up for a hundred days and nights to the Sun-god, that he might “forgive the sin” of his people, and avert the dangers that threatened them.  The prayers were heard, and the invaders were driven into Ellipi.  Then Esar-haddon marched against Teuspa, and forced him to turn from Assyria.  The Kimmerians made their way instead into Asia Minor, where they sacked the Greek and Phrygian cities, and overran Lydia.

The northern and eastern boundaries of the empire were at length secured.  It was now necessary to punish the Arab tribes who had taken advantage of the Kimmerian invasion to harass the empire on the south.  Esar-haddon accordingly marched into the very heart of the Arabian desert—­a military achievement of the first rank, the memory of which was not forgotten for years.  The empire at last was secure.

The Assyrian king was now free to complete the policy of Tiglath-pileser by conquering Egypt.  Palestine was no longer a source of trouble.  Judah had returned to its vassalage to Assyria, and the abortive attempts of Sidon and Jerusalem to rebel had been easily suppressed.  True to his policy of conciliation, Esar-haddon had dealt leniently with Manasseh of Judah.  He had been brought in fetters before his lord at Babylon, and there pardoned and restored to his kingdom.  It was a lesson which neither he nor his successors forgot, like the similar lesson impressed a few years later upon the Egyptian prince Necho.

The Assyrian conquest of Egypt has been already described.  The first campaign of Esar-haddon against it was undertaken in B.C. 674; and it was while on the march to put down a revolt in B.C. 668 that he fell ill and died, on the 10th of Marchesvan, or October.  The empire was divided between his two sons.  Assur-bani-pal had already been named as his successor, and now took Assyria, while Saul-sum-yukin became king of Babylonia, subject, however, to his brother at Nineveh.  It was an attempt to flatter the Babylonians by giving them a king of their own, while at the same time keeping the supreme power in Assyrian hands.

The first few years of Assur-bani-pal’s reign were spent in tranquillising Egypt by means of the sword, in suppressing insurrections, and in expelling Ethiopian invaders.  After the destruction of Thebes in B.C. 661 the country sullenly submitted to the foreign rule; its strength was exhausted, and its leaders and priesthood were scattered and bankrupt.  Elam was now almost the only civilised kingdom of western Asia which remained independent.  It was, moreover, a perpetual thorn in the side of the Assyrians.  It was always ready to give the same help to the disaffected in Babylonia that Egypt was to the rebels in Palestine, with the difference that whereas the Egyptians were an unwarlike race, the Elamites were a nation of warriors.  Assur-bani-pal was not a soldier himself, and he would have preferred remaining at peace with his warlike neighbour.  But Elamite raids made this impossible,