its own people called it, Khaldia, should begin to gain power over the
communities about Lake Van and the heads of the valleys which run down
to Assyrian territory. Both Ashurnatsirpal and Shalmaneser led raid
after raid into the northern mountains in the hope of weakening the
tribes from whose adhesion that Vannic Kingdom might derive strength.
Both kings marched more than once up to the neighbourhood of the Urmia
Lake, and Shalmaneser struck at the heart of Urartu itself three or four
times; but with inconclusive success. The Vannic state continued to
flourish and its kings--whose names are more European in sound than
Asiatic--Lutipris, Sarduris, Menuas, Argistis, Rusas--built themselves
strong fortresses which stand to this day about Lake Van, and borrowed a
script from their southern foes to engrave rocks with records of
successful wars. One of these inscriptions occurs as far west as the
left bank of Euphrates over against Malatia. By 800 B.C., in spite of
efforts made by Shalmaneser's sons to continue their father's policy of
pushing the war into the enemy's country, the Vannic king had succeeded
in replacing Assyrian influence by the law of Khaldia in the uppermost
basin of the Tigris and in higher Mesopotamia--the "Nairi" lands of
Assyrian scribes; and his successors would raid farther and farther into
the plains during the coming age.


SECTION 3. THE MEDES

Menacing as this power of Urartu appeared at the end of the ninth
century to an enfeebled Assyrian dynasty, there were two other racial
groups, lately arrived on its horizon, which in the event would prove
more really dangerous. One of these lay along the north-eastern frontier
on the farther slopes of the Zagros mountains and on the plateau beyond.
It was apparently a composite people which had been going through a slow