ability: the course of events seems to me to prove that the
advantage remained with the Assyrians, though the victory
was not decisive. The date, which necessarily falls between
692 and 689 B.C., has been decided by general considerations
as 691 B.C., the very year in which the _Taylor Cylinder_
was written.

Years might have elapsed before Sennacherib could have ventured to
recommence hostilities: he was not deluded by the exaggerated estimate
of his victory in the accounts given by his court historians, and he
recognised the fact that the issue of the struggle must be uncertain
as long as the alliance subsisted between Elam and Chaldæa. But fortune
came to his aid sooner than he had expected. Ummân-minânu was not
absolute in his dominions any more than his predecessors had been,
and the losses he had sustained at Khalulê, without obtaining any
compensating advantages in the form of prisoners or spoil, had lowered
him in the estimation of his vassals; Mushezîb-marduk, on the other
hand, had emptied his treasuries, and though Karduniash was wealthy,
it was hardly able, after such a short interval, to provide further
subsidies to purchase the assistance of the mountain tribes.
Sennacherib's emissaries kept him well informed of all that occurred
in the enemy's court, and he accordingly took the field again at the
beginning of 689 B.C., and on this occasion circumstances seemed likely
to combine to give him an easy victory.*

* The Assyrian documents insert the account of the capture
of Babylon directly after the battle of Khalulê, and modern
historians therefore concluded that the two events took
place within a few months of each other. The information
afforded by _Pinches' Babylonian Chronicle_ has enabled us