the border city. It would seem as if the official narrative of the
campaign had been prepared at Kirkh, immediately after its close, by
the scribes who followed the army. [Footnote: Cf. Johns,
_Assyr. Deeds and Documents_, II. 168.] One copy of this became
the basis of the Kirkh inscription while another was made at Kalhu and
it was from this that the Monolith and Annals are derived. [Footnote:
Ann. II. 109, where Mon. has 300 as against 700 of Kir. and Ann.,
shows Ann. did not use Kir. through Mon.; Kir. has 40 as against 50 of
the others in II. 111, and 200 for 2000 in II. 115; proper names such
as Tushha for Tushhan show nearness of Mon. to Kir., but the likeness
can hardly be considered striking.] From this, too, must have been
derived the slab which gives a fourth witness for this
section. [Footnote: L. 48 f.]

With this year, 880, the Monolith fails us. But even if we had no
other document, the Annals itself would show us that the year 880 was
an important one in the development of our sources. At the end of the
account for this year, we have a closing paragraph, taken bodily from
the Ninib inscription, which may thus be assigned to 880. This is
further confirmed by the manner in which, this passage in the Annals
abstracts the last lines of the Monolith, [Footnote: Ann. II. 125-135a
is the same as the Ninib inscription l-23a (BM. 30; Budge-King, 209
ff.), and this in turn is merely a resume of the close of the
Monolith.] which is repeated almost in its entirety at the close of
the Annals itself. The column thus ends a separate document, whose
last line, giving a list of temples erected, seems to go back to one
recension of the Standard inscription, which in its turn goes back to
the various separate building inscriptions.

That the Annals itself existed in several recensions is indicated by