Barbara Toy followed the Mediterranean coastline of North Africa, travelling through what was then French Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, to Cyprus, then down through Lebanon, Syria and then through Jordan to Iraq. While in Iraq she visited several archaeological sites, including in May 1951 Sir Max Mallowan's excavations at Nimrud where his wife Agatha Christie was helping with processing the finds. The work on the site had just finished, and the finds for that season included the stele of King Assur-nasir-pal II. Her journey home is not described in the book, although in her second book "A Fool in the
Old Assyrian Empire EA 16 has been contested as a faulty writing of Ashur-nadin-apli, another Assyrian king. He was succeeded by his brother, Eriba-Adad I, the first king of the Middle Assyrian Empire. Old Assyrian Empire The Old Assyrian Empire is one of four periods in which the history of Assyria is divided, the other three being the Early Assyrian Period, the Middle Assyrian Empire, and the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Assyria was a major Mesopotamian East Semitic-speaking kingdom and empire of the ancient Near East. Centered on the Tigris–Euphrates river system in Upper Mesopotamia, the Assyrian people came to rule powerful empires at several