of Asshur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.

Before this disaster occurred Sennacherib had to invade Babylonia
again, for the vassal king, Bel-ibni, had allied himself with the
Chaldaeans and raised the standard of revolt. The city of Babylon was
besieged and captured, and its unfaithful king deported with a number
of nobles to Assyria. Old Merodach Baladan was concerned in the plot
and took refuge on the Elamite coast, where the Chaldaeans had formed
a colony. He died soon afterwards.

Sennacherib operated in southern Babylonia and invaded Elam. But ere
he could return to Assyria he was opposed by a strong army of allies,
including Babylonians, Chaldaeans, Aramaeans, Elamites, and Persians,
led by Samunu, son of Merodach Baladan. A desperate battle was fought.
Although Sennacherib claimed a victory, he was unable to follow it up.
This was in 692 B.C. A Chaldaean named Mushezib-Merodach seized the
Babylonian throne.

In 691 B.C. Sennacherib again struck a blow for Babylonia, but was
unable to depose Mushezib-Merodach. His opportunity came, however, in
689 B.C. Elam had been crippled by raids of the men of Parsua
(Persia), and was unable to co-operate with the Chaldaean king of
Babylon. Sennacherib captured the great commercial metropolis, took
Mushezib-Merodach prisoner, and dispatched him to Nineveh. Then he
wreaked his vengeance on Babylon. For several days the Assyrian
soldiers looted the houses and temples, and slaughtered the
inhabitants without mercy. E-sagila was robbed of its treasures,
images of deities were either broken in pieces or sent to Nineveh: the
statue of Bel-Merodach was dispatched to Asshur so that he might take
his place among the gods who were vassals of Ashur. "The city and its
houses," Sennacherib recorded, "from foundation to roof, I destroyed
them, I demolished them, I burned them with fire; walls, gateways,
sacred chapels, and the towers of earth and tiles, I laid them low and
cast them into the Arakhtu."[536]

"So thorough was Sennacherib's destruction of the city in 689 B.C.,"
writes Mr. King, "that after several years of work, Dr. Koldewey
concluded that all traces of earlier buildings had been destroyed on
that occasion. More recently some remains of earlier strata have been
recognized, and contract-tablets have been found which date f