title: Amu Darya

text: People began to settle along the lower Amu Darya and the Uzboy in the 5th century, establishing a thriving chain of agricultural lands, towns, and cities. In about AD 985, the massive Gurganj Dam at the bifurcation of the forks started to divert water to the Aral. Genghis Khan's troops destroyed the dam in 1221, and the Amu Darya shifted to distributing its flow more or less equally between the main stem and the Uzboy. But in the 18th century, the river again turned north, flowing into the Aral Sea, a path it has taken since. Less and less water flowed down the Uzboy. When Russian explorer Bekovich-Cherkasski surveyed the region in 1720, the Amu Darya did not flow into the Caspian Sea anymore.


title: Amu Darya

text: By the 1800s, the ethnographic makeup of the region was described by Peter Kropotkin as the communities of "the vassal Khanates of Maimene, Khulm, Kunduz, and even the Badakshan and Wahkran." An Englishman, William Moorcroft, visited the Oxus around 1824 during the Great Game period. Another Englishman, a naval officer called John Wood, came with an expedition to find the source of the river in 1839. He found modern-day Lake Zorkul, called it Lake Victoria, and proclaimed he had found the source. Then, the French explorer and geographer Thibaut Viné collected a lot of information about this area during five expeditions between 1856 and 1862.


title: Amu Darya

text: The question of finding a route between the Oxus valley and India has been of concern historically. A direct route crosses extremely high mountain passes in the Hindu Kush and isolated areas like Kafiristan. Some in Britain feared that the Empire of Russia, which at the time wielded great influence over the Oxus area, would overcome these obstacles and find a suitable route through which to invade British India – but this never came to pass. The area was taken over by Russia during the Russian conquest of Turkestan.


title: Amu Darya

text: The Soviet Union became the ruling power in the early 1920s and expelled Mohammed Alim Khan. It later put down the Basmachi movement and killed Ibrahim Bek. A large refugee population of Central Asians, including Turkmen, Tajiks and Uzbeks, fled to northern Afghanistan. In the 1960s and 1970s the Soviets started using the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya to irrigate extensive cotton fields in the Central Asian plain. Before this time, water from the rivers was already being used for agriculture, but not on this massive scale. The Qaraqum Canal, Karshi Canal, and Bukhara Canal were among the larger of the irrigation diversions built. However, the Main Turkmen Canal, which would have diverted water along the dry Uzboy River bed into central Turkmenistan, was never built. The 1970s, in the course of the Soviet–Afghan War, Soviet forces used the valley to invade Afghanistan through Termez. The Soviet Union fell in the 1990s and Central Asia split up into the many smaller countries that lie within or partially within the Amu Darya basin.


title: Amu Darya

text: During the Soviet era, a resource-sharing system was instated in which Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan shared water originating from the Amu and Syr Daryas with Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan in summer. In return, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan received Kazakh, Turkmen, and Uzbek coal, gas, and electricity in winter. After the fall of the Soviet Union this system disintegrated and the Central Asian nations have failed to reinstate it. Inadequate infrastructure, poor water-management, and outdated irrigation methods all exacerbate the issue.


title: Amu Darya

text: The Caspian tiger used to occur along the river's banks. After its extirpation, the Darya's delta was suggested as a potential site for the introduction of its closest surviving relative, the Siberian tiger. A feasibility study was initiated to investigate if the area is suitable and if such an initiative would receive support from relevant decision makers. A viable tiger population of about 100 animals would require at least of large tracts of contiguous habitat with rich prey populations. Such habitat is not available at this stage and cannot be provided in the short term. The proposed region is therefore unsuitable for the reintroduction, at least at this stage.


title: Amu Darya

text: The Oxus river, and Arnold's poem, fire the imaginations of the children who adventure with ponies over the moors of the West Country in the 1930s children's book "The Far-Distant Oxus". There were two sequels, "Escape to Persia" and "Oxus in Summer".


title: Amu Darya

text: Robert Byron's 1937 travelogue, "The Road to Oxiana", describes its author's journey from the Levant through Persia to Afghanistan, with the Oxus as his stated goal.


title: Amu Darya

text: George MacDonald Fraser's "Flashman at the Charge", (1973), places Flashman on the Amu Darya and the Aral Sea during the (fictitious) Russian advance on India during The Great Game period.


title: Raghubir Yadav

text: Raghubir Yadav is an Indian actor, music composer, singer and set designer who works in Hindi films. He made his film debut with "Massey Sahib" (1985), in which he played the title role. He has won two International Awards as Best Actor for "Massey Sahib", FIPRESCI Critic's Award, Venice Film Festival, 1986 and the IFFI Best Actor Award (Male): Silver Peacock Award at the 11th International Film Festival of India, 1987. The film also featured writer and social activist in National School of Drama, New Delhi until 1977.


title: Raghubir Yadav

text: Yadav has performed as an actor and singer in over 70 plays and about 2500 shows, travelling in caravans, living in tents and performing on makeshift stages in villages, towns and cities of India with the Parsi Theatre Company (1967–1973). He was with the Rangoli Puppet Theatre, Lucknow (1973–1974), performing with glove puppets. At the National School of Drama Repertory (1977–1986), he acted in about 40 plays in over 2000 shows. He has also contributed to music, sets, costumes and masks.


title: Raghubir Yadav

text: He was seen in many milestone films in the following decades. Three films that he has acted in have received Academy Award nominations for Best Foreign Language Film ("Salaam Bombay!" ,"Water" and "Lagaan"). Raghubir Yadav is one of the few Indian actor to have received the Silver Peacock Best Actor Award, at the International Film Festival of India. His most acclaimed role was as the drug addicted "Chillum" in "Salaam Bombay!" (1988). He has acted in "Firaaq". In 2011, he played the lead role in the film "Dear Friend Hitler", which takes its name from two letters Mahatma Gandhi wrote Adolf Hitler, in 1939 immediately before World War II and Christmas Eve 1940 after the war had started, to prevent and to stop the war.


title: Raghubir Yadav

text: Yadav started his television career with the television program "Mungerilal Ke Haseen Sapne" (1988), playing the lead character "Mungerilal". " Amaravathi ki Kathayein(1994-'95).


title: Raghubir Yadav

text: Later he played the roles of Haji Nasruddin in the television program "Mullah Nasruddin" (also spelled as "Mulla Nasiruddin") and the lead in "Chacha Chaudhary". He also played the lead role for BI T.V. in "Arjun Pandit".


title: Mark 48 torpedo

text: The Mark 48 and its improved Advanced Capability (ADCAP) variant are American heavyweight submarine-launched torpedoes. They were designed to sink deep-diving nuclear-powered submarines and high-performance surface ships.


title: Mark 48 torpedo

text: The Mark 48 was initially developed as REsearch TORpedo Concept II (RETORC II), one of several weapons recommended for implementation by Project Nobska, a 1956 summer study on submarine warfare. The Mk-48 torpedo was designed at the end of the 1960s to keep up with the advances in Soviet submarine technology. Operational since 1972, it replaced the Mk-37, Mk-14 and Mk-16 torpedoes as the principal weapon of U.S. Navy submarines. With the entry into service of the new Soviet in 1977, the decision was made to accelerate the ADCAP program, which would bring significant modifications to the torpedo. Tests were run to ensure that the weapon could keep up with the developments and the weapon was modified with improved acoustics and electronics. The new version of the weapon, also known as Mk-48 Mod 4, was extensively tested and production started in 1985, with entry into service in 1988. From then on, various upgrades have been added to the torpedo. Mk-48 Mod 6 was in service; a Mod 7 version was test fired in 2008 in the Rim of Pacific Naval exercises. The inventory of the U.S. Navy in 2001 was 1,046 Mk-48 torpedoes. In 2017 Lockheed's production was approximately 50 per year.


title: Mark 48 torpedo

text: The Mk-48 torpedo is designed to be launched from submarine torpedo tubes. The weapon is carried by all U.S. Navy submarines, including ballistic missile submarines and -, -, and attack submarines. It is also used on Canadian, Australian, and Dutch submarines. The Royal Navy elected not to buy the Mark 48, preferring to use the Spearfish instead.


title: Mark 48 torpedo

text: Mk-48 and Mk-48 ADCAP torpedoes can be guided from a submarine by wires attached to the torpedo. They can also use their own active or passive sensors to execute programmed target search, acquisition, and attack procedures. The torpedo is designed to detonate under the keel of a surface ship, breaking the keel and destroying its structural integrity. In the event of a miss, it can circle back for another attempt.


title: Mark 48 torpedo

text: The swashplate piston engine is fueled by Otto fuel II, a monopropellant which combusts to drive the engine. The thrust is generated by a propulsor assembly.


title: Mark 48 torpedo

text: The torpedo's seeker has an active electronically steered "pinger" (2D phased array sonar) that helps avoid having to maneuver as it approaches the target. Unconfirmed reports indicate that the torpedo's sensors can monitor surrounding electrical and magnetic fields. This may refer to the electromagnetic coils on the warhead (at least from 1977 to 1981), used to sense the metallic mass of the ship's hull and detonate at the proper stand-off distance.


title: Mark 48 torpedo

text: In the 1990s, a Mod 6 variant of the ADCAP provided much improved noise isolation for the engine, which makes this torpedo more difficult to detect for a potential target.


title: Mark 48 torpedo

text: The Mk48 Mod 7 Common Broadband Advanced Sonar System (CBASS) torpedo is optimized for both the deep and littoral waters and has advanced counter-countermeasure capabilities. The MK48 ADCAP Mod 7 (CBASS) torpedo is the result of a Joint Development Program with the Royal Australian Navy and reached Initial Operational Capability in 2006. The modular Mod 7 variant increases sonar bandwidth, enabling it to transmit and receive pings over a wider frequency band, taking advantage of broadband signal processing techniques to greatly improve search, acquisition, and attack effectiveness. This version is much more resistant to enemy countermeasures.


title: Mark 48 torpedo

text: On July 25, 2008 a MK 48 Mod 7 CBASS torpedo fired by an Australian , , successfully sank a test target during the Rim of the Pacific 2008 (RIMPAC) exercises.


