The fourth year appears to have been chiefly
taken up with expeditions against the inhabitants of the mountainous
regions to the north and east of Assyria. In the fifth he crossed the
Euphrates into Syria, the inhabitants of which country are called by
their familiar Biblical name of Hittites. He first took possession of
Phoenicia, which was abandoned by its King Luliya (the Eululaeus of the
Greeks). He then restored to his throne Padiya, or Padi, king of
Ekron, and a tributary of Assyria, who had been deposed by his
subjects and given over to Hezekiah, king of Jerusalem. The king of
Ethiopia and Egypt sent a powerful army to the assistance of the
people of Ekron, but it was entirely defeated by Sennacherib, who
afterwards marched against Hezekiah, probably to punish him for having
imprisoned Padiya. The inscriptions record this expedition, according
to the translation of the late Dr. Hincks, in the following
term:--'Hezekiah, king of Judah, who had not submitted to my
authority, forty-six of his principal cities, and fortresses and
villages depending upon them, of which I took no account, I captured
and carried away their spoil. I _shut up_ (?) himself within
Jerusalem, his capital city. The fortified towns, and the rest of his
towns, which I spoiled, I severed from his country, and gave to the
kings of Ascalon, Ekron, and Gaza, so as to make his country small. In
addition to the former tribute imposed upon their countries, I added a
tribute, the nature of which I fixed.' The next passage is somewhat
illegible, but the substance of it appears to be, that he took from
Hezekiah the treasure he had collected in Jerusalem, thirty talents of
gold and eight hundred talents of silver, the treasures of his
palace, besides his sons and his daughters, and his male and female
servants or slaves, and brought them all to Nineveh. This city itself,
however, he does not pretend to have taken.

"The translation of this passage by Sir H. Rawlinson varies in some
particulars from that given in the text. It is as follows: 'Because
Hezekiah, king of Judah, would not submit to my yoke I came up against
him, and by force of arms, and by the might of my power I took
forty-six of his fenced cities; and of the smaller towns which were
scattered about I took and plundered a countless number. And from
these places I captured and carried off, as spoil, 200,150 people, old
and young, male and female, together with horses and mares, asses and
cam