The Ancient Empires of the East, Herodotus I

BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. 379
into the trackless mountains of distant Media ; Kilikia and the
Tibareni were placed under an Assyrian governor, and the city of
Malatiyeh was razed to the ground. Sargon could now turn to Palestine,
where Hezekiah of Judah, encouraged by Babylonia and Egypt, had
refused to pay the tribute due to his Assyrian lord. But in 7 1 ] Sargon
swept Phoenicia and Judah, Jerusalem was captured, and the Jewish
king compelled to submit. The suppression of the revolt in Palestine
came none too soon. Aided by the Elamites, Yagina or Yugseos, a
Chaldean prince, had made himself master of Babylonia after Tiglath-
Pileser's death, and the short campaign of Sargon in 721 did not
prevent his son, Merodach-baladan, from succeeding to his power.
For twelve years Merodach-baladan was undisturbed. But he knew
well that the Assyrian king was only waiting to complete his work in
the east before asserting his claim to Babylonia. When, therefore,
the coalition of the northern nations was breaking down before the
Assyrian arms, the Babylonian king sent embassies to Judah and the
neighbouring principalities, in order to concert measures of defence
against the common enemy. Sargon, however, fell upon Palestine
before either Babylonia or Egypt was ready to move, and when
Merodach-baladan at last stirred he found himself single-handed face
to face with the whole might of the Assyrian empire. The issue could
not be doubtful, and though the Elamites hastened to his assistance he
was driven first from Babylon, and then from the cities of the south.
His last refuge. Bit-Yagina in the marshes, was taken by storm in 709,
and he himself was loaded with chains and sent to Nineveh. Sargon
now set himself to obliterate all traces of the Chaldean usurpation.
The turbulent desert tribes, whom the late king had settled in
Babylonia, were exterminated or expelled, and Sargon did his utmost
to ingratiate himself with the native priesthood. His coronation in
Babylon was like the coronation of the German emperors at Rome,
and seemed to give him that title of legitimacy which was wanting in
his own country. In the following year his pride was gratified by the
voluntary submission of Uperi of Dilvun, in the Persian Gulf, the
sacred island of Accadian mythology, as well as of the Greek and
Phoenician kings of Kypros, the island of Yavnan or the " lonians,"
where he caused a monument of himself to be erected at Kition or
Larnaka, inscribed with pseudo-archaic cuneiform characters. It was
the first direct contact between Greek and Assyrian ; the culture of
Babylonia and Assyria had long since been indirectly leavening the
Hellenic world, but the barrier that had existed between them was