title: Mark 48 torpedo

text: In 2015 the USN announced plans to restart production and seek a more modular design. Lockheed Martin is to upgrade existing Mark 48s to include a new guidance-control system known as the Common Broadband Advanced Sonar System (CBASS), in addition to improving propulsion and resistance to electronic countermeasures.


title: Mark 48 torpedo

text: Starting in 2003, the US Navy began the Stealth Torpedo Enhancement Program which aims to upgrade the capability of the existing Mk 48 design by implementing alternative fuel sources including electric fuel cells, and a "swim out" capability. The program is ongoing, with many details yet classified.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: In physics, statistical mechanics is a mathematical framework that applies statistical methods and probability theory to large assemblies of microscopic entities. It does not assume or postulate any natural laws, but explains the macroscopic behavior of nature from the behavior of such ensembles.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: Statistical mechanics arose out of the development of classical thermodynamics, a field for which it was successful in explaining macroscopic physical properties—such as temperature, pressure, and heat capacity—in terms of microscopic parameters that fluctuate about average values and are characterized by probability distributions. This established the fields of statistical thermodynamics and statistical physics.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: While classical thermodynamics is primarily concerned with thermodynamic equilibrium, statistical mechanics has been applied in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to the issues of microscopically modeling the speed of irreversible processes that are driven by imbalances. Examples of such processes include chemical reactions and flows of particles and heat. The fluctuation–dissipation theorem is the basic knowledge obtained from applying non-equilibrium statistical mechanics to study the simplest non-equilibrium situation of a steady state current flow in a system of many particles.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: In physics, two types of mechanics are usually examined: classical mechanics and quantum mechanics. For both types of mechanics, the standard mathematical approach is to consider two concepts:


title: Statistical mechanics

text: Using these two concepts, the state at any other time, past or future, can in principle be calculated.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: There is however a disconnect between these laws and everyday life experiences, as we do not find it necessary (nor even theoretically possible) to know exactly at a microscopic level the simultaneous positions and velocities of each molecule while carrying out processes at the human scale (for example, when performing a chemical reaction). Statistical mechanics fills this disconnection between the laws of mechanics and the practical experience of incomplete knowledge, by adding some uncertainty about which state the system is in.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: Whereas ordinary mechanics only considers the behaviour of a single state, statistical mechanics introduces the statistical ensemble, which is a large collection of virtual, independent copies of the system in various states. The statistical ensemble is a probability distribution over all possible states of the system. In classical statistical mechanics, the ensemble is a probability distribution over phase points (as opposed to a single phase point in ordinary mechanics), usually represented as a distribution in a phase space with canonical coordinate axes. In quantum statistical mechanics, the ensemble is a probability distribution over pure states, and can be compactly summarized as a density matrix.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: These two meanings are equivalent for many purposes, and will be used interchangeably in this article.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: However the probability is interpreted, each state in the ensemble evolves over time according to the equation of motion. Thus, the ensemble itself (the probability distribution over states) also evolves, as the virtual systems in the ensemble continually leave one state and enter another. The ensemble evolution is given by the Liouville equation (classical mechanics) or the von Neumann equation (quantum mechanics). These equations are simply derived by the application of the mechanical equation of motion separately to each virtual system contained in the ensemble, with the probability of the virtual system being conserved over time as it evolves from state to state.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: One special class of ensemble is those ensembles that do not evolve over time. These ensembles are known as "equilibrium ensembles" and their condition is known as "statistical equilibrium". Statistical equilibrium occurs if, for each state in the ensemble, the ensemble also contains all of its future and past states with probabilities equal to the probability of being in that state. The study of equilibrium ensembles of isolated systems is the focus of statistical thermodynamics. Non-equilibrium statistical mechanics addresses the more general case of ensembles that change over time, and/or ensembles of non-isolated systems.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: The primary goal of statistical thermodynamics (also known as equilibrium statistical mechanics) is to derive the classical thermodynamics of materials in terms of the properties of their constituent particles and the interactions between them. In other words, statistical thermodynamics provides a connection between the macroscopic properties of materials in thermodynamic equilibrium, and the microscopic behaviours and motions occurring inside the material.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: Whereas statistical mechanics proper involves dynamics, here the attention is focussed on "statistical equilibrium" (steady state). Statistical equilibrium does not mean that the particles have stopped moving (mechanical equilibrium), rather, only that the ensemble is not evolving.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: A sufficient (but not necessary) condition for statistical equilibrium with an isolated system is that the probability distribution is a function only of conserved properties (total energy, total particle numbers, etc.).


title: Statistical mechanics

text: There are many different equilibrium ensembles that can be considered, and only some of them correspond to thermodynamics. Additional postulates are necessary to motivate why the ensemble for a given system should have one form or another.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: A common approach found in many textbooks is to take the "equal a priori probability postulate". This postulate states that


title: Statistical mechanics

text: The equal a priori probability postulate therefore provides a motivation for the microcanonical ensemble described below. There are various arguments in favour of the equal a priori probability postulate:


title: Statistical mechanics

text: Other fundamental postulates for statistical mechanics have also been proposed. For example, recent studies shows that the theory of statistical mechanics can be built without the equal a priori probability postulate. One such formalism is based on the fundamental thermodynamic relation together with the following set of postulates:


title: Statistical mechanics

text: There are three equilibrium ensembles with a simple form that can be defined for any isolated system bounded inside a finite volume. These are the most often discussed ensembles in statistical thermodynamics. In the macroscopic limit (defined below) they all correspond to classical thermodynamics.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: For systems containing many particles (the thermodynamic limit), all three of the ensembles listed above tend to give identical behaviour. It is then simply a matter of mathematical convenience which ensemble is used. The Gibbs theorem about equivalence of ensembles was developed into the theory of concentration of measure phenomenon, which has applications in many areas of science, from functional analysis to methods of artificial intelligence and big data technology.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: In these cases the correct thermodynamic ensemble must be chosen as there are observable differences between these ensembles not just in the size of fluctuations, but also in average quantities such as the distribution of particles. The correct ensemble is that which corresponds to the way the system has been prepared and characterized—in other words, the ensemble that reflects the knowledge about that system.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: Once the characteristic state function for an ensemble has been calculated for a given system, that system is 'solved' (macroscopic observables can be extracted from the characteristic state function). Calculating the characteristic state function of a thermodynamic ensemble is not necessarily a simple task, however, since it involves considering every possible state of the system. While some hypothetical systems have been exactly solved, the most general (and realistic) case is too complex for an exact solution. Various approaches exist to approximate the true ensemble and allow calculation of average quantities.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: One approximate approach that is particularly well suited to computers is the Monte Carlo method, which examines just a few of the possible states of the system, with the states chosen randomly (with a fair weight). As long as these states form a representative sample of the whole set of states of the system, the approximate characteristic function is obtained. As more and more random samples are included, the errors are reduced to an arbitrarily low level.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: All of these processes occur over time with characteristic rates. These rates are important in engineering. The field of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics is concerned with understanding these non-equilibrium processes at the microscopic level. (Statistical thermodynamics can only be used to calculate the final result, after the external imbalances have been removed and the ensemble has settled back down to equilibrium.)


title: Statistical mechanics

text: In principle, non-equilibrium statistical mechanics could be mathematically exact: ensembles for an isolated system evolve over time according to deterministic equations such as Liouville's equation or its quantum equivalent, the von Neumann equation. These equations are the result of applying the mechanical equations of motion independently to each state in the ensemble. Unfortunately, these ensemble evolution equations inherit much of the complexity of the underlying mechanical motion, and so exact solutions are very difficult to obtain. Moreover, the ensemble evolution equations are fully reversible and do not destroy information (the ensemble's Gibbs entropy is preserved). In order to make headway in modelling irreversible processes, it is necessary to consider additional factors besides probability and reversible mechanics.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: Non-equilibrium mechanics is therefore an active area of theoretical research as the range of validity of these additional assumptions continues to be explored. A few approaches are described in the following subsections.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: One approach to non-equilibrium statistical mechanics is to incorporate stochastic (random) behaviour into the system. Stochastic behaviour destroys information contained in the ensemble. While this is technically inaccurate (aside from hypothetical situations involving black holes, a system cannot in itself cause loss of information), the randomness is added to reflect that information of interest becomes converted over time into subtle correlations within the system, or to correlations between the system and environment. These correlations appear as chaotic or pseudorandom influences on the variables of interest. By replacing these correlations with randomness proper, the calculations can be made much easier.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: Another important class of non-equilibrium statistical mechanical models deals with systems that are only very slightly perturbed from equilibrium. With very small perturbations, the response can be analysed in linear response theory. A remarkable result, as formalized by the fluctuation–dissipation theorem, is that the response of a system when near equilibrium is precisely related to the fluctuations that occur when the system is in total equilibrium. Essentially, a system that is slightly away from equilibrium—whether put there by external forces or by fluctuations—relaxes towards equilibrium in the same way, since the system cannot tell the difference or "know" how it came to be away from equilibrium.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: This provides an indirect avenue for obtaining numbers such as ohmic conductivity and thermal conductivity by extracting results from equilibrium statistical mechanics. Since equilibrium statistical mechanics is mathematically well defined and (in some cases) more amenable for calculations, the fluctuation–dissipation connection can be a convenient shortcut for calculations in near-equilibrium statistical mechanics.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: An advanced approach uses a combination of stochastic methods and linear response theory. As an example, one approach to compute quantum coherence effects (weak localization, conductance fluctuations) in the conductance of an electronic system is the use of the Green–Kubo relations, with the inclusion of stochastic dephasing by interactions between various electrons by use of the Keldysh method.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: The ensemble formalism also can be used to analyze general mechanical systems with uncertainty in knowledge about the state of a system. Ensembles are also used in:


title: Statistical mechanics

text: In 1738, Swiss physicist and mathematician Daniel Bernoulli published "Hydrodynamica" which laid the basis for the kinetic theory of gases. In this work, Bernoulli posited the argument, still used to this day, that gases consist of great numbers of molecules moving in all directions, that their impact on a surface causes the gas pressure that we feel, and that what we experience as heat is simply the kinetic energy of their motion.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: In 1859, after reading a paper on the diffusion of molecules by Rudolf Clausius, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell formulated the Maxwell distribution of molecular velocities, which gave the proportion of molecules having a certain velocity in a specific range. This was the first-ever statistical law in physics. Maxwell also gave the first mechanical argument that molecular collisions entail an equalization of temperatures and hence a tendency towards equilibrium. Five years later, in 1864, Ludwig Boltzmann, a young student in Vienna, came across Maxwell's paper and spent much of his life developing the subject further.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: Statistical mechanics was initiated in the 1870s with the work of Boltzmann, much of which was collectively published in his 1896 "Lectures on Gas Theory". Boltzmann's original papers on the statistical interpretation of thermodynamics, the H-theorem, transport theory, thermal equilibrium, the equation of state of gases, and similar subjects, occupy about 2,000 pages in the proceedings of the Vienna Academy and other societies. Boltzmann introduced the concept of an equilibrium statistical ensemble and also investigated for the first time non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, with his "H"-theorem.


