noble birth, who had been
taken, when quite a child, to Nineveh and educated there under the eyes
of Sargon.*

* The name is transcribed Belibos in Greek, and it seems as
if the Assyrian variants justify the pronunciation Belibush.

While he was thus reorganising the government, his generals were
bringing the campaign to a close: they sacked, one after another,
eighty-nine strongholds and eight hundred and twenty villages of
the Kalda; they drove out the Arabian and Aramaean garrisons which
Merodach-baladan had placed in the cities of Karduniash, in Urak, Nipur,
Kuta, and Kharshag-kalamma, and they re-established Assyrian supremacy
over all the tribes on the east of the Tigris up to the frontiers of
Elam, the Tumuna, the Ubudu, the Gambulu, and the Khindaru, as also over
the Nabataeans and Hagarenes, who wandered over the deserts of Arabia to
the west of the mouths of the Euphrates. The booty was enormous: 208,000
prisoners, both male and female, 7200 horses, 11,073 asses, 5230 camels,
80,100 oxen, 800,500 sheep, made their way like a gigantic horde of
emigrants to Assyria under the escort of the victorious army. Meanwhile
the Khirimmu remained defiant, and showed not the slightest intention
to submit: their strongholds had to be attacked and the inhabitants
annihilated before order could in any way be restored in the country.
The second reign of Merodach-baladan had lasted barely nine months.

The blow which ruined Merodach-baladan broke up the coalition which he
had tried to form against Assyria. Babylon was the only rallying-point
where states so remote, and such entire strangers to each other as Judah
and Elam, could enter into friendly relations and arrange a plan of
combined action. Having lost Babylon as a centre, they were once more
hopelessly isolated, and had no means of concerting measures against the
common foe: they renounced all offensive action, and waited under
arms to see how the conqueror would deal with each severally. The
most threatening storm, however, was not that which was gathering over
Palestine, even were Egypt to be drawn into open war: for a revolt of
the western provinces, however serious, was never likely to lead to
disastrous complications, and the distance from Pelusium to the Tigris
was too great for a victory of the Pharaoh to compromise effectually
the safety of the empire. On the other hand, should intervention on the
part of Elam in the affairs of Babylon or Media be cro