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The honors once paid to Ninib in Calah in this month could thus easily be transferred to the head of the Assyrian pantheon. Although in the calendar the sixth month is sacred to Ishtar, her festival was celebrated in the fifth month, known as Ab. This lack of correspondence between the calendar and the festivals is an indication of the greater antiquity of the latter.

The name Portugal is compounded of the Latin portus, a "port," and the Arabic caläh, a "castle" or "fortress." The first of these names was originally given to the town which still retains it Oporto one of the oldest of Portugal, and at one time its capital. The history of Portugal, when it separates from that of Spain, is the history of a single stupendous achievement.

Nergal's consort is Laz, but she is not referred to by the Assyrian rulers. Sin. The old Babylonian moon-god plays a comparatively insignificant rôle in Assyria. Ashurnasirbal speaks of a temple that he founded in Calah perhaps only a chapel in honor of Sin. It could not have been of much importance, for we learn nothing further about it.

That the Babylonian Nabu is meant, is clear from such designations as 'the offspring of E-sagila, the favorite of Bel, 'he who dwells at E-zida, which appear among the epithets bestowed upon the god; and the temple in Calah, which one of the last kings of Assyria, Ashuretililani, is engaged in improving, bears the same name E-zida, as Nabu's great temple at Borsippa.

He seems to have had none at either Nineveh or Calah, and none of any importance in all Assyria, except that at Asshur. There is, however, reason, to believe that he was occasionally honored with a shrine in a temple dedicated to another deity. BIL, or BEL.

Finally the capital, Calah, with its traditions of the dead dynasty, the old regime and the recent rebellion, must be replaced by a new capital, even as once on a time Asshur, with its Babylonian and priestly spirit, had been replaced.

Shalmaneser seems to have held his court ordinarily at Calah, where he built his palace and set up his obelisk; but sometimes he would reside for a time at Nineveh or at Asshur. He does not appear to have built any important edifice at either of these two cities, but at the latter he left a monument which possesses some interest.

The shifting of the Assyrian capital to Calah by Shalmaneser I was also due to the extension of Assyrian power in the north, in consequence of which there was need of having the capital nearer the centre of the country so enlarged.

Now the journey between Nineveh and Calah and the plains of Lower Chaldæa was far easier than it is now considering especially the state of the roads between Tauris, Ispahan, and Teheran, on the one hand and Nedjef on the other. The transit from Assyria to Chaldæa could be made, like that of the Egyptian mummy, entirely by water, that is to say, very cheaply, very easily, and very rapidly.

This fact is of considerable interest, for it proves that Tukulti-Ninib restored the capital of Assyria to the city of Ashur, removing it from Calah, whither it had been transferred by his father Shalmaneser I. The city of Calah had been founded and built by Shalmaneser I in the same way that his son Tukulti-Ninib built the city of Kar-Tukulti-Ninib, and the building of both cities is striking evidence of the rapid growth of Assyria and her need of expansion around fresh centres prepared for administration and defence.