title: Statistical mechanics

text: The term "statistical mechanics" was coined by the American mathematical physicist J. Willard Gibbs in 1884. "Probabilistic mechanics" might today seem a more appropriate term, but "statistical mechanics" is firmly entrenched. Shortly before his death, Gibbs published in 1902 "Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics", a book which formalized statistical mechanics as a fully general approach to address all mechanical systems—macroscopic or microscopic, gaseous or non-gaseous. Gibbs' methods were initially derived in the framework classical mechanics, however they were of such generality that they were found to adapt easily to the later quantum mechanics, and still form the foundation of statistical mechanics to this day.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: The National Revolutionary Army (NRA; ), sometimes shortened to Revolutionary Army () before 1928, and as National Army () after 1928, was the military arm of the Kuomintang (KMT, or the Chinese Nationalist Party) from 1925 until 1947 in China. It also became the regular army of the Republican era during the KMT's period of party rule beginning in 1928. It was renamed the Republic of China Armed Forces after the 1947 Constitution, which instituted civilian control of the military.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: Originally organized with Soviet aid as a means for the KMT to unify China during the Warlord Era, the National Revolutionary Army fought major engagements in the Northern Expedition against the Chinese Beiyang Army warlords, in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) against the Imperial Japanese Army and in the Chinese Civil War against the People's Liberation Army.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the armed forces of the Chinese Communist Party were nominally incorporated into the National Revolutionary Army (while retaining separate commands), but broke away to form the People's Liberation Army shortly after the end of the war. With the promulgation of the Constitution of the Republic of China in 1947 and the formal end of the KMT party-state, the National Revolutionary Army was renamed the Republic of China Armed Forces, with the bulk of its forces forming the Republic of China Army, which retreated to the island of Taiwan in 1949.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: The NRA was founded by the KMT in 1925 as the military force destined to unite China in the Northern Expedition. Organized with the help of the Comintern and guided under the doctrine of the Three Principles of the People, the distinction among party, state and army was often blurred. A large number of the Army's officers passed through the Whampoa Military Academy, and the first commandant, Chiang Kai-shek, became commander-in-chief of the Army in 1925 before launching the successful Northern Expedition. Other prominent commanders included Du Yuming and Chen Cheng. The end of the Northern Expedition in 1928 is often taken as the date when China's Warlord era ended, though smaller-scale warlord activity continued for years afterwards.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: In 1927, after the dissolution of the First United Front between the Nationalists and the Communists, the ruling KMT purged its leftist members and largely eliminated Soviet influence from its ranks. Chiang Kai-shek then turned to Germany, historically a great military power, for the reorganization and modernization of the National Revolutionary Army. The Weimar Republic sent advisers to China, but because of the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles they could not serve in military capacities. Chiang initially requested famous generals such as Ludendorff and von Mackensen as advisers; the Weimar Republic government turned him down, however, fearing that they were too famous, would invite the ire of the Allies and that it would result in the loss of national prestige for such renowned figures to work, essentially, as mercenaries.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: When Adolf Hitler became Germany's chancellor in 1933 and disavowed the Treaty, the anti-communist Nazi Party and the anti-communist KMT were soon engaged in close cooperation. with Germany training Chinese troops and expanding Chinese infrastructure, while China opened its markets and natural resources to Germany. Max Bauer was the first adviser to China.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: In 1934, Gen. Hans von Seeckt, acting as adviser to Chiang, proposed an ""80 Division Plan"" for reforming the entire Chinese army into 80 divisions of highly trained, well-equipped troops organised along German lines. The plan was never fully realised, as the eternally bickering warlords could not agree upon which divisions were to be merged and disbanded. Furthermore, since embezzlement and fraud were commonplace, especially in understrength divisions (the state of most of the divisions), reforming the military structure would threaten divisional commanders' "take". Therefore, by July 1937 only eight infantry divisions had completed reorganization and training. These were the 3rd, 6th, 9th, 14th, 36th, 87th, 88th, and the Training Division.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: Another German general, Alexander von Falkenhausen, came to China in 1934 to help reform the army. However, because of Nazi Germany's later cooperation with the Empire of Japan, he was later recalled in 1937. After his goodbye party with Chiang Kai-shek's family, he promised not to reveal his devised battle plans to the Japanese.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: For a time, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Communist forces fought as a nominal part of the National Revolutionary Army, forming the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army units, but this co-operation later fell apart. Throughout the Chinese Civil War the National Revolutionary Army experienced major problems with desertion, with many soldiers switching sides to fight for the Communists. Women were also part of the army's corps during the war. In 1937 Soong Mei-ling encouraged women to support the Sino-Japanese War effort, by forming battalions, such as the Guangxi Women's Battalion.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: Troops in India and Burma during World War II included the Chinese Expeditionary Force (Burma), the Chinese Army in India and Y Force.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: The US government repeatedly threatened to cut off aid to China during World War 2 unless they handed over total command of all Chinese military forces to the US. After considerable stalling, the arrangement only fell through due to a particularly insulting letter from the Americans to Chiang. By the end of the war, US influence over the political, economic, and military affairs of China were greater than any foreign power in the last century, with American personnel appointed in every field, such as the Chief of Staff of the Chinese military, management of the Chinese War Production Board and Board of Transport, trainers of the secret police, and Chiang's personal advisor. Sir George Sansom, British envoy to the US, reported that many US military officers saw US monopoly on Far Eastern trade as a rightful reward for fighting the Pacific war.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: After the drafting and implementation of the Constitution of the Republic of China in 1947, the National Revolutionary Army was transformed into the ground service branch of the Republic of China Armed Forces – the Republic of China Army (ROCA).


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: The NRA throughout its lifespan recruited approximately 4,300,000 regulars, in 370 Standard Divisions (正式師), 46 New Divisions (新編師), 12 Cavalry Divisions (騎兵師), eight New Cavalry Divisions (新編騎兵師), 66 Temporary Divisions (暫編師), and 13 Reserve Divisions (預備師), for a grand total of 515 divisions. However, many divisions were formed from two or more other divisions, and were not active at the same time.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: At the apex of the NRA was the National Military Council, also translated as Military Affairs Commission. Chaired by Chiang Kai-Shek, it directed the staffs and commands. It included from 1937 the Chief of the General Staff, General He Yingqin, the General Staff, the War Ministry, the military regions, air and naval forces, air defence and garrison commanders, and support services Around 14 Million were conscripted from 1937 to 1945.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: Also, New Divisions were created to replace Standard Divisions lost early in the war and were issued the old division's number. Therefore, the number of divisions in active service at any given time is much smaller than this. The average NRA division had 5,000–6,000 troops; an average army division had 10,000–15,000 troops, the equivalent of a Japanese division. Not even the German-trained divisions were on par in terms of manpower with a German or Japanese division, having only 10,000 men.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: The NRA only had small number of armoured vehicles and mechanised troops. At the beginning of the war in 1937 the armour were organized in three Armoured Battalions, equipped with tanks and armoured cars from various countries. After these battalions were mostly destroyed in the Battle of Shanghai and Battle of Nanjing. The newly provided tanks, armoured cars, and trucks from the Soviet Union and Italy made it possible to create the only mechanized division in the army, the 200th Division. This Division eventually ceased to be a mechanized unit after the June 1938 reorganization of Divisions. The armoured and artillery Regiments were placed under direct command of 5th Corps and the 200th Division became a motorized Infantry Division within the same Corps. This Corps fought battles in Guangxi in 1939–1940 and in the Battle of Yunnan-Burma Road in 1942 reducing the armoured units due to losses and mechanical breakdown of the vehicles. On paper China had 3.8 million men under arms in 1941. They were organized into 246 "front-line" divisions, with another 70 divisions assigned to rear areas. Perhaps as many as forty Chinese divisions had been equipped with European-manufactured weapons and trained by foreign, particularly German and Soviet, advisers. The rest of the units were under strength and generally untrained. Overall, the Nationalist Army impressed most Western military observers as more reminiscent of a 19th- than a 20th-century army.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: Despite the poor reviews given by European observers to the European-trained Divisions, the Muslim Divisions of the National Revolutionary Army, trained in China (not by Westerners) and led by Ma Clique Muslim generals, frightened the European observers with their appearance and fighting skills in battle. Europeans like Sven Hedin and Georg Vasel were in awe of the appearance Chinese Muslim NRA divisions made and their ferocious combat abilities. They were trained in harsh, brutal conditions. The 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army), trained entirely in China without any European help, was composed of Chinese Muslims and fought and severely mauled an invading Soviet Russian army during the Soviet Invasion of Xinjiang. The division was lacking in technology and manpower, but badly damaged the superior Russian force.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: The Muslim divisions of the army controlled by Muslim Gen. Ma Hongkui were reported by Western observers to be tough and disciplined. Despite having diabetes Ma Hongkui personally drilled with his troops and engaged in sword fencing during training.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: When the leaders of many of the warlord and provincial armies joined with the KMT and were appointed as officers and generals, their troops joined the NRA. These armies were renamed as NRA divisions. The entire Ma Clique armies were absorbed into the NRA. When the Muslim Ma Clique General Ma Qi joined the KMT, the Ninghai Army was renamed the National Revolutionary Army 26th Division.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: The unit organisation of the NRA is as follows: (Note that a unit is not necessarily subordinate to one immediately above it; several army regiments can be found under an army group, for example.)


