Forty-six fenced cities of Judah, besides many smaller towns, were taken and plundered by the invaders, and Hezekiah was ‘shut up in Jerusalem like a bird in his cage.’ The king of Judah delayed no longer to send his humble submission, and the arrears of his unpaid tribute, to Sennacherib encamped before Lachish. But the submission was hollow and the tribute extorted, for Hezekiah was in treaty with Egypt all the while. His messengers made the weary journey through the burning desert, their camels and asses laden with gifts and offerings,[88] to implore the aid of the king, who seems then to have been at Zoan in the Delta—preparing at last to march against the foe. Nor was the haughty Assyrian monarch unaware of the secret hopes of the king of Judah. He had captured Lachish, with the cruel massacre and torture of the captives that usually accompanied Assyrian conquests. His attack upon Libnah was postponed, for tidings came that Tirhakah, at the head of the Egypto-Ethiopian army, had crossed the frontiers. Aware of the secret understanding between that sovereign and the king of Judah, Sennacherib vented his bitter indignation and scorn in menaces and insult. He now demanded from Hezekiah nothing less than unconditional and absolute surrender, and taunted him with his vain reliance upon that ‘broken reed,’ the king of Egypt. At this crisis silence falls upon the scene, a silence broken only by the exulting cry of the great Hebrew prophet, as the mighty Assyrian host perishes before an unseen foe.
Judah breathed freely again, and a respite was accorded to Egypt, though not of long duration. Sennacherib, though engaged in many warlike enterprises during the remainder of his reign, left it to his successor Esar-haddon (680-668 b.c.), to renew the attempt upon Egypt. Judah was unmolested this time, and took no part in the terrible and desolating struggle that ensued.
Tirhakah had entered into an alliance with the king of Tyre, against the common foe. Esar-haddon laid siege to Tyre, and then, advancing along the old military road, trodden of old by the armies of Thothmes and of Rameses in the opposite direction, he entered Egypt. Tirhakah was defeated, and retreated to the south; the Assyrian king annexed the whole country, portioning it out into twenty districts, over which he placed governors to rule, as vassals in his name. Then, concluding a treaty with Tirhakah, he returned to Nineveh. Soon after he fell sick, and associated his son Assur-bani-pal in the government. It is from the records left by the latter that we learn the proceedings both of his father and of himself in Egypt. Tirhakah, probably on hearing of the illness of Esar-haddon, emerged from his retreat, and advancing north, regardless of his treaty, occupied Memphis, and expelled the Assyrian garrisons and governors. They fled to Nineveh, and told what had happened; Assur-bani-pal immediately assembled a large army, and entered Egypt. ‘When Tirhakah had heard in the city of Memphis of the approach of my army,’ says the king, ‘he numbered his hosts, and drew them up in battle array. In a fierce battle he was put to flight. Fear seized upon him, and he escaped from Memphis, the city of his honour, and fled away in ships to save himself alive. He came to Nia, to the great city. I sent my servants after him; a journey of one month and ten days. Then he left Thebes, the city of his empire, and went up the river. My soldiers made a slaughter in that city.’ Assur-ban-ipal then reinstated the governors in their respective districts, and returned to Nineveh with great spoil. But Tirhakah, undaunted by defeat, came forth once more from the Nubian hills, and the vassal governors entered into a league with him. Many of them were Egyptian by birth, and unwilling subjects of the Assyrian king, and all were for the moment more afraid of Tirhakah, who was so near at hand, than of the distant power of Assyria. News, however, soon reached Nineveh of what was going on. Letters had been intercepted by ‘judges,’ and the insurgent vassals were sent to Nineveh bound hand and foot in chains. Assur-bani-pal once more took the field, breathing vengeance and slaughter. He found it politic, however, to restore Necho,[89] prince of Memphis, chief of the rebellious vassals, and to uphold him against Tirhakah. But the hand of the Assyrian was heavy on the land. ‘Memphis, Sais, Mendes, and Zoan,’ he says, ‘and all the cities they had led away with them, I took by storm, putting to death both small and great.’ Soon after this the gallant Tirhakah died, after a reign of twenty-six years, and his successor, Urdamaneh, following in his steps, occupied Thebes, and once more attempted to wrest Egypt from the invader. Assur-bani-pal took the field in person, and again compelled his foe to retire to the far south. On Thebes he took dire vengeance. ‘My warriors attacked the city, and razed it to the ground like a thunderbolt.’ Thebes certainly was not ‘razed to the ground,’ as the proud conqueror boasts, but the destruction was terrible, and the city never recovered the blow. ‘Gold and silver, the treasures of the land, precious stones, horses, men and women, huge apes from the mountains—my soldiers took out of the midst of the city as spoil. They brought it to Nineveh, the city of my dominion, and they kissed my feet.’ Not far from Nineveh there was living at this time an exile from Israel, who may himself have seen the Egyptian prisoners and the spoil of Thebes. In his indignant denunciation of Nineveh and her king, he thus addresses the magnificent and cruel city: ‘Art thou better than No-Amon “(the city of Amen = Thebes),” that was enthroned among the streams, and the floods were round about her; her rampart was upon the river, and the waters her defence. Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite; Put and Lubim were her helpers. Yet was she carried away and went into captivity; her young children were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: they cast lots for her honourable men, and her great men were bound with chains’ (Nahum iii. 8-10).[90]
It was little more than half a century later that Nineveh herself fell with a mightier and more overwhelming destruction.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
Psammetichus and the Saite Dynasty—The Persian Conquest—Last Independent Dynasties. (666-340 b.c.)
After the capture and sack of Thebes, the successors of Tirhakah made no further attempts to recover their lost dominion. The princes who ruled in the north, more or less as the vassals of Assyria, were often engaged in mutual strife, and the twenty satrapies established there by Esar-haddon had dwindled down to twelve—the ‘Dodecarchy,’ of Greek writers. Bravest and most conspicuous amongst the twelve princes was Psamtek (Psammetichus), son of that Necho who had been imprisoned and restored by Assur-bani-pal[91] ([p. 260]). Banished by the jealousy of his rivals, Psammetichus[92] determined on a new and energetic policy. He formed an alliance with the king of Lydia, and obtained the assistance of a large number of Greek mercenaries—chiefly Carians and Ionians by birth. He resolved, by their aid, to win back the independence of Egypt by driving out the Assyrians, and to reunite the divided land, by bringing it all under his own sceptre. At Momemphis he defeated the Assyrians in a great battle, and they left Egypt to return no more. Assur-bani-pal, who had conquered Egypt and devastated Thebes, was still reigning at Nineveh; and it must have been not a little humiliating to his pride, to be unable to make another attempt to regain what he had lost. But the time had come when Assyria had no soldiers to spare for foreign conquests; they were all wanted at home to defend the monarchy. Weakened by the incessant warfare that had won so triumphant a military ascendency, she was assailed on every side by the nations to whom she had long been a terror, and by her own subject provinces, ever restlessly eager to cast off the yoke of her tyranny.
Meanwhile Psammetichus successfully achieved the other portion of his task; he re-united the north under his sway, and made peace with the rulers of the south. The descendants of the priest-king, of Piankhi and of Tirhakah henceforth made Napata the centre of their dominion, and abandoned all thought of ruling even in Upper Egypt. The friendship thus formed was cemented by the marriage of Psammetichus with a princess of the southern dynasty. She was daughter of a king named Piankhi and his beautiful wife Ameniritis: a statue of her has been preserved, of which Brugsch says, “Sweet peace seems to hover about her features; the very flowers in her hand suggest her high mission as the reconciler of the long feud.”’