Such was the empire inherited by Sargon's son, Sennacherib. Not content,
he would go farther afield to make a conquest which has never remained
long in the hands of an Asiatic power. It was not only lust of loot,
however, which now urged Assyria towards Egypt. The Great Kings had long
found their influence counteracted in southern Syria by that of the
Pharaohs. Princes of both Hebrew states, of the Phoenician and the
Philistine cities and even of Damascus, had all relied at one time or
another on Egypt, and behind their combinations for defence and their
individual revolts Assyria had felt the power on the Nile. The latter
generally did no more in the event to save its friends than it had done
for Israel when Shalmaneser IV beleaguered, and Sargon took and
garrisoned, Samaria; but even ignorant hopes and empty promises of help
cause constant unrest. Therefore Sennacherib, after drastic chastisement
of the southern states in 701 (both Tyre and Jerusalem, however, kept
him outside their walls), and a long tussle with Chaldaean Babylon, was
impelled to set out in the last year, or last but one, of his reign for
Egypt. In southern Palestine he was as successful as before, but,
thereafter, some signal disaster befell him. Probably an epidemic
pestilence overtook his army when not far across the frontier, and he
returned to Assyria only to be murdered.
He bequeathed the venture to the son who, after defeating his parricide
brothers, secured his throne and reigned eleven years under a name which
it has been agreed to write Esarhaddon. So soon as movements in Urartu
and south-western Asia Minor had been suppressed, and, more important,
Babylon, which his father had dishonoured, was appeased, Esarhaddon took
up the incomplete conquest. Egypt, then in the hands of an alien dynasty
from the Upper Nile and divided against itself, gave him little trouble
at first. In his second expedition (670) he reached Memphis itself,
carried it by assault, and drove the Cushite Tirhakah past Thebes to the
Cataracts. The Assyrian proclaimed Egypt his territory and spread the
net of Ninevite bureaucracy over it as far south as the Thebaid; but
neither he nor his successors cared to assume the style and titles of
the Pharaohs, as Persians and Greeks, wiser in their generations, would
do later on. Presently trouble at home, excited by a son rebelling after
the immemorial practice of the east, recalled Esarhaddon to Assyria;
Tirhakah moved up again from the south; the Great King returned to meet
him and died on the march.
[Plate 4: ASSYRIAN EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT. EARLY YEARS OF
ASHURBANIPAL]
But Memphis was reoccupied by Esarhaddon's successor, and since the
latter took and ruined Thebes also, and, after Tirhakah's death, drove
the Cushites right out of Egypt, the doubtful credit of spreading the
territorial empire of Assyria to the widest limits it ever reached falls
to Ashurbanipal. Even Tyre succumbed at last, and he stretched his
sphere of influence over Asia Minor to Lydia. First of Assyrian kings he
could claim Elam with its capital Susa as his own (after 647), and in
the east he professed overlordship over all Media. Mesopotamian arts and
letters now reached the highest point at which they had stood since
Hammurabi's days, and the fame of the wealth and luxury of "Sardanapal"
went out even into the Greek lands. About 660 B.C. Assyria seemed in a
fair way to be mistress of the desirable earth.