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Thebes itself was taken and Tirhakah retreated into Ethiopia. Esar-haddon thus became master of all Egypt, at least as far as Thebes or Diospolis, the No or No-Amon of scripture. He then broke up the country into twenty governments, appointing in each town a ruler who bore the title of king, but placing all the others to a certain extent under the authority of the prince who reigned at Memphis.
This expedition was followed by one or two petty wars in the north-west and the north-east after which Esar-haddon, probably about his sixth year B.C. 675, made an expedition into Chaldaea.
Advancing civilization, more abundant literature, improved art, had not softened the tempers of the Assyrians, nor rendered them more tender and compassionate in their treatment of captured enemies. Sennacherib and Esar-haddon show, indeed, in this respect, some superiority to former kings.
The expedition next mentioned on Esar-haddon's principal cylinder is one presenting some difficulty. The scene of it is a country called Bazu, which is said to be "remote, on the extreme confines of the earth, on the other side of the desert." None of the kings of Assyria, down to the time of Esar-haddon, had ever penetrated so far.
With the consideration of these two events the military history of his reign will terminate. The conquest of Egypt by Esar-haddon, though concealed from Herodotus, and not known even to Diodorus, was no secret to the more learned Greeks, who probably found an account of the expedition in the great work of Berosus.
This judicious step had all the success that he could have expected or desired. Esar-haddon, having conquered the ill-judging Nebo-zirzi-sidi, made over to the more clear-sighted Nahid-Marduk the whole of the maritime region that had been ruled by his brother.
At the same time the Assyrian monarch deposed a Chaldaean prince who had established his authority over a small town in the neighborhood of Babylon, and set up another in his place, thus pursuing the same system of division in Babylonia which we shall hereafter find that he pursued in Egypt. Esar-haddon after this was engaged in a war with Edom.
Abdi-Milkut king of Sidon, and Sandu-arra king of the adjoining part of Lebanon, had formed an alliance and revolted from the Assyrians, probably during the troubles which ensued on Sennacherib's death. Esar-haddon attacked Sidon first, and soon took the city; but Aladi-Milkut made his escape to an island Aradus or Cyprus where, perhaps, he thought himself secure.
It was very much inferior to the ordinary palatial edifices of the Assyrians, being in fact only a house which Esar-haddon built as a dwelling for his eldest son during his own lifetime. Like the more imposing buildings of this king, it was probably unfinished at his decease.
They exhibit him to us as a warrior more enterprising and more powerful than any of his predecessors, and as one who enlarged in almost every direction the previous limits of the empire. In Egypt he completed the work which his father Esar-haddon had begun, and established the Assyrian dominion for some years, not only at Sais and at Memphis, but at Thebes.
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