So far the inquiry was confined to the collation of Scripture, the Canon, and Berosus. It has passed those limits MOW. The information obtained from Assyrian monuments can no longer be ignored, now that the substantial reality of their decipherment is a fact not to be gainsaid but by the wilfully blind.
(t.) In the great inscription of Khorsabad, Salles iv., vii., viii., x., published with interlines decipherment and Latin translation by Oppert and Menant (Fastes de Sargon, 1863), the king Sargina (Is. XL I) relates, p. 7, how he made war upon Alarudak Sal-idin, son of yakin, who for twelve years, against the will of the gods, had forcibly held Babylon.' In another large inscription, Salles v., xiii., xiv., which, as detailing the campaigns year by year, may be called the Annals of Sargon, the defeat and dethronement of this Marudak Bal idin are related under Sargon's twelfth year. Hence it appears that Sargon and M. B. began to reign in the same year. And the inscription, in giving to this M. B. a reign of twelve years, is held, and justly, to prove him identical with Mar dokempad, to whom, and to no other of its Baby lonian kings, the Canon gives twelve years of reign. So, the epoch of Sargon is defined to the year 721 B.C.
(2.) From the lists of the eponymi, or high officers by whose names the years were designated (as at Athens by archons, at Rome by consuls, etc.), it appears that Sargina reigned 17, or, accord ing to one copy (Canon 4), 18 years. See the lists as rendered by Sir H. Rawlinson in Athen. May and July '62, and by Oppert in fuser. des Sar gonides, p. 15, ff. (but comp. Athen. '63, p. 245, note 13). Hence the reign of Sennacherib would begin 704 or 703 B.C.
(3.) Sennacherib, in his Annals (on the Taylor Cylinder,' dated in his 15th year), records that in his first year* he vanquished Marudak Bal-idin, king of lower Chaldea : the Bellino Cylinder,' dated in his 4th year, records further that he gave the vacant throne to a certain officer whose name Sir H. Rawlinson originally read Bel-adon, now Bel-ipni or Bel-abana, Athen. Aug. 1862, p. 85 ; Oppert, Bel-ibnou ; but Dr. Hincks reads it Bel-ib, and so Brandis, fiber den hist. Gewinn, etc., p. 44, note. In the 3d year (`Taylor Cylinder') is re lated the expedition against Syria, with the defeat and submission of Hezekiah ; in the 4th year, Marudak Bal-idin reappears, is again defeated, and Sennacherib's son Assurnadin is placed on the throne of Babylon (Oppert, Inscr. des Sang., p. 41,
ff., comp. Talbot, Yournal R. Asiat. Soc., xix. 135, ff.) But the Canon has a Edibles king in Babylon, and with him this Bel-ib is identified on these grounds : (a), Belibus in the Canon stands at 702 B.C. Bel-ib was made king at the end of the first or early in the second year of Sennacherib, i.e. (if Sargon has IS years as in Canon 4), late in 703 or early in 702 B.C. Or thus : the Canon has 12 + 5 + 2 = 19 years from 1 Mardokempad, which is 1 Sargon, to 1 Belibus—the monuments show the same interval of 19 years from 1 Sargina to end of Sennacherib, i.e., to epoch i Bel-ib. (b), In the Canon, Belibus reigns 3 years—in the Annals, the reign of Bel-ib reaches its third year ; beginning at Sennacherib fin. it ends in 4 Sennacherib. (c), In the Annals, Bel-ib is succeeded by Assur-nadin—in the Canon, Belibus by AIIAPANAAIOE, which is easily explained as a corruption of AZZAPA NAAIO.E, Assar-nadlos.* Or thus : the Canon from I Mardokempad (= 1 Sargon) to 1 Assar nadios has 22 years—the inscriptions from 1 Sargon to 4 Sennacherib fin. = i Assurnadin, 18 + 4=22 years. Even the account in Berosus agrees so far as this, that it has an Elibus ( = Belibus) with a third year of reign, and with Sennacherib's son Asordanes for his successor. These coincidences are too close to be accidental. In the face of these it is useless to contend (as v. Gumpach does) for the lower date given by Polyhistor's misreported summation. The casual partial resemblance of the name Mesessi-mordak counts for nothing ; the Apis-stehe prove only that Tirhaka reigned in Egypt not before 697 B.C. at the earliest ; it is as king of Ethiopia that he appears in the Biblical story together with a contemporaneous king of Egypt [CHRONOLOGY, sec. 14] ; and in fact Sen nacherib's own annals of the 3d year distinguish a king of Egypt and a king of Mirukha (Merge, Ethiopia) ; Sir H. Rawlinson, Trans. R. S. Lit., vii. 154 ; Oppert, laser. des Sarg., 44.