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His next exploit was the rapid conquest of the mountainous and populous regions on the shores of the Caspian. And now he ventured to try conclusions with Armenia and to attack the famous kingdom of Urartu in the difficult fastnesses round Lakes Van and Urumiah.
The peoples, which were of most account in 1000, are still of the most account in 800 the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Mushki of Cappadocia, the tribesmen of Urartu, the Aramaeans of Damascus, the trading Phoenicians on the Syrian coast and the trading Greeks on the Anatolian.
The Mitanni, who may have been congeners of the latter, seem still to have been holding the north-west; probably all the north-east was Assyrian territory. No doubt the Kurds and Armenians of Urartu were raiding the plains impartially from autumn to spring, as they always did when Assyria was weak.
So soon as movements in Urartu and south-western Asia Minor had been suppressed, and, more important, Babylon, which his father had dishonoured, was appeased, Esarhaddon took up the incomplete conquest. Egypt, then in the hands of an alien dynasty from the Upper Nile and divided against itself, gave him little trouble at first.
Since the chief weakness of these tribes lies in a lack of unity which the subdivided nature of their country encourages, it must have caused no small concern to the Assyrians that, early in the ninth century, a Kingdom of Urartu or, as its own people called it, Khaldia, should begin to gain power over the communities about Lake Van and the heads of the valleys which run down to Assyrian territory.
The district inhabited by the Vannic people was known to the Assyrians by the name of Urartu, and although the inscriptions of the earlier Assyrian kings do not record expeditions against that country, they frequently make mention of campaigns against princes and petty rulers of the land of Na'iri.
But Menuas, a bold and able King of Urartu, proved himself a thorn in the side of the Assyrian king, for he delivered from the yoke of Nineveh the tribes on the borders of Lake Urmiah and all the adjacent regions.
Menacing as this power of Urartu appeared at the end of the ninth century to an enfeebled Assyrian dynasty, there were two other racial groups, lately arrived on its horizon, which in the event would prove more really dangerous. One of these lay along the north-eastern frontier on the farther slopes of the Zagros mountains and on the plateau beyond.
It is, indeed, a considerably larger area than was independent of the Farther East at the date of our last survey. Asia Minor was in all likelihood independent from end to end, from the Aegean to the Euphrates for in 600 B.C. Kyaxares had probably not yet come through Urartu and from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Issus.
Subsequently, in the year 833 B.C., Shalmaneser II made another attack upon the country, which at that time was under the sway of Sarduris I. Under this monarch the citadel of Van became the great stronghold of the people of Urartu, for he added to the natural strength of the position by the construction of walls built between the rock of Van and the harbour.