ESARHADDON (Assur-akhi-iddina, “Assur gave brothers ”) succeeded his father Sennacherib as king of Assyria, January 680 b.c. He had had to fight a battle a few weeks previously against his elder brothers, Adrammelech and Nergal·sharezer, who had murdered their father, and after their defeat fled to Armenia. The murder had probably been occasioned by the partiality shown by Sennacherib for Esarhaddon, a curious record of which has been preserved to us in a kind of will in which he bequeaths to Esarhaddon various private property. Esarhaddon seems to have been the ablest of the Assyrian monarchs; he was distinguished equally as a general and an organizer, and under him the Assyrian empire attained almost its furthest limits. His character, too, seems to have been milder than that of most other Assyrian kings, and his policy was one of conciliation. Babylon, which had been destroyed by Sennacherib in 691 b.c., was rebuilt, and made the southern capital. It was to Babylon, therefore, that Manasseh was brought (2 Chr. xxxiii. 11). Esarhaddon’s first object waa to strengthen his empire by overthrowing the rival monarchy of Egypt, and diverting the trade of Phