throne.  According to Rabbinic traditions he was seized by his enemies and enclosed in the hollow trunk of a tree, which was sawn through.  Other orthodox teachers appear to have been slain also.  “Manasseh shed innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another."[540] It is possible that there is a reference to Isaiah’s fate in an early Christian lament regarding the persecutions of the faithful:  “Others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:  they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword".[541] There is no Assyrian evidence regarding the captivity of Manasseh.  “Wherefore the Lord brought upon them (the people of Judah) the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon.  And when he was in affliction, he besought the Lord his God, and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers, and prayed unto him:  and he was intreated of him, and heard his supplication, and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom."[542] It was, however, in keeping with the policy of Esarhaddon to deal in this manner with an erring vassal.  The Assyrian records include Manasseh of Judah (Menase of the city of Yaudu) with the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, Ashdod, Gaza, Byblos, &c, and “twenty-two kings of Khatti” as payers of tribute to Esarhaddon, their overlord.  Hazael of Arabia was conciliated by having restored to him his gods which Sennacherib had carried away.

Egypt continued to intrigue against Assyria, and Esarhaddon resolved to deal effectively with Taharka, the last Ethiopian Pharaoh.  In 674 B.C. he invaded Egypt, but suffered a reverse and had to retreat.  Tyre revolted soon afterwards (673 B.C).

Esarhaddon, however, made elaborate preparations for his next campaign.  In 671 B.C. he went westward with a much more powerful army.  A detachment advanced to Tyre and invested it.  The main force meanwhile pushed on, crossed the Delta frontier, and swept victoriously as far south as Memphis, where Taharka suffered a crushing defeat.  That great Egyptian metropolis was then occupied and plundered by the soldiers of Esarhaddon.  Lower Egypt became an Assyrian province; the various petty kings, including Necho of Sais, had set over them Assyrian governors.  Tyre was also captured.

When he returned home Esarhaddon erected at the Syro-Cappadocian city of Singirli[543] a statue of victory, which is now in the Berlin museum.  On this memorial the Assyrian “King of the kings of Egypt” is depicted as a giant.  With one hand he pours out an oblation to a god; in the other he grasps his sceptre and two cords attached to rings, which pierce the lips of dwarfish figures representing the Pharaoh Taharka of Egypt and the unfaithful King of Tyre.

In 668 B.C.  Taharka, who had fled to Napata in Ethiopia, returned to Upper Egypt, and began to stir up revolts.  Esarhaddon planned out another expedition, so that he might shatter the last vestige of power possessed by his rival.  But before he left home he found it necessary to set his kingdom in order.