Revolution in Elam—­Attack on Indabigash—­Tammaritu restored to power—­Pillage and destruction of Susa—­Campaign against the Arabs of Kedar and the Nabataeans:  suppression of the Tyrian rebellion —­Dying struggles of Elam—­Capture of Madaktu and surrender of Khumban-khaldash—­The power of Assyria reaches its zenith.

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CHAPTER II—­THE POWER OF ASSYRIA AT ITS ZENITH; ESARHADDON AND ASSUR-BANI-PAL

The Medes and Cimmerians:  Lydia—­The conquest of Egypt, of Arabia, and of Elam.

As we have already seen, Sennacherib reigned for eight years after his triumph; eight years of tranquillity at home, and of peace with all his neighbours abroad.  If we examine the contemporary monuments or the documents of a later period, and attempt to glean from them some details concerning the close of his career, we find that there is a complete absence of any record of national movement on the part of either Elam, Urartu, or Egypt.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after Layard.  The vignette, also by Faucher-Gudin, represents Taharqa in a kneeling attitude, and is taken from a bronze statuette in the Macgregor collection.

The only event of which any definite mention is made is a raid across the north of Arabia, in the course of which Hazael, King of Adumu, and chief among the princes of Kedar, was despoiled of the images of his gods.  The older states of the Oriental world had, as we have pointed out, grown weary of warfare which brought them nothing but loss of men and treasure; but behind these states, on the distant horizon to the east and north-west, were rising up new nations whose growth and erratic movements assumed an importance that became daily more and more alarming.  On the east, the Medes, till lately undistinguishable from the other tribes occupying the western corner of the Iranian table-land, had recently broken away from the main body, and, rallying round a single leader, already gave promise of establishing an empire formidable alike by the energy of its people and the extent of its domain.  A tradition afterwards accepted by them attributed their earlier successes to a certain Deiokes, son of Phraortes, a man wiser than his fellows, who first set himself to deal out justice in his own household.  The men of his village, observing his merits, chose him to be the arbiter of all their disputes, and, being secretly ambitious of sovereign power, he did his best to settle their differences on lines of the strictest equity and justice.  By these means he gained such credit with his fellow-citizens as to attract the attention of those who lived in the neighbouring villages, who had suffered from unjust judgments, so that when they heard of the singular uprightness of Deiokes and of the equity of his decisions they joyfully had recourse to him until at last they came to put confidence in no one else.  The number