The deportation was small, even when aug mented by that of Pul, far less than has oc curred in recent cultured times. It Was' rather by absorption at home that the (ten -tribes were lost." For ages this Sargon was known from Is. xx, 1 as conqueror of Ashdod (711). His name was next discovered when Botta, exhumed his palace in 1845. It is Sennacherib (706-681) that bulks largest in Judah's history. 'His in scription relattng to his campaign of 701- tells of his delivering Ekron's king "Padi my ally* from nHezekiah, the Juckean," —to whcirn his people Thad delivered him" in (fetters' of iron," --- ((out of the midst of Jerusalem"; that lie captured 046 of his (Hezekiah's) strongholds,* n200,150 people, . . . I brought ant of their midst" with countless nbooty." (Himself I shut up like a caged bird in Jerusalem." "Deserted') by "Urbi and his favorite soldiers,* Hezekiah "with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver," and endless treasures, "also his daughters, the women of his palace, male and female musicians he seat after me to Nineveh, my capital, and sent his messenger to present the gift and to do homage.* From this much-debated inscrip tion it would appear, quite in accord with Is. xxxvii, and 2 Kings xviii, xix, that Jerusalem did not actually fall to the Assyrian, but that he departed to Nineveh, leaving his army behind. However, the extent of Hezekiah's disaster is only vaguely hinted in the Scrip ture, and no intimation of the angelic slaughter of 185,000 Assyrians is found in the wedge writing. Some, as Meinhold, would accept this latter, whose minuteness inspires credence, at its face value and regard the Biblical account as confused or garbled; others, as Winckler, refer 2 Kings xix, 9-36, to a second expedition, about 691 (when Tirhakah first ascended the Ethiopian throne), and the inscription to the first expedition only,— though this seems im possible, as the return of Sennacherib to Nineveh (2 Kings xix, 36) is clearly implied in the close of his inscription. This latter how ever strongly suggests that something happened to the. Assyrian to call him away, and G. A. Smith, followed by others, in view of a passage in Herodotus (II, 141) telling how Egypt was delivered from Sennacherib's host by field-mice that ate up their quivers, bowstrings and shield straps "in the night," conjectures that it was the bubonic plague that paralyzed the "might of the Gentile," and became in the Egyptian tradi tion a "multitude of field-mice," vehicles of the pestilence, but in Hebrew imagination the Angel of Yahveh. In these accounts, then, we "see men as trees walking.* An inscription of Esar haddon (680-669) names "Manassah King of Judea" as second among "22 kings of Hittite lands," whom “I overthrew," confirming 2 Chr. xxxiii, 11, and Ezra iv, 2. Asurbanipal (669 626) also appears in Ezra iv, 10, characteristi cally disguised as "the great and noble Osnap par." In Is. xxxix, 1, 2 Kings xx, 12, 2 Chr. xxxii, 31, we find Merodach-Baladan sending an embassy to congratulate Hezekiah on re covery from illness; Sennacherib's inscription of 703 tells of the overthrow of the former at Kish; the embassy was doubtless to induce the latter to rebel. The many inscriptions of the highly religious* Nebukadrezar (Nabu kiidurri-uzur, "Nabu, border-mine defend") re late chiefly to his buildings (Dan. iv, 30) and pass by his Judaian conquests.
Inscriptions that merely contain Bible names are too abundant for any specification. The inscription, nscription, which may illustrate 2 Kings xx, 20, has already been mentioned. The brated "Stone of Mesha" the King of Moab mentioned in 2 Kings iii, 4, discovered by Klein 1868, and after serious mishap finally lodged in the Louvre, contains a long inscription con firming the subjection of Moab to the house of Omri "for forty years" and its deliverance. un der Mesha, whose narrative is at best tangent to that in 2 Kings; the two scarcely at all overlap, their viewpoints being wide apart.
It remains to add that the inscriptions show clearly enough that Babylon fell to Cyrus under the usurper Nabuna'idu (not to Darius, as in Dan. v, 31, not under Belshazzar, as in Dan. v, 30), who (and not Nebukadrezzar as in Dan. v, 11-18) was father of Belshazzar. They also make clear how the later Isaiah could speak so knowingly of Cyrus (xliv, 28-xlv, 5).
On the other hand, Pinches and Clay have pub lished two tablets which may indicate that Bel shazzar was in some way
with his father Nabuna'id in sovereignty. On the whole, it seems likely that the author of
Another important matter is that of literary resemblance or contrast. The vast Egyptian and Assyrian literatures continually emerging to light raise this question afresh at each new decipherment. With the first chapters in Gen esis one must compare the Seven Tablets of the Babylonian Epic of Creation. Minute treatment is not possible in this connection; suffice it that critics feel sure that there is intimate relation at a number of points, though the discrepancies are far greater and more numerous. Thus, the two accounts agree in assuming a primaeval chaos of waters,—in Hebrew TehOm, in Baby lonian (Mummu) Thim-at, cognate terms, like English morrow and German Morgen. Bnt Genesis is monotheistic, while the epic is poly theistic, and though vivid in its depiction of the god Marduk's struggle and triumph, it by no means approaches the serene sublimity of the fiats of Elohim. Yet the notion of cosmic Creation as a victorious struggle against Chaos had a charm of its own and seems to appear here and there in the Scriptures, as in Job ix, 13-14, where "Rahab's helpers" seem to be "the helpers" of Tiamat in Tablet IV, 105-18. Also in Ps. lxxxix, 10, and Is, li, 9, Rahab is like Tiamat. Similarly Job xxvi, 13, seems to recall Marduk's cleaving of Tiamat (IV, 93-104, 135 140). Once more, the ((Leviathan" of Ps. body, 13, 14, Job iii, 8; xli, 19-21, Is. xxvii, 1, remind us of Kingu in the Tablets, the spouse of Tiamat. Lastly, to the present writer the noble 93d Psalm, especially in verses 3, 4, appears to re echo and glorify the triumph of the cosmogonic God over the turbulent chaos (of Tehom). In another tablet is found a distant resemblance to the second account of creation in Gen. ii, 4ff, as well as in the. great Gilgamesh-epic, where "Aruru laved her hands, Clay she pinched off and spat thereon, Eabani, a hero she created, Exalted offspring, with Ninib's might.° Once more in the myth of Adapa, who °broke the Southwind's wing,° critics detect sundry sugges tions of the fall of man in Gen. iii. In spite of countless disparities, the atmospheres are alike. Moreover, the antediluvian patriarchs are matched in the long-lived Babylonian kings of the tablets and of Berossos, and even their names have been equated by Barton, extremely interesting results, which carmot be detailed in these columns. Very striking resemblances to the account of the Flood in Genesis are found in the 205 lines of the immense Gilgamesh-epic dating from Babylon, 7th century, but doubtless elaborating far older material. Ut-Napishtim (day-life), or in the Nippurian version, Ziu giddu (life-day prolonged) figures in place of Noah. The essential features of the Bible story all appear in the Babylonian, along with plentiful polytheistic additions: the warning from heaven to the hero alone, the builcling and pitching of the vessel of safety, the embarka tion, the °mighty rainstorm,° the ruin it wrought, the cessation when °the sea c,almed, the destruction abated, the flood ceased,D the settling on the mount (Nizir), the sending forth and return of dove and swallow, the non-retum of the raven, the disembarking and sacrifice, not however the rainbow (but compare the (Iliad,) XI, 27f : Three on a side, and they likened to rainbows set of Kronion Ifigh. on a cloud, as a marvel to mortals articulate-speak mg).