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: The NRA used multiple divisional organisations as different threats emerged as well as other factors necessitated a new organisation. The Years below relate to the Minguo calendar which starts in 1911. Therefore, the 22nd year division is the 1933 division.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: The above template was only applied to divisions serving in Guangxi during the 5th encirclement campaign.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: A new Plan was divised in 1935 to raise 60 new divisions in 6 month batches with divisions to be raised from divisional districts tied to them, in an aim to enhance cohesion and communication as well as simplifying recruitment, officers however were to be recruited nationally and placed into these divisions to disrupt regional affiliations. The 24th Year New Type division was almost the equivalent of western style divisions with the notable difference being the absence of radios in the Chinese division. Planning began in December 1934 and in January 1935 a classified meeting of over 80 of the highest NRA officers was called with a timetable published.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: This new army being significantly better armed and trained than the warlord armies would give Chiang a large advantage over his domestic opponents as well as being personally answerable to the Generalissimo.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: However, Chinese industry was incapable of producing the artillery or infantry guns in large quantities needed for the 60 division plan and German imports were not forthcoming. Mortars were introduced as substitues for the infantry guns and later as a substitute for artillery. Horses were also lacking as the new division required many of them and Chinese divisions often used mules oxen or even buffalos as substitues for the many horses.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: 10 divisions were organised in 1935 on the new model but equipment was lacking. A further 20 were reorganised by the Marco Polo Bridge Incident but equipment was again lacking meaning these divisions were not to be the modern equivalent of Western style or Japanese divisions.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: During the Xinhai Revolution and the Warlord Era of the Republic of China, "Dare to Die Corps" () were frequently used by Chinese armies. China deployed these suicide units against the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: "Dare to Die" troops were used by warlords in their armies to conduct suicide attacks. "Dare to Die" corps continued to be used in the Chinese military. The Kuomintang used one to put down an insurrection in Canton. Many women joined them in addition to men to achieve martyrdom against China's opponents.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: A "dare to die corps" was effectively used against Japanese units at the Battle of Taierzhuang. They used swords.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: Suicide bombing was also used against the Japanese. A Chinese soldier detonated a grenade vest and killed 20 Japanese soldiers at Sihang Warehouse. Chinese troops strapped explosives like grenade packs or dynamite to their bodies and threw themselves under Japanese tanks to blow them up. This tactic was used during the Battle of Shanghai, where a Chinese suicide bomber stopped a Japanese tank column by exploding himself beneath the lead tank, and at the Battle of Taierzhuang where dynamite and grenades were strapped on by Chinese troops who rushed at Japanese tanks and blew themselves up. In one incident at Taierzhuang, Chinese suicide bombers obliterated four Japanese tanks with grenade bundles.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: During the Chinese Civil War the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) was known to have used penal battalions from 1945 to 1949. A unit made up of deserters and those accused of cowardice, the penal battalion was giving such tasks as scouting ahead of the main forces to check for ambushes, crossing rivers and torrents to see whether they were fordable, and walking across unmapped minefields.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: The military was formed through bloody and inhumane conscription campaigns. These are described by Rudolph Rummel as:


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: This was a deadly affair in which men were kidnapped for the army, rounded up indiscriminately by press-gangs or army units among those on the roads or in the towns and villages, or otherwise gathered together. Many men, some the very young and old, were killed resisting or trying to escape. Once collected, they would be roped or chained together and marched, with little food or water, long distances to camp. They often died or were killed along the way, sometimes less than 50 percent reaching camp alive. Then recruit camp was no better, with hospitals resembling Nazi concentration camps like Buchenwald.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: For regular provincial Chinese divisions the standard rifles were the Hanyang 88 (copy of Gewehr 88). Central army divisions were typically equipped with the Chiang Kai-shek rifle and other Mauser type rifles from Germany, Belgium and Czechoslovakia. The standard light machine gun were imported or domestically produced of the Czech Brno ZB vz. 26 in the standard 7.92 mm. There were machine guns from other sources, such as Belgian, French and from the Soviet Aid Programme. In general, there were 6-9 LMG's in an infantry company, with the monthly ammunition supply being around 5,000 rounds (for 5 days consumption). Heavy machine guns were mainly locally-made Type 24 water-cooled Maxim guns (which were based on the commercial version of the German MG08), and Type Triple-Ten M1917 Browning machine guns chambered for the standard 8mm Mauser round. On average, every Central Army battalion contained a machine gun company with 5-6 heavy machine guns. They were allotted a monthly supply of 20,000 rounds. The most common sidearm for NCOs and officers was the 7.63 mm Mauser C96 semi-automatic pistol. Submachine guns were not part of any TO&E, but many were inherited from former warlord armies or locally produced. They were generally carried by the guards of divisional or corps commanders or special service platoon/companies. Some elite units, such as the X Force in Burma used Lend-Lease US equipment.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: Generally speaking, the regular provincial army divisions did not possess any artillery. However, some Central Army divisions were equipped with 37 mm PaK 35/36 anti-tank guns, and/or mortars from Oerlikon, Madsen, and Solothurn. Each of these infantry divisions ideally had 6 French Brandt 81 mm mortars and 6 Solothurn 20 mm autocannons. Some independent brigades and artillery regiments were equipped with Krupp 75 mm L/29 field guns, Krupp 75 mm L/14, or Bofors 75 mm L/20 mountain guns. There were also 24 Rheinmetall 150 mm L/32 sFH 18 howitzers (bought in 1934) and 24 Krupp 150 mm L/30 sFH 18 howitzers (bought in 1936). At the start of the war, the NRA and the Tax Police Regiment had three tank battalions armed with German Panzer I light tanks and CV-35 tankettes. After defeat in the Battle of Shanghai the remaining tanks, together with several hundred T-26 and BT-5 tanks acquired from the Soviet Union were reorganised into the 200th Division.


title: National Revolutionary Army

text: Infantry uniforms were basically redesigned Zhongshan suits. Puttees were standard for soldiers and officers alike, since the primary mode of movement for NRA troops was by foot. Troops were also issued sewn field caps. The helmets were the most distinguishing characteristic of these divisions. From the moment German M35 Stahlhelms rolled off the production lines in 1935, and until 1936, the NRA imported 315,000 of these helmets, usually seen with the Blue Sky with a White Sun emblem of the ROC on the sides. These helmets were worn by both the German-trained divisions and regular Central Army divisions. Other helmets included the French Adrian helmet, the British Brodie helmet and later the American M1 helmet. Other equipment included straw shoes for soldiers (cloth shoes for Central Army), leather shoes for officers and leather boots for high-ranking officers. Every soldier was issued ammunition for his weapon, along with ammunition pouches or harness, a water flask, bayonet, food bag, and a gas mask.


title: Menards

text: Menards is an American home improvement retail company headquartered in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Menards is owned by founder John Menard Jr. through his privately held company, Menard, Inc. It has 335 stores in 15 states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, but there are also plans to expand to Pennsylvania. Menards is the third-largest home improvement store in the United States, behind Lowe's and The Home Depot.


title: Menards

text: In 1958, John Menard Jr. began building post-frame buildings to finance his college education. By the end of 1959, he found it necessary to hire extra crews, and to purchase more equipment to keep up with demand. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire in 1962, Menard purchased land in Eau Claire, Wisconsin and built an office and shop. The company was founded in 1960 and incorporated in 1962. The first Menards hardware store opened in 1964. By opening a truss plant in the late 1960s, Menards grew to produce more substantial building materials on-site. The truss plant evolved into the Menard Building Division, which produced steel siding and roofing, interior and exterior doors, decking and treated lumber, and other materials. Menards sold the Menard Building Division in 1994, racking up 36 years in the pole building industry.


title: Menards

text: Menards was founded as Menard Cashway Lumber. In the mid-1980s, the "Cashway Lumber" name was dropped and the business became simply known to this day as Menards.


title: Menards

text: In 2007, Menards opened its third and fourth distribution centers in Holiday City, Ohio, and Shelby, Iowa, which are and , respectively. In 2009, Menards opened its first Wyoming location in Casper. Then it was followed by two more locations in Gillette and Cheyenne. In 2012, Menards opened its first Kentucky location in Owensboro. Four more locations in Kentucky, one in Louisville, another in Paducah, another in Elizabethtown and the last one in Florence. Two more locations are coming to Kentucky: Bowling Green and Richmond.


title: Menards

text: In 2020, Menards expanded into West Virginia, opening three locations in that state: one in Wheeling, another in Morgantown, and the last one in Huntington. In 2022, Menards announced that they will open a store on WV Route 279 in Bridgeport, West Virginia.


title: Menards

text: A fifth manufacturing and distribution center in Ravenna, Ohio began construction in Spring 2022 after a two-year-long delay. The distribution center in Ravenna will supplement the chain's expansion into Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. Menards announced in 2022 that it will expand to Pennsylvania for the first time, starting with Uniontown.


title: Menards

text: In 2007, the and larger Menards stores began selling groceries. At such locations, shoppers are able to purchase items such as frozen pizza, milk, eggs, common snacks, and a variety of canned items. In addition, these Menards locations carry items such as office supplies, pet supplies, and mattresses.


title: Menards

text: Menards publishes weekly print ads and broadcasts TV and radio ads. Radio and TV ads are usually accompanied by banjo music (resembling that of bluegrass music) played by Gary Shaw of Wisconsin. Ray Szmanda was the "Menards Guy" who used the slogan "Save big money at Menards" regularly on television advertisements from 1976 to 1998, and occasionally from 1999 until his death in 2018. Before his return in 1999, Kim Larsen took over his position in his absence. During the Christmas and holiday season, radio and television ads typically feature an alternate jingle "Warm season's greetings to you all from Menards!" sung by a female chorus beginning in 1986. The same year, the "Helping You Build America’s Heartland" jingle was made. Bob Holtan, John Menard's friend and radio station owner, wrote the lyrics to the "Save Big Money" jingle in the early 1970s.


