there crowned legitimate king. For twelve years he
successfully resisted the Assyrians; but the failure of his allies in the
west to act in concert with him, and the overthrow of the Elamites,
eventually compelled him to fly to his ancestral domains in the marshes of
southern Babylonia. Sargon, who meanwhile had crushed the confederacy of
the northern nations, had taken (717 B.C.) the Hittite stronghold of
Carchemish and had annexed the future kingdom of Ecbatana, was now accepted
as king by the Babylonian priests and his claim to be the successor of
Sargon of Akkad acknowledged up to the time of his murder in 705 B.C.
[Sidenote: Sennacherib.] His son Sennacherib, who succeeded him on the 12th
of Ab, did not possess the military or administrative abilities of his
father, and the success of his reign was not commensurate with the vanity
of the ruler. He was never crowned at Babylon, which was in a perpetual
state of revolt until, in 691 B.C., he shocked the religious and political
conscience of Asia by razing the holy city of Babylon to the ground. His
campaign against Hezekiah of Judah was as much a failure as his policy in
Babylonia, and in his murder by his sons on the 20th of Tebet 681 B.C. both
Babylonians and Jews saw the judgment of heaven.

[Sidenote: Esar-haddon.]

Esar-haddon, who succeeded him, was of different calibre from his father.
He was commanding the army in a campaign against Ararat at the time of the
murder; forty-two days later the murderers fled from Nineveh and took
refuge at the court of Ararat. But the Armenian army was utterly defeated
near Malatia on the 12th of Iyyar, and at the end of the day Esar-haddon
was saluted by his soldiers as king. He thereupon returned to Nineveh and
on the 8th of Sivan formally ascended the throne.

One of his first acts was to restore Babylon, to send back the image of
Bel-Merodach (Bel-Marduk) to its old home, and to re-people the city with
such of the priests and the former population as had survived massacre.
Then he was solemnly declared king in the temple of Bel-Merodach, which had
again risen from its ruins, and Babylon became the second capital of the
empire. Esar-haddon's policy was successful and Babylonia remained
contentedly quiet throughout his reign. In February (674 B.C.) the
Assyrians entered upon their invasion of Egypt (see also EGYPT: _History_),
and in Nisan (or March) 670 B.C. an expedition on an unusually large scale
set out from Nineveh. The