ce a sufficient supply of gold, was forced to
strip the walls and pillars of the Temple, which were overlaid in parts
with this precious metal. He yielded up all the silver from the royal
treasury and from the treasury of the Temple; and this amounted to five
hundred talents more than the fixed rate of tribute. In addition to
these sacrifices, the Jewish monarch was required to surrender Padi, his
Ekronite prisoner, and was mulcted in certain portions of his dominions,
which were attached by the conqueror to the territories of neighboring
kings.

Sennacherib, after this triumph, returned to Nineveh, but did not remain
long in repose. The course of events summoned him in the ensuing year
B.C. 700--to Babylonia, where Merodach-Baladan, assisted by a certain
Susub, a Chaldaean prince, was again in arms against his authority.
Sennacherib first defeated Susub, and then, directing his march upon
Beth-Yakin, forced Merodach-Baladan once more to quit the country and
betake himself to one of the islands of the Persian Gulf, abandoning to
Sennacherib's mercy his brothers and his other partisans. It would
appear that the Babylonian viceroy Belibus, who three years previously
had been set over the country by Sennacherib, was either actively
implicated in this revolt, or was regarded as having contributed towards
it by a neglect of proper precautions. Sennacherib, on his return from
the sea-coast, superseded him, placing upon the throne his own eldest
son, Asshur-inadi-su, who appears to be the Asordanes of Polyhistor, and
the Aparanadius or Assaranadius of Ptolemy's Canon.

The remaining events of Sennacherib's reign may be arranged in
chronological order without much difficulty, but few of them can be
dated with exactness. We lose at this point the invaluable aid of
Ptolemy's Canon, which contains no notice of any event recorded in
Sennacherib's inscriptions of later date than the appointment of
Assaranadius.

It is probable in that in the year B.C. 699 Sennacherib conducted his
second expedition into Palestine. Hezekiah, after his enforced
submission two years earlier, had entered into negotiations with the
Egyptians, and looking to receive important succors from this quarter,
had again thrown off his allegiance. Sennacherib, understanding that the
real enemy whom he had to fear on his south-western frontier was not
Judaea, but Egypt, marched his army through Palestine--probably by the
coast route--and without stopping to chas