title: Menards

text: Spanish language commercials (whose music contains a mixture of mariachi and banjo sounds) end with "¡Ganar mucho dinero en Menards!"


title: Menards

text: John Menard got involved in Indycar racing in the early 1980s working with his neighbor, driver Herm Johnson. Menard eventually owned cars, primarily focusing on the Indianapolis 500 often using stock block Buick V6 engines. When Buick left the sport, Menard bought the engine tooling from Buick and began producing the engines under the Menard V6 name. Driver Scott Brayton won two consecutive Indy 500 poles for Menard, but was killed in a practice crash before the 1996 500. Tony Stewart got his first Indy 500 starts for Menard, and in 1992 Al Unser Sr. scored the highest Indy 500 finish for the team (3rd) and the highest ever 500 finish for the Buick/Menard V6 engine.


title: Menards

text: Menards has supported several racing drivers, including Paul Menard (John Menard's son) who won his only NASCAR Cup race in the 2011 Brickyard 400 in a Menards sponsored Richard Childress Chevrolet. ; Robby Gordon; P. J. Jones; Brandon Jones; Matt Crafton; Simon Pagenaud, Ryan Blaney and Matt DiBenedetto. Menards began sponsoring Team Penske in 2016. Menards has also become the title sponsor of races in the Xfinity Series and as the entitlement sponsor for the ARCA Racing Series.


title: Menards

text: In 2021, Menards ranked 26th on "Forbes"’ list of "America's Largest Private Companies", with an estimated revenue of US$11.8 billion. In 2022, Menards ranked 34th on the National Retail Federation's list of "100 Top Retailers".


title: Menards

text: In 2022, Menards ranked second in a J.D. Power survey in customer satisfaction among home improvement retail stores.


title: Menards

text: According to " Milwaukee Magazine" in 2007, Menards was cited with more regulatory violations involving air/water pollution and hazardous waste disposal than any other company in Wisconsin. It also alleges that the company is strongly anti-union, to the point that it will not hire anyone who has ever worked in a union shop, even if they did so while in their teen years.


title: Menards

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Michigan's Attorney General Dana Nessel sent Menards a cease and desist letter citing 18 complaints from consumers in regards to price gouging on products such as face masks and bleach. "Big box stores are not immune to the Michigan Consumer Protection Act or the Governor's Executive Order", Nessel said. "Large corporations must also play by the rules, and my office will work diligently to ensure this state's consumers are treated fairly and not abused by businesses seeking to unlawfully jack prices up to line their pockets with profits at the expense of the public during this time of great need." Nessel said that Menards would have 10 days to respond to the letter, or she would potentially take legal action.


title: Menards

text: During the pandemic, Menards instituted a policy that prohibited children under age 16 and non-service animals in stores, to the frustration of single parents who do not have other childcare options. The policy for children was later relaxed.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Ashurbanipal (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , meaning "Ashur is the creator of the heir") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 669 BCE to his death in 631. He is generally remembered as the last great king of Assyria. Inheriting the throne as the favored heir of his father Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal's 38-year reign was among the longest of any Assyrian king. Though sometimes regarded as the apogee of ancient Assyria, his reign also marked the last time Assyrian armies waged war throughout the ancient Near East and the beginning of the end of Assyrian dominion over the region.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Esarhaddon selected Ashurbanipal as heir 673. The selection of Ashurbanipal bypassed the elder son Shamash-shum-ukin. Perhaps in order to avoid future rivalry, Esarhaddon designated Shamash-shum-ukin as the heir to Babylonia. The two brothers jointly acceded to their respective thrones after Esarhaddon's death in 669, though Shamash-shum-ukin was relegated to being Ashurbanipal's closely monitored vassal. Much of the early years of Ashurbanipal's reign was spent fighting rebellions in Egypt, which had been conquered by his father. The most extensive campaigns of Ashurbanipal were those directed towards Elam, an ancient enemy of Assyria, and against Shamash-shum-ukin, who gradually began to resent the overbearing control that his younger brother held over him. Elam was defeated in a series of conflicts in 665, 653 and 647–646. Shamash-shum-ukin rebelled in 652 and assembled a coalition of Assyria's enemies but was defeated and died during Ashurbanipal's siege of Babylon in 648. On account of a lack of surviving records, much of Ashurbanipal's late reign is poorly known.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Ashurbanipal is chiefly remembered today for his cultural efforts. A patron of artwork and literature, Ashurbanipal was deeply interested in the ancient literary culture of Mesopotamia. Over the course of his long reign, Ashurbanipal utilized the massive resources at his disposal to construct the Library of Ashurbanipal, a collection of texts and documents of various different genres. Perhaps comprising over 100,000 texts at its height, the Library of Ashurbanipal was not surpassed until the construction of the Library of Alexandria, several centuries later. The more than 30,000 cuneiform texts that have survived from the library are a highly important source on ancient Mesopotamian language, religion, literature and science. Artwork produced under Ashurbanipal was innovative in its style and motifs and is regarded to possess an "epic quality" otherwise absent from much of the art produced under previous kings.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Ashurbanipal was remembered in Greco-Roman literary tradition under the name Sardanapalus, erroneously characterized as the effeminate and decadent last king of Assyria and blamed for the fall of his empire. Whether the fall of the Assyrian Empire only two decades after his death is attributable to Ashurbanipal or not is disputed in modern Assyriology. Ashurbanipal is recognized as one of the most brutal Assyrian kings; he was one of the few kings to describe massacres of civilians and the one with the most varied methods in enacting them. His extensive destruction of Elam is regarded by some scholars to amount to a genocide. The Assyrians were militarily successful under Ashurbanipal, campaigning further away from the Assyrian heartland than ever before, but several of his campaigns had little overall effect. Ashurbanipal failed to maintain control of Egypt, his wars in Arabia cost time and resources without leading to the establishment of Assyrian control in the region, and his extensive sack of Babylon after defeating Shamash-shum-ukin fanned anti-Assyrian sentiment in southern Mesopotamia, perhaps contributing to the rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire five years after Ashurbanipal's death.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Born 685 BC, Ashurbanipal was a son of his predecessor Esarhaddon (). Though Ashurbanipal's inscriptions suggest that he was divinely preordained to rule, his accession was far from straightforward, and its political complexities sowed the seeds for later civil war. Ashurbanipal was probably Esarhaddon's fourth eldest son, younger than Esarhaddon's first crown prince Sin-nadin-apli and the other two sons Shamash-shum-ukin and Shamash-metu-uballit. He also had an older sister, Serua-eterat, and several younger brothers. The Assyrian court was thrown into upheaval upon the unexpected death of Sin-nadin-apli in 674. Esarhaddon wished to avoid his eventual death initiating a succession crisis; his own accession had only been accomplished with great difficulty and as such he quickly began drawing up new succession plans. Esarhaddon soon decided upon proclaiming the next eldest son Shamash-shum-ukin as the heir to Babylonia (southern Mesopotamia) and Ashurbanipal as the heir to Assyria, designating the two as "equal brothers". The third eldest son, Shamash-metu-uballit, older than Ashurbanipal, was entirely bypassed, perhaps because he suffered from poor health.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Esarhaddon's decision to bypass Shamash-shum-ukin for the Assyrian throne was a remarkable one given that the difficulties with Esarhaddon's own accession were the direct result of his father Sennacherib acting in a similar way. Sennacherib had bypassed the elder son Arda-Mulissu in favor of the younger Esarhaddon; in Sennacherib's case this decision led to Arda-Mulissu murdering him and fighting a civil war against Esarhaddon. Why Esarhaddon made nearly the same decision is not clear. Promoting one of his sons as the heir to Assyria and another as the heir to Babylon was a novel idea; for the past decades the Assyrian king had simultaneously been the king of Babylon. The decision to leave Babylonia to Shamash-shum-ukin and to designate the two as "equal brothers" might have been intended to counteract the possible damage inherit in designating Ashurbanipal as the sole heir, avoiding future jealousy and rivalry. One hypothesis in regard to why a younger son was designated as the heir to what was clearly Esarhaddon's primary title is that Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin could have had different mothers. Though it is equally likely that Shamash-shum-ukin and Ashurbanipal shared a mother, possibly Esharra-hammat (Esarhaddon's primary consort), it is also possible that Ashurbanipal was the son of an Assyrian woman and Shamash-shum-ukin was the son of a Babylonian woman; Shamash-shum-ukin accceding to the Assyrian throne could thus have been problematic.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: After Esarhaddon made his decision, the two princes arrived at the Assyrian capital of Nineveh together and partook in a celebration in May 672 with foreign representatives, Assyrian nobles and elements of the military. Since the name Ashurbanipal ("Aššur-bāni-apli") means "Ashur is the creator of the heir", it was likely granted to him at this time; what name Ashurbanipal used before he became crown prince is not known. It was also perhaps around this time that Ashurbanipal married his future queen, Libbali-sharrat.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: After he was designated as crown prince, Ashurbanipal entered what the Assyrians called the "House of Succession", the palace of the crown prince. As crown prince, Ashurbanipal began to undergo training for traditional royal duties. Among the various skills Ashurbanipal was trained in during this time were hunting, riding, scholarship and wisdom, archery, chariotry and other forms of military training. Because Esarhaddon was constantly ill, much of the administrative duties of the empire fell upon Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin during the last few years of their father's reign. It was important for the crown princes to gain real experience in ruling. Letters of correspondence between Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal from this time show that Ashurbanipal prominently participated in the Assyrian intelligence network, gathering information on foreign enemies and rivals and compiling reports for his father.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Ashurbanipal became the king of Assyria in late 669 following Esarhaddon's death, having been crown prince for only three years. Upon his accession, he was possibly the most powerful person on the planet, but there appears to have been some fears of trouble. His grandmother Naqi'a wrote a treaty, dubbed the Zakutu Treaty by modern historians, in which she forced the royal family, aristocracy and all of Assyria to swear loyalty to her grandson. There however appears to have been no strong opposition to Ashurbanipal's rise to power. Shamash-shum-ukin was somewhat belatedly crowned as king of Babylon in the spring of the next year. His coronation was marked by Ashurbanipal returning the religiously important Statue of Marduk, stolen by Sennacherib twenty years prior, to Babylon. Shamash-shum-ukin would rule at Babylon for sixteen years, apparently mostly peacefully in regard to his younger brother, but there would be repeated disagreements on the exact extent of his control.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Treaties drawn up by Esarhaddon are somewhat unclear as to the relationship he intended his two sons to have. It is clear that Ashurbanipal was the primary heir to the empire and that Shamash-shum-ukin was to swear him an oath of allegiance but other parts also specify that Ashurbanipal was not to interfere in Shamash-shum-ukin's affairs, indicating an intent for a more equal standing between them. Though it is possible that Ashurbanipal intentionally ignored Esarhaddon's wishes and shifted the balance of power in his own favor by diminishing Shamash-shum-ukin's intended status, such a decision might have been primarily motivated by Ashurbanipal fearing that granting his older brother a strong power-base would present a threat to his own continued rule.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Egypt was conquered in 671 by Ashurbanipal's father Esarhaddon, who defeated the Kushite Pharaoh Taharqa. The conquest of Egypt was one of Esarhaddon's greatest accomplishments, the first time Egypt had ever been under Assyrian rule, and brought the Assyrian Empire to its greatest extent. Assyrian control of Egypt was weak, however, and Taharqa escaped to Nubia in the south, scheming to retake his lands. Esarhaddon sent troops to garrison Egyptian cities and appointed local Egyptian nobles as vassal rulers of the country. In 669, Taharqa reappeared from the south and led Egypt in a revolt against Assyria. Esarhaddon left Nineveh to defeat Taharqa but fell ill and died on the way. Esarhaddon's death and the lack of an Assyrian response to Taharqa's actions, owing to Ashurbanipal's coronation and affairs at home, inspired many of the Egyptian vassal rulers to join the revolt and rid Egypt of Assyrian dominion and influence. After news reached Ashurbanipal of a massacre of the Assyrian garrison in Memphis, Ashurbanipal sent an army to quell the uprising and bring the rebels to Nineveh in chains.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: The Assyrian army collected tribute from the various Levantine vassal states on their way to Egypt. Many of the vassal rulers, such as Manasseh of Judah and various rulers from Cyprus, also bolstered the Assyrian forces through providing additional equipment and troops. The Assyrian army and its allies fought their way through Egypt. A decisive battle was won at the city of Kar-Banitu in Lower Egypt. According to Assyrian sources, the Egyptian defeat at Kar-Banitu impelled Taharqa and his close supporters to abandon Memphis, flee to Thebes and then escape to Nubia once more. Shortly thereafter, the Assyrian army captured Memphis. Some conspirators, including the local vassal ruler Necho I, had remained at Memphis and were taken back to Assyria and forced to swear new oaths of loyalty. Some of the captured Egyptian nobles were unexpectedly allowed to return and resume their posts in Egypt, Necho among them.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: After Taharqa's death in 664, his nephew Tantamani proclaimed himself pharaoh and invaded Egypt, swiftly gained control of Thebes and then marching toward Memphis. Ashurbanipal once again sent the Assyrian army to secure control. According to Ashurbanipal's account, Tantamani abandoned his efforts and fled south as soon as the Assyrian army entered Egypt. In retaliation for supporting Tantamani, the Assyrians captured and heavily plundered Thebes, one of the major political and religious centers in Egypt. Ashurbanipal's sack of Thebes was the most serious calamity to ever befall the ancient city. The city might only have been saved from being wholly razed to the ground through skillful diplomacy by its governor Mentuemhat. Tantamani was not pursued beyond the Egyptian border. Upon the return of the Assyrian army to Nineveh, spoils from Thebes were paraded through the streets and many treasures and obelisks were melted down so that their material could be used for Ashurbanipal's projects.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: In 665, the Elamite king Urtak, who had kept peaceful relations with Esarhaddon, launched a surprise attack against Babylonia. Urtak was successfully driven back into Elam, dying shortly thereafter. He was succeeded as Elamite king by Teumman, who was unrelated to the previous monarch and had to stabilize his rule by killing his political rivals. Three of Urtak's sons, chief rival claimants to the Elamite throne, escaped to Assyria and were harbored by Ashurbanipal, despite Teumman demanding them to be returned to Elam.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Following the 665 victory over the Elamites, Ashurbanipal had to deal with a series of revolts within his own borders. Bel-iqisha, chieftain of the Gambulians (an Aramean tribe) in Babylonia, rebelled after he had been implicated as supporting the Elamite invasion and was forced to relinquish some of his authority. Little is known of this revolt, but there is a letter preserved in which Ashurbanipal orders the governor of Uruk, Nabu-usabsi, to attack Bel-iqisha. Nabu-usabsi apparently claimed that Bel-iqisha was solely to blame for the Elamite invasion. Bel-iqisha's revolt does not appear to have caused much damage and he was killed shortly after revolting by a boar. Shortly thereafter in 663, Bel-iqisha's son Dunanu also surrendered to Ashurbanipal.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: After a long period of peace, Teumman attacked Babylonia in 653. Because Ashurbanipal had not entrusted Shamash-shum-ukin with any substantial military forces, he was unable to defend Babylonia against the Elamite invasion and had to rely on Ashurbanipal for military support. Ashurbanipal's army first advanced south and secured the city of Der. Though Teumman marched to meet the Assyrians, he soon changed his mind and fell back to the Elamite capital of Susa. The final battle in the war with Teumman, the Battle of Ulai, took place near Susa and was a decisive Assyrian victory, partly due to defections in the Elamite army. Teumann was killed in the battle, as was one of his vassals, Shutruk-Nahhunte of Hidalu. In the aftermath of his victory, Ashurbanipal installed two of Urtak's sons as rulers, proclaiming Ummanigash as king at Madaktu and Susa and Tammaritu I as king at Hidalu. This intervention into the Elamite succession weakened both Elamite opposition towards Assyria and Elamite royal authority. In his inscriptions, Ashurbanipal described his victory at Ulai with the following account:


