of the Chronicle and of Berosus is explained by the fact that Sharezer was chief in the conspiracy, and the one among the sons who aspired to the kingdom:  the second murderer merely acted for his brother, and consequently had no more right to be mentioned by name than those accomplices not of the blood-royal who shared in the murder.  The name Sharezer is usually considered as an abbreviation of the Assyrian name Nergal-sharuzur, or Assur-sharuzur.  Winckler thinks that he sees in it a corruption of Sharitir, abbreviated from Sharitir-assur, which he finds as a royal name on a fragment in the British Museum; he proposes to recognise in this Sharitir-assur, Sharezer enthroned after his father’s death.

One half of the army proclaimed Sharezer king; the northern provinces espoused his cause; and Esarhaddon must for the moment have lost all hope of the succession.  His father’s tragic fate overwhelmed him with fear and grief; he rent his clothes, groaned and lamented like a lion roaring, and could be comforted only by the oracles pronounced by the priests of Babylon.  An assurance that the gods favoured his cause reached him even from Assyria, and Nineveh, after a few weeks of vacillation, acknowledged him as its sovereign, the rebellion being mercilessly crushed on the 2nd of Adar.*

* The Bible alone tells us that Sharezer retired to Urartu (2 Kings xix. 37).  To explain the plan of this campaign, it is usually supposed that at the time of his father’s death Esarhaddon was either beyond Mount Taurus or else on the Armenian frontier; the sequence of the dates in the Babylonian Chronicle of Pinches, compels me to revert to the opinion that Esarhaddon marched from Babylon against the rebels, and pursued them as far as Mount Taurus, and beyond it to Khanigalbat.

Although this was a considerable advantage to Esarhaddon’s cause, it could not be considered as decisive, since the provinces of the Euphrates still declared for Sharezer; the gods, therefore, once more intervened.  Ishtar of Arbela had long been considered as the recognised patroness and oracle of the dynasty.  Whether it were a question of a foreign expedition or a rebellion at home, of a threatened plague or invasion, of a marriage or an alliance with some powerful neighbour, the ruling sovereign would invariably have recourse to her, always with the same formula, to demand counsel of her for the conduct of affairs in hand, and the replies which she vouchsafed in various ways were taken into consideration; her will, as expressed by the mouth of her ministers, would hasten, suspend, or modify the decisions of the king.  Esarhaddon did not neglect to consult the goddess, as well as Assur and Sin, Shamash, Bel, Nebo, and Nergal; and their words, transcribed upon a tablet of clay, induced him to act without further delay:  “Go, do not hesitate, for we march with thee and we will cast down thine enemies!” Thus encouraged, he made