treated of in another section.








XXI.

THE FIGHT OVER THE CARCASE--ETHIOPIA _v_. ASSYRIA.


The miraculous destruction of his army was accepted by Sennacherib as a
warning to desist from all further attempts against the independence of
Judea, and from all further efforts to extend his dominions towards the
south-west. He survived the destruction during a period of seventeen
years, and was actively engaged in a number of wars towards the east,
the north, and the north-west, but abstained carefully from further
contact with either Palestine or Egypt. His son Esarhaddon succeeded him
on the throne in B.C. 681, and at once, to a certain extent, modified
this policy. He re-established the Assyrian dominion over Upper Syria,
Phœnicia, and even Edom; but during the first nine years of his reign
the memory of his father's disaster caused him to leave Judea and Egypt
unattacked. At last, however, in B.C. 672, encouraged by his many
military successes, by the troubled state of Judea under the idolatrous
Manasseh, who "shed innocent blood very much from one end of Jerusalem
to the other" (2 Kings xxi. 16), and by the advanced age of Tehrak,
which seemed to render him a less formidable antagonist now than