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Dunanu, who had joined the Elamites in the war, was captured alongside his family and executed. The Gambulians were attacked by Ashurbanipal's army and brutally punished, with their capital of Shapibel being flooded and many of its inhabitants slaughtered. In Dananu's stead, Ashurbanipal appointed a noble called Rimutu as the new Gambulian chieftain after he had agreed to pay a considerable sum in tribute to the Assyrian king.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: The Cimmerians, a nomadic Indo-European people living in the southern Caucasus north of Assyria, had invaded Assyria during the reign of Ashurbanipal's father. After Esarhaddon defeated them, the Cimmerians turned to attack Lydia in western Anatolia, ruled by Gyges. After allegedly receiving advice from the Assyrian national deity Ashur in a dream, Gyges sent his diplomats to ask Ashurbanipal for assistance. The Assyrians did not even know that Lydia existed; after the two states successfully established communication with the help of interpreters, the Cimmerian invasion of Lydia was defeated 665. Two Cimmerian chiefs were imprisoned in Nineveh and large amounts of spoils were secured by Ashurbanipal's forces. The extent to which the Assyrian army was involved in the Lydian campaign is unknown, but it appears that Gyges was disappointed with the help since he just twelve years later broke his alliance with Ashurbanipal and allied with the increasingly independent Egypt instead. After this, Ashurbanipal cursed Gyges. When Lydia was overrun by its enemies 652–650 there was much rejoicing in Assyria.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: While the Assyrian forces were on campaign in Elam, an alliance of Persians, Cimmerians and Medes marched on Nineveh and managed to reach the city's walls. To counteract this threat, Ashurbanipal called on his Scythian allies and successfully defeated the enemy army. The Median king, Phraortes, is generally held to have been killed in the fighting. This attack is poorly documented and it is possible that Phraortes wasn't present at all and his unfortunate death instead belongs to a Median campaign during the reign of one of Ashurbanipal's successors.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: After his death 652, Gyges was succeeded by his son Ardys. Because the Scythians had driven the Cimmerians from their homes, the Cimmerians invaded Lydia again and successfully captured most of the kingdom. As his father had before him, Ardys also sent for aid from Ashurbanipal, stating that "You cursed my father and bad luck befell him; but bless me, your humble servant, and I will carry your yoke". It is unknown if any Assyrian aid arrived, but Lydia was successfully freed from the Cimmerians. They would not be driven out of Lydia completely until the reign of Ardys's grandson Alyattes.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Although Esarhaddon's inscriptions suggest that Shamash-shum-ukin should have been granted the entirety of Babylonia to rule, contemporary records only definitely prove that Shamash-shum-ukin held Babylon itself and its vicinity. The governors of some Babylonian cities, such as Nippur, Uruk and Ur, and the rulers in the Sea Land, all ignored the existence of a king in Babylon and saw Ashurbanipal as their monarch. Despite this, Shamash-shum-ukin had initially been positively inclined towards his brother, viewing him as his equal. In letters, Shamash-shum-ukin addressed Ashurbanipal simply as "my brother" (unlike how he addressed his father Esarhaddon, "the king, my father"). Although there are several letters preserved from Shamash-shum-ukin to Ashurbanipal, there are no known replies. It is possible that Ashurbanipal, on account of his network of informers, did not feel a need to write to his brother. By the 650s, Shamash-shum-ukin's opinion of Ashurbanipal had significantly deteriorated, owing to the increasing intervention and involvement of Ashurbanipal in Babylonian affairs, Ashurbanipal often delaying when help was needed, and growing dissatisfaction with his position relative to that of Ashurbanipal. A letter written during this time by Zakir, a courtier at Shamash-shum-ukin's court, to Ashurbanipal described how visitors from the Sea Land had publicly criticized Ashurbanipal in front of Shamash-shum-ukin, using the phrase "this is not the word of a king!". Zakir reported that though Shamash-shum-ukin was angered, he and his governor of Babylon, Ubaru, chose to not take action against the visitors.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Aspiring to become independent of Ashurbanipal and free Babylonia under his own rule, Shamash-shum-ukin revolted in 652. According to later Aramaic-language legends, Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin's sister Serua-eterat attempted to intervene and stop the two from fighting; after the war broke out the legends hold that she disappeared into self-imposed exile. The war between the brothers lasted for three years. In addition to resenting Ashurbanipal's overbearing control, Shamash-shum-ukin's revolt was also facilitated by the certainty of support in the south: the Babylonians constantly resented Assyrian control and the rulers of Elam were certain allies, always willing to join anyone who waged war against Assyria. Inscription evidence suggests that Shamash-shum-ukin addressed the citizens of Babylon to join him in his revolt. In Ashurbanipal's inscriptions, Shamash-shum-ukin is quoted to have said "Ashurbanipal will cover with shame the name of the Babylonians", which Ashurbanipal refers to as "wind" and "lies". Soon after Shamash-shum-ukin began his revolt, the rest of southern Mesopotamia rose up against Ashurbanipal alongside him. The beginning of Ashurbanipal's account of the conflict reads as follows:


