. With this end
in view, he crossed the Tigris near its source at the traditional fords,
and made his way unmolested in the bend of the Euphrates from the palace
of Tilluli, where the accustomed tribute of Kummukh was brought to him,