The Historians' History of the World 01

Shabak of Cush and Egypt was succeeded in the year 716 (?) by Shabatakh who, according to Manetho, was his son, and of whom only scattered monuments have been preserved in Karnak and Memphis. But in the year 704 he was succeeded by a younger, more vigorous prince, Tirhaqa. The latter appears not to have belonged to the royal family, but to have acquired the throne by marriage with the wife of Shabak and to have seized the government in the name of the latter’s son, Tanut-Amen; in Karnak the two conjointly raised a temple to Osiris Ptah, and are here both called kings in exactly the same terms. Tirhaqa was twenty years old when he obtained the double crown. The numerous princes of the Egyptian cities acknowledged his supremacy, and he was able to turn his attention to renewing Shabak’s interference in Syria. A number of Syrian princes were ready to join the liberator from the Assyrian yoke, especially Elulæus of Tyre, Hezekiah of Judah, who, in the year 714, had succeeded Ahaz, and Zidqa of Askalon. King Padi of Ekron remained faithful to the Assyrians, but his magnates revolted against him and delivered him up to Hezekiah. It might have been hoped that Sennacherib would be detained for a long time in Babylonia. We learn that Merodach-baladan had opened negotiations with Hezekiah, so that a great coalition against Assyria seems to have been planned.

Yet this time also the Assyrians were able to forestall their adversaries. Before their preparations were completed, in the beginning of 701, Sennacherib appeared in Syria and turned first against Elulæus. Sidon, Sarepta, Akko, and the other towns subject to him submitted, and he himself fled to Cyprus. From Phœnicia, Sennacherib marched to Philistia, having received in every way the homage of those vassals who had remained loyal. Zidqa of Askalon was captured, his towns reduced, and a new king set up. Then, the Great King further informs us, he marched against Ekron, when the army of the King of Cush (Assyrian, Melukhkha) and the princes of Egypt came to its assistance. At Altaku he defeated this force, took that city and Timnath, reduced Ekron where he punished the instigator of the rebellion, and restored King Padi, who had been taken as a prisoner to Jerusalem.

Trusting in Pharaoh and in Jehovah, Hezekiah persisted in resisting. Meantime the army of Tirhaqa, King of Cush, marched up. Sennacherib advanced against him and again demanded the surrender of Jerusalem. But Hezekiah, trusting in Jehovah’s word as announced to him by the prophet Isaiah, once more refused. In the night the Mal’ak-Yahveh (the angel of the Lord) smites the Assyrian army, so that 185,000 men die, and Sennacherib had to return to Nineveh.

[ca. 672-663 B.C.]

The Egyptians gave Herodotus a similar account: after the Ethiopian Sabaco [Shabak], a former priest of Ptah, Sethos, who had been at enmity with the warrior caste, ruled over Egypt. Now when Sennacherib, “King of the Arabians and Assyrians,” made an expedition against Egypt, the warriors refused to fight, and Sethos was in great distress. But the gods sent field-mice against the hostile army which was encamped at Pelusium, and the mice gnawed the bows and all the leather trappings of the enemy, so that on the following day they could easily be defeated by the Egyptian artisans and merchants that had been impressed into service.