title: Ashurbanipal

text: According to the inscriptions of Ashurbanipal, Shamash-shum-ukin was very successful in finding allies. Ashurbanipal identified three groups who aided his brother: first and foremost there were the Chaldeans, Arameans and the other peoples of Babylonia, then there were the Elamites, and lastly the kings of Gutium, Amurru and Meluhha. This last group of kings might refer to the Medes (as Gutium, Amurru and Meluhha no longer existed at this point) but this is uncertain. Meluhha might have referred to Egypt, though the Egyptians are not documented to have aided Shamash-shum-ukin in the war. Shamash-shum-ukin's ambassadors to the Elamites had offered gifts (called "bribes" by Ashurbanipal) and their king, Ummanigash, sent an army under the command of Undashe, the son of Teumman, to aid in the conflict. For the first two years of the conflict, battles were fought all across Babylonia, some won by the Assyrians and some won by Shamash-shum-ukin and his allies. The war quickly turned chaotic; several minor players repeatedly changed sides and both Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin found it difficult to keep track of their allies. Among the most notorious double agents were Nabu-bel-shumati, a governor of the far south in Babylonia whose repeated betrayals enraged Ashurbanipal.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Despite this seemingly strong alliance of Assyrian enemies, Shamash-shum-ukin failed to halt Ashurbanipal's advance. As the war progressed, his forces were slowly defeated, his allies diminished and his lands were lost. By 650 the situation looked grim, with Ashurbanipal's forces having besieged Sippar, Borsippa, Kutha and Babylon itself. During Ashurbanipal's siege of Babylon, the city entered into a period of famine. Ashurbanipal's account of the siege claimed that some of the citizens grew so hungry and desperate that they ate their own children. Having endured both starvation and disease, Babylon fell in 648, after a siege lasting two years. The city was extensively plundered by Ashurbanipal. According to his own inscriptions, Ashurbanipal initiated a bloodbath: "their carved up bodies I fed to dogs, to pigs, to wolves, to eagles, to birds of the heavens, to fishes of the deep". At the time of the city's fall, a great fire also spread within Babylon. Shamash-shum-ukin is traditionally believed to have committed suicide by stepping into the flames, or by setting himself and his family on fire in his palace. Contemporary texts however only say that he "met a cruel death" and that the gods "consigned him to a fire and destroyed his life". In addition to suicide through self-immolation or other means, it is possible that he was executed, died accidentally or was killed in some other way. If Shamash-shum-ukin was executed, it would be logical for the Assyrian scribes to leave this out of historical records since fratricide (killing a brother) was illegal and even if a soldier (and not Ashurbanipal) had carried it out, it would still constitute a murder of a member of the Assyrian royal family.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: After Shamash-shum-ukin's defeat, Ashurbanipal appointed a new vassal king of Babylon, Kandalanu, of whom little is known. Kandalanu's realm was the same as Shamash-shum-ukin's with the exception of the city of Nippur, which Ashurbanipal converted into a powerful Assyrian fortress. The authority of Kandalanu is likely to have been very limited and few records survive of his reign at Babylon. He might have been another one of Ashurbanipal's brothers or perhaps a Babylonian noble who had allied with Ashurbanipal in the civil war and had consequently been rewarded with the rank of king. Kandalanu probably lacked any true political and military power, which was instead firmly in the hands of Ashurbanipal.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Due to the defeat and death of a member of the Assyrian royal family, the defeat of Shamash-shum-ukin was Ashurbanipal's most problematic victory. The civil war also had significant broader consequences impacting Assyrian dominion. Though Babylonia slowly recovered after the war, the war exhausted economic resources and decreased the power and authority of the Assyrian Empire. Signs of decline had already been visible before the civil war but its conclusion is regarded by modern historians to mark the end of the height of Assyrian authority. Ashurbanipal's sack of Babylon, the second extensive sack of the city in thirty years, also fanned anti-Assyrian sentiment in southern Babylonia and might thus have been a decisive factor in the Babylonian revolt by Nabopolassar a few years after Ashurbanipal's death, which led to the formation of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the fall of Assyria.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: The Elamite effort to support Shamash-shum-ukin in the civil war had largely come to an end with the early defeat of Ummanigash's army near the city of Der. As a result of Ummanigash's defeat, he was deposed in Elam by Tammaritu II, who then took the throne for himself. Ummanigash fled to the Assyrian court where he was granted asylum by Ashurbanipal. Tammaritu II's rule was brief and despite success in some battles against the Assyrians, alongside the rogue governor Nabu-bel-shumati (already notorious for his role in the war with Shamash-shum-ukin), he was deposed in another revolt in 649. The new king, Indabibi, had an extremely brief reign and was murdered after Ashurbanipal threatened to invade Elam again because of the kingdom's role in supporting Shamash-shum-ukin and his other enemies.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: In Indabibi's stead, Humban-haltash III became king in Elam. Nabu-bel-shumati continued fighting against Ashurbanipal from outposts within Elam and though Humban-haltash was in favor of giving up the Chaldean rebel, Nabu-bel-shumati had too many supporters in Elam in order for this to go through. Because Humban-haltash could thus not respond to Ashurbanipal's threats, the Assyrians invaded Elam again in 647. After the Elamite defense collapsed, Humban-haltash abandoned his seat at Madaktu and fled into the mountains. He was briefly replaced as king by Tammaritu II, who regained his throne. After the Assyrians had plundered the region of Khuzestan they returned home, prompting Humban-haltash to reemerge from the mountains and retake the throne.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: The Assyrians returned to Elam in 646 and Humban-haltash again abandoned Madaktu, fleeing first to the city Dur-Untash and then into the mountains in eastern Elam. Ashurbanipal's forces pursued him, plundering and razing cities on their way. All major political centers in Elam were crushed and nearby chiefdoms and petty kingdoms who had previously paid tribute to the Elamite king began paying tribute to Ashurbanipal instead. Among these kingdoms was Parsua, possibly a predecessor of the empire that would be founded by the Achaemenids a century later. Parsua's king, Cyrus (possibly the same person as Cyrus I, the grandfather of Cyrus the Great), had originally sided with the Elamites at the beginning of the campaign, and had thus been forced to supply his son Arukku as a hostage. Countries which had never previously had contact with the Assyrians, such as a kingdom ruled by a king called Ḫudimiri which "extended beyond Elam", also began paying tribute to the Assyrians for the first time.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: On their way back from their campaign, the Assyrian forces brutally plundered Susa. In Ashurbanipal's triumphant inscriptions detailing the sack it is described in great detail, recounting how the Assyrians desecrated the royal tombs, looted and razed temples, stole the statues of the Elamite gods and sowed salt in the ground. The ancient Elamite capital was wiped off the face of the Earth and Ashurbanipal then continued with the destruction of Elamite settlements on a massive scale. In addition to the destruction of numerous cities, thousands of those Elamites who were not killed were deported away from their homeland. Ashurbanipal's brutal suppression of Elam is sometimes considered a genocide. The detail and length of Ashurbanipal's inscriptions concerning the destructions suggest that the events were meant to shock the world, signalling the defeat and eradication of the Elamites as a distinct cultural entity.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Despite the thorough and brutal campaign, the Elamites endured as a political entity for some time. Ashurbanipal did not annex Elam, instead leaving it to its own devices. Humban-haltash returned to rule at Madaktu and (belatedly) sent Nabu-bel-shumati to Ashurbanipal, though the Chaldean committed suicide on his way to Nineveh. After Humban-haltash was deposed, captured and sent to the Assyrians in a revolt shortly thereafter, Assyrian records cease to speak of Elam. Elam was ultimately unable to ever fully recover from Ashurbanipal's efforts in 646 and was left open to attack from tribes and kings in the surrounding lands, eventually disappearing altogether from the historical record.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Assyrian interests in the Levant and other western territories were at times challenged on account of Arab tribal groups raiding Assyrian territories or disrupting trade. On occasion, the Assyrian army intervened, deposing and replacing problematic tribal rulers. Ashurbanipal oversaw two campaigns against Arab tribes, though their chronology is somewhat uncertain and his narrative of these conflicts was altered over the course of his later reign. The Arabian campaigns have received relatively little attention from modern historians but they are the conflicts with the most lengthy and detailed accounts in Ashurbanipal's own writings.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Ashurbanipal's first campaign against the Arabs was conducted some time before the war with Shamash-shum-ukin, primarily against the Qedarites. Ashurbanipal's earliest account of his campaign against the Qedarites was created in 649 and describes how Yauta, son of Hazael, king of the Qedarites, revolted against Ashurbanipal together with another Arab king, Ammuladdin, and plundered the western lands of the Assyrian Empire. According to Ashurbanipal's account, the Assyrian army, together with the army of Kamas-halta of Moab, defeated the rebel forces. Ammuladdin was captured and sent in chains to Assyria but Yauta escaped. In the place of Yauta a loyal Arabian warlord called Abiyate was granted kingship of the Qedarites. Ashurbanipal's account of this conflict is markedly different from the accounts of his other campaigns: the phrase "in my "n"th campaign" (otherwise always used) is missing, the defeat of the enemy is explicitly attributed to the army rather than to Ashurbanipal personally, and Yauta escapes rather than being captured and/or executed. A second version of the narrative, composed a year later, also includes that Ashurbanipal defeated Adiya, a queen of the Arabs, and that Yauta fled to another chieftain, Natnu of the Nabayyate, who refused him and remained loyal to Ashurbanipal. Even later versions of the narrative also include mentions of how Yauta previously revolted against Esarhaddon, years prior. These later accounts also explicitly connect Yauta's rebellion to the revolt of Shamash-shum-ukin, placing it at the same time and suggesting that the western raids by the Arabs were prompted by the instability caused by the Assyrian civil war. In both accounts, the Qedarite lands were thoroughly plundered at the conclusion of the war.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Some of the Arab tribal leaders joined Shamash-shum-ukin in the Assyrian civil war. Among them were Abiyate, made king by Ashurbanipal's forces, and his brother Aya-ammu, who sent soldiers to Babylonia. Because of Ashurbanipal's focus on Elam, they initially escaped retaliation and punishment. As the Elamite wars dragged on, several Arab rulers ceased to pay tribute to Ashurbanipal and began raiding nearby Assyrian settlements, severely disrupting trade. This development proved enough for Ashurbanipal's generals to organize a major campaign to restore order. Ashurbanipal's account of this conflict largely concerns the movements of his army through Syria in search of Uiate (conflated with Yauta but possibly a different person) and his Arabian soldiers. According to the account, the Assyrian army marched from Syria to Damascus and then on to Hulhuliti, after which they captured Abiyate and defeated Uššo and Akko. The Assyrians were reportedly faced with great difficulties during this war on account of the unfamiliar and hostile terrain. The Nabayyate, who had aided Ashurbanipal in the previous campaign, are mentioned as being defeated in the second war against the Arabs, without any further information on what had led to the change in their relationship between the two campaigns. The last known version of the Arabian narrative specifies the two campaigns as together composing Ashurbanipal's ninth campaign and further expands them with more details. In this version, Abiyate and Ammuladdin are specified to have joined Shamash-shum-ukin. Ashurbanipal is in this version also for the first time personally credited with the victories of the campaign. This later version also states that Uiate was captured and paraded in Nineveh together with prisoners captured during the wars in Elam, that Uiate was hitched up to Ashurbanipal's hariot like a horse, and that Aya-ammu was flayed alive.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Supposedly spoils brought back from the Arabian campaigns were so extensive that they caused inflation in the Assyrian Empire and famine in Arabia. Despite this, and despite being impressive in the sense that no previous Assyrian ruler had campaigned against the Arabs with the same vigor, Ashurbanipal's Arabian campaigns are sometimes assessed as a strategic blunder. The two wars were time-consuming, wasted valuable resources and failed to consolidate Assyrian rule over any of the lands they took place in.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: The end of Ashurbanipal's reign and the beginning of the reign of his son and successor, Ashur-etil-ilani, is shrouded in mystery on account of a lack of available sources. Events in Ashurbanipal's reign after 649 are relatively poorly recorded since the secure eponym canon (known Assyrian year names) ends in that year. After 639, only two inscriptions by Ashurbanipal are known, a sharp contrast to the abundant records known from previous years. This scarcity of documentation might reflect the beginning of a serious internal political crisis. Ashurbanipal's late reign appears to have seen a growing disconnect between the king and the traditional elite of the empire. Ashurbanipal heavily promoted eunuchs to prominent positions, to the detriment of the nobility and aristocracy. At some point late in his reign, the chief singer, Bullutu, was made eponym, an unprecedented and perhaps self-indulgent move. Some Assyriologists, such as Eckart Frahm, have drawn parallels between the sparse evidence from Ashurbanipal's late reign and Sardanapalus, in Greco-Roman literary tradition the decadent last king of Assyria, based on Ashurbanipal. Ashurbanipal himself recognized that he had failed to maintain the durability of the Assyrian Empire. In one of his final known inscriptions, Ashurbanipal, saddened and faced with his own mortality due to illness, lamented the state of his empire. This inscriptions reads:


