12 
precious stones, and also his daughters and wives, with male 
and female slaves. This agrees remarkably with the narrative 
in 2 Kings xviii. 13—14: In the fourteenth year of King 
Hezekiah did Sennacherib, King of Assyria, come up against 
all the fenced cities of Judah and took them. And Hezekiah, 
King of Judah, sent to the King of Assyria to Lachish, saying 
I have offended ; return from me ; that which thou puttest on 
me will I bear. And the King of Assyria appointed unto 
Hezekiah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of 
gold.” To meet this demand, Hezekiah was compelled not 
only to strip his treasury of all its silver, hut to cut off the gold 
from the doors and pillars of the Temple. It is remarkable 
that in the Second Book of Chronicles no mention is made of 
this submission of Hezekiah. It is equally remarkable, though 
easy of explanation in both cases, that no cylinder or other 
monument records the second expedition of Sennacherib 
against Jerusalem, which ended so disastrously for his army, 
as related in both Kings and Chronicles. Of the reality of his 
discomfiture, however, we have the evidence of Herodotus 
(ii. 141), who ascribes it, on the authority of the Egyptian 
priests, to a very different cause, the gnawing of the how 
strings and shield straps of his soldiers by an invasion of mice, 
which left them a defenceless prey to their enemies. 
No Assyrian monument makes any mention of the invasion 
of Judah by the army of Esarhaddon, the successor of Sen¬ 
nacherib, the captivity of Manasseh, and his subsequent restor¬ 
ation, as related in 2 Chron. xxxiii. 2, perhaps because the 
King himself took no part in it. The records of the two suc¬ 
ceeding reigns before the overthrow of the Assyrian empire 
exhibit no points of contact with the Scripture history, but 
Babylon was evidently aiming at independence, and the 
Median power growing in the North. Their united forces 
brought the kingdom of Assyria to an end about the close of 
the 7th century b. c. The subject of the history of Babylon, 
as illustrated by cuneiform inscription, is too wide to be entered 
upon. 
When the new materials for the history of the nations using 
the cuneiform character, which their records present, were 
