What is most remarkable in the glimpse of history which this tablet opens to us is the power of Assyria, and the apparent terms of equality on which she stands with her neighbor. Not only does she treat as an equal with the great Southern Empire--not only is her royal house deemed worthy of furnishing wives to its princes but when dynastic troubles arise there, she exercises a predominant influence over the fortunes of the contending parties, and secures victory to the side whose cause she espouses. Jealous as all nations are of foreign inter-position in their affairs, we may be sure that Babylonia would not have succumbed on this occasion to Assyria’s influence, had not her weight been such that, added to one side in a civil struggle, it produced a preponderance which defied resistance.
After this one short lift, the curtain again drops over the history of Assyria for a space of about sixty years, during which our records tell us nothing but the mere names of the king’s. It appears from the bricks of Kileh-Sherghat that Asshur-upallit was succeeded upon the throne by his son, Bel-lush, or Behiklhus (Belochush), who was in his turn followed by his son, Pudil, his grandson. Vul-lush, and his great-grandson, Shahmaneser, the first of the name. Of Bel-lush, Pudil, and Vul-lush I., we know only that they raised or repaired important buildings in their city of Asshur (now Kileh-Sherghat), which in their time, and for some centuries later, was the capital of the monarchy.
This place was not very favorably situated, being on the right bank of the Tigris, which is a far less fertile region than the left, and not being naturally a place of any great strength. The Assyrian territory did not at this time, it is probable, extend very far to the north: at any rate, no need was as yet felt for a second city higher up the Tigris valley, much less for a transfer of the seat of government in that direction. Calah was certainly, and Nineveh probably, not yet built; but still the kingdom had obtained a name among the nations; the term Assyria was applied geographically to the whole valley of the middle Tigris; and a prophetic eye could see in the hitherto quiescent power the nation fated to send expeditions into Palestine, and to bear off its inhabitants into captivity.