title: Ashurbanipal

text: In addition to internal strife, it is clear that the hold of the Assyrian Empire on its peripheral regions had severely weakened by the end of Ashurbanipal's reign. Some peripheral lands had regained independence; there was for instance no longer an Assyrian presence in the southern Levant, where the Egyptians had instead become the hegemonic power. Ashurbanipal's late reign may have also seen the beginning of rebellious movements in Babylonia (precursors of that of Nabopolassar). Egypt already regained independence in the middle of Ashurbanipal's reign. Egypt appears to have been liberated peacefully and gradually under Necho I's son and successor Psamtik I, who had been educated at the Assyrian court. After becoming king in 664 as a loyal Assyrian vassal, Psamtik slowly extended his control across all of Egypt, unifying the country in 656 and initiating a period of renaissance and prosperity, eventually becoming fully independent of Ashurbanipal. Psamtik remained an ally of Assyria; during the later Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire in the reign of Sinsharishkun (Ashur-etil-ilani's successor and another son of Ashurbanipal) both Psamtik and his son Necho II rushed to Assyria's aid, with Egyptian armies fighting alongside the Assyrians.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Inscriptions by Ashur-etil-ilani suggest that his father died a natural death, but do not shed light on when or how this happened. Though his final year is often erroneously given as 627 or even 626, this follows an estimate from an inscription written nearly a century later at Harran by Adad-guppi, the mother of the Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus (). The final contemporary evidence for Ashurbanipal being alive and reigning as king is a contract from Nippur made in 631. If Ashurbanipal's reign had ended in 627 the inscriptions of his successors Ashur-etil-ilani and Sinsharishkun in Babylon (covering several years) would have been impossible, given that the city was seized by Nabopolassar in 626 and never again fell into Assyrian hands. To get the attested lengths of the reigns of his successors to match, it is generally agreed that Ashurbanipal either died, abdicated or was deposed in 631 or 630. 631 is typically favored as the year of his death. Ashurbanipal was succeeded as king by Ashur-etil-ilani and he seems to have been inspired by the succession plans of his father, despite its consequences, given that Sinsharishkun was granted the fortress-city of Nippur and was designated to be the successor of Kandalanu at Babylon once Kandalanu died.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: A handful of historians have attempted to justify a reign of Ashurbanipal extending to 627, though no such proposal is without problems. It is possible that the 42-year (rather than 38-year) error came about in later Mesopotamian historiography on account of the knowledge that Ashurbanipal ruled concurrently with Babylonian rulers Shamash-shum-ukin and Kandalanu, whose reigns together amount to 42 years, but Kandalanu survived Ashurbanipal by three years, actually dying in 627. One possible way to justify a 42-year reign of Ashurbanipal is by assuming there was a coregency between him and Ashur-etil-ilani, but there had never been a coregency in prior Assyrian history and the idea is explicitly contradicted by Ashur-etil-ilani's own inscriptions, which describe him as becoming king after the end of his father's reign. Another once popular idea, for instance favored by Stefan Zawadski, is that Ashurbanipal and Kandalanu were the same person, "Kandalanu" simply being the name the king used in Babylon. This idea is generally considered unlikely for several reasons, most notably that no previous Assyrian king is known to have used an alternate name in Babylon and that inscriptions from Babylonia show a difference in the lengths of the reigns of Ashurbanipal and Kandalanu (Ashurbanipal's reign is counted from his first full year as king, 668, and Kandalanu's is counted from his first full year as king, 647). All Assyrian kings who personally ruled Babylon used the title "king of Babylon" in their inscriptions, but that title is not used in any of Ashurbanipal's inscriptions, even those made after 648. Most importantly, Babylonian documents clearly treat Ashurbanipal and Kandalanu as two different people.


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Ashurbanipal was already married to his queen Libbali-sharrat (Akkadian: ) at the time of his accession to the throne, perhaps marrying her around the time of his proclamation as crown prince. The marriage occurring around that time is supported by Libbali-sharrat's name, which she is attested under before the death of Esarhaddon. The name is unique, not known to have been borne by any other individual, and incorporates the element "šarratum" ("queen"), indicating that it was not her birth name but rather a name perhaps assumed upon her marriage to Ashurbanipal. Libbali-sharrat is most famous for her appearance in the so-called "Garden Party" relief from Ashurbanipal's palace, which depicts her and Ashurbanipal dining together. The scene is noteworthy for being organized around Libbali-sharrat rather than Ashurbanipal and for being the only known image from ancient Assyria depicting an individual other than the king effectively holding court (and even hosting the king).


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Libbali-sharrat was presumably the mother of Ashurbanipal's immediate successors, Ashur-etil-ilani and Sinsharishkun. Ninurtas-sharru-usur's less prominent role probably derived from him being the son of a lower wife. Libbali-sharrat might have lived for some time after Ashurbanipal's death in 631 since there is a tablet dating to Ashur-etil-ilani's reign referencing the "mother of the king". The inscriptions of Sinsharishkun which mention him being selected for the kingship "from among his equals" (i.e., brothers) suggest that Ashurbanipal had more sons in addition to the three known by name. It is also known that Ashurbanipal had at least one daughter given that there are documents from his reign that reference a "daughter of the king".


title: Ashurbanipal

text: Ashurbanipal's lineage may have survived the fall of Assyria in 612–609. The mother of the last Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus, Adad-guppi, was from Harran and had Assyrian ancestry. According to her own inscriptions, Adad-guppi was born in the 20th year of Ashurbanipal's reign (648, as years were counted from the king's first full year). British scholar Stephanie Dalley considers it "almost certain" that Adad-guppi was a daughter of Ashurbanipal on account of her own inscriptions claiming that Nabonidus was of Ashurbanipal's dynastic line. American Professor of Biblical Studies Michael B. Dick has refuted this, pointing out that even though Nabonidus did go to some length to revive some old Assyrian symbols (such as wearing a wrapped cloak in his depictions, absent in those of other Neo-Babylonian kings but present in Assyrian art) and attempted to link himself to the Sargonid dynasty, there is "no evidence whatsoever that Nabonidus was related to the Sargonid Dynasty".