[538] See Prof. Smith, Isaiah, p. 198.
[539] Records of the Past, vii. 40. Sargon's words are, "The people of Philistia, Judah, Edom, and Moab were speaking treason. The people and their evil chiefs, to fight against me, unto Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, a monarch who could not save them, their presents carried, and besought his alliance" (G. Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, 290).
[540] On the monuments called Turtanu, "Holder of power." See Schrader in Riehm, s.v.
[541] Raphia, or Ropeh, is on the borders of the desert. Asia beat Africa in every encounter—at Raphia, at Altaqu, at Carchemish. The impression of the seal of Shabak, attached to his capitulations with Sargon, was found at Nineveh by Sir A. H. Layard, and is now in the British Museum. Shabak died in 712. His son Shabatoh succeeded him in Egypt, and his nephew(?) Tirhakah in Ethiopia. Sabaco's name assumes many forms (LXX., Σηγώρ; Herod., ii. 137; Σαβακώς; Vulg., Sua). The Egyptians called him Shaba(ka).
[542] Isa. xx. 1-6.
[543] Lenormant, Les Premières Civilisations, ii. 203; Records of the Past, vii. 41-46.
[544] Isa. xxi. 6, A.V., "Watch in the watch-tower." Hitzig, Cheyne, "They spread the carpets." Much in this short oracle (xxi. 1-10) is obscure. Isaiah seems, in denouncing the fate of Babylon, to mourn for the ruin of the smaller states of which it was the prelude (G. Smith, Soc. of Bibl. Arch., ii. 320 Kleinert, Stud. u. Krit., 1877 W. R. Smith in Enc. Brit., s.v. "Isaiah").
[545] Isa. xxi. 10—i.e., "My people threshed and trodden"; LXX., ὁ καταλελειμμένος καὶ οἱ ὀδυνώμενοι Records of the Past, vii. 47.
[546] Herod., Σαναχάριβος; Jos., Σεναχήριβος. See [Appendix I]. Sin was the moon-god; Merodach, the planet Jupiter; Adar, Saturn; Ishtai, Venus; Nebo, Mercury; Nergal, Mars (Schrader, ii. 117).
[547] Sargon seems to have been murdered in the palace of unparalleled splendour which he built at Dur-Sharrukin ("The City of Sargon"). It took him five years to build it with armies of workmen. Its halls, opened by Botta, were the first Assyrian halls ever entered by a modern's foot. It is strange that this greatest of Assyrian kings is only mentioned once in the Bible (Isa. xx. 1). We owe to Assyriology his restoration to his proper place in the annals of mankind. See Ragozin, Assyria, 247-254.