The Greatest Empires & Civilizations of the Ancient East: Egypt, Babylon, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Assyria, Media, Chaldea, Persia, Parthia & Sasanian Empire. George Rawlinson
the superior arms, and the better discipline of the Assyrians, prevailed. Asia proved herself, as she has generally done, stronger than Africa; the Egyptians and Philistines fled away in disorder; Hanun was made a prisoner; Shabak with difficulty escaped. Negotiations appear to have followed, and a convention to have been drawn up, to which the Ethiopian and Assyrian monarchs attached their seals. The lump of clay which received the impressions was found by Sir A. Layard at Nineveh, and is now in the British Museum.
Shortly afterwards, about B.C. 712, Shabak died, and was succeeded in Egypt by his son Shabatok, in Ethiopia by a certain Tehrak, who appears to have been his nephew, Tehrak exercised the paramount authority over the whole realm, but resided at Napata, while Shabatok held his court at Memphis and ruled Lower Egypt as Tehrak's representative, Assyrian aggression still continued. In B.C. 711 Sargon took Ashdod, and threatened an invasion of Egypt, which Shabatok averted by sending a submissive embassy with presents.
Six years afterwards Sargon died, and his son, Sennacherib, mounted the Assyrian throne. At once south-western Asia was in a ferment. The Phœnician and Philistine kings recently subjected by Tiglath-Pileser and Sargon, broke out in open revolt. Hezekiah, king of Judah, joined the malcontents. The aid of Egypt was implored, and certain promises of support and assistance received, in part from Tehrak, in part from Shabatok and other native rulers of nomes and cities. Sennacherib, in B.C. 701, led his army into Syria to suppress the rebellion, reduced Phœnicia, received the submission of Ashdod, Ammon, Moab, and Edom; took Ascalon, Hazor, and Joppa, and was proceeding against Ekron, when for the first time he encountered an armed force in the field. A large Egyptian and Ethiopian contingent had at last reached Philistia, and, having united itself with the Ekronites, stood prepared to give the Assyrians battle near Eltekeh. The force consisted of chariots, horsemen, and footmen, and was so numerous that Sennacherib calls it "a multitude that no man could number." Once more, however, Africa had to succumb. Sennacherib at Eltekeh defeated the combined forces of Egypt and Ethiopia with as much ease and completeness as Sargon at Raphia; the multitudinous host was entirely routed, and fled from the field, leaving in the hands of the victors the greater portion of their war-chariots and several sons of one of their kings.
After this defeat, it is not surprising that Tehrak made no further effort. Hezekiah, the last rebel unsubdued, was left to defend himself as he best might. The Egyptians retreated to their own borders, and there awaited attack. It seemed as if the triumph of Assyria was assured, and as if her yoke must almost immediately be imposed alike upon Judea, upon Egypt, and upon the kingdom of Napata; but an extraordinary catastrophe averted the immediate danger, and gave to Egypt and Ethiopia a respite of thirty-four years. Sennacherib's army, of nearly two hundred thousand men, was almost totally destroyed in one night. "The angel of the Lord went forth," says the contemporary writer, Isaiah, "and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses" (Isa. xxxvii. 36). Whatever the agency employed in this remarkable destruction—whether it was caused by a simoon, or a pestilence, or by a direct visitation of the Almighty, as different writers have explained it—the event is certain. Its truth is written in the undeniable facts of later history, which show us a sudden cessation of Assyrian attack in this quarter, the kingdom of Judea saved from absorption, and the countries on the banks of the Nile left absolutely unobstructed by Assyria for the third part of a century. As the destruction happened on their borders, the Egyptians naturally enough ascribed it to their own gods, and made a boast of it centuries after. Everything marks, as one of the most noticeable facts in history, this annihilation of so great a portion of the army of the greatest of all the kings of Assyria.
The reign of Tirhakah (Tehrak) during this period appears to have been glorious. He was regarded by Judea as its protector, and exercised a certain influence over all Syria as far as Taurus, Amanus, and the Euphrates. In Africa, he brought into subjection the native tribes of the north coast, carrying his arms, according to some, as far as the Pillars of Hercules. He is exhibited at Medinet-Abou in the dress of a warrior, smiting with a mace ten captive foreign princes. He erected monuments in the Egyptian style at Thebes, Memphis, and Napata. Of all the Ethiopian sovereigns of Egypt he was undoubtedly the greatest; but towards the close of his life reverses befell him, which require to be 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 formerly, he resumed the designs on Egypt which his father and grandfather had entertained, swept Manasseh from his path by seizing him and carrying him off a prisoner to Babylon, marched his troops from Aphek along the coast of Palestine to Raphia, and there made the dispositions which seemed to him best calculated to effect the conquest of the coveted country. As Tirhakah, aware of his intentions, had collected all his available force upon his north-east frontier, about Pelusium and its immediate neighbourhood, the Assyrian monarch took the bold resolution of proceeding southward through the waste tract, known to the Hebrews as "the desert of Shur," in such a way as to turn the flank of Tirhakah's army, to reach Pithom (Heroopolis) and to attack Memphis along the line of the Old Canal. The Arab Sheikhs of the desert were induced to lend him their aid, and facilitate his march by conveying the water necessary for his army on the backs of their camels in skins. The march was thus made in safety, though the soldiers are said to have suffered considerably from fatigue and thirst, and to have been greatly alarmed by the sight of numerous serpents.
Tehrak, on his part, did all that was possible. On learning Esarhaddon's change of route, he broke up from Pelusium, and, by a hasty march across the eastern Delta succeeded in interposing his army between Memphis and the host of the Assyrians, which had to follow the line taken by Sir Garnet Wolseley in 1884, and encountered the enemy, probably, not far from the spot where the British general completely defeated the troops of Arabi. Here for the third time Asia and Africa stood arrayed the one against the other. Assyria brought into the field a host of probably not fewer than two hundred thousand men, including a strong chariot force, a powerful cavalry, and an infantry variously armed and appointed—some with huge shields and covered by almost complete panoplies, others lightly equipped with targe and dart, or even simply with slings. Egypt opposed to her a force, probably, even more numerous, but consisting chiefly of a light-armed infantry, containing a large proportion of mercenaries whose hearts would not be in the fight, deficient in cavalry, and apt to trust mainly to its chariots. In the flat Egyptian plains lightly accoutred troops fight at a great disadvantage against those whose equipment is of greater solidity and strength; cavalry are an important arm, since there is nothing to check the impetus of a charge; and personal strength is a most important element in determining the result of a conflict. The Assyrians were more strongly made than the Egyptians; they had probably a better training; they certainly wore more armour, carried larger shields and longer spears, and were better equipped both for offence and defence. We have,