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Even the list of Herodotus requires curtailment. His Deioces, whose whole history reads more like romance than truth the organizer of a powerful monarchy in Media just at the time when Sargon was building his fortified posts in the country and peopling with his Israelite captives the old "cities of the Medes" the prince who reigned for above half a century in perfect peace with his neighbors, and who, although contemporary with Sargon, Sennacherib, Esar-haddon, and As-shur-bani-pal all kings more or less connected with Media is never heard of in any of their annals, must be relegated to the historical limbo in which repose so many "shades of mighty names;" and the Herodotean list of Median kings must at any rate, be thus far reduced.
Nothing is more evident than that during the flourishing period of Assyria under the great Sargonidae above named there was no grand Median kingdom upon the eastern flank of the empire. Such a kingdom had certainly not been formed up to B.C. 671, when Esar-haddon reduced the more distant Medes, finding them still under the government of a number of petty chiefs.
But a great change took place in the era of Narbonassar, B.C. 747, when Babylon threatened to secure its independence, and which subsequently compelled Esar-Haddon, the Assyrian monarch, to assume, in his own person, the government of Babylon, B.C. 680. He obtained a share of the captives of Nineveh, and increased the population of his capital.
Esar-haddon inflicted a defeat on the Cilicians, and then invaded the mountain region, where he took twenty-one towns and a larger number of villages, all of which he plundered and burnt. The inhabitants he carried away captive, as usual but he made no attempt to hold the ravaged districts by means of new cities or fresh colonists.
In the most flourishing period of their dominion the reigns of Sargon, Sennacherib, and Esar-haddon it prevailed most widely, and was carried to the greatest extent.
He went in person to the Assyrian capital, prostrated himself before the royal footstool, and entreated for the restoration of his gods; which Esar-haddon consented to give back, but solely on the condition that Laile became thenceforth one of his tributaries.
The first campaign of Esar-haddon against it was undertaken in B.C. 674; and it was while on the march to put down a revolt in B.C. 668 that he fell ill and died, on the 10th of Marchesvan, or October. The empire was divided between his two sons.
Thus Assur-bani-pal forgave the Egyptian prince of Sais when, like Manasseh, he had been sent in chains to Assyria after an unsuccessful rebellion, and restored him to his old principality. What was done by Assur-bani-pal might well have been done by the more merciful Esar-haddon, who showed himself throughout his reign anxious to conciliate the conquered populations.
The Canon of Ptolemy marks the year B.C. 688 as the first of an interregnum at Babylon which continues from that date till the accession of Esar-haddon in B.C. 680. The Assyrian yoke, in either case, must have been rejected; and Babylonia must have succeeded at this time in maintaining, for the space of eight years, a separate and independent existence, albeit troubled and precarious.
It may have been in connection with this restoration of Manasseh to his throne an act of doubtful policy from an Assyrian point of view that Esar-haddon determined on a project by which the hold of Assyria upon Palestine was considerably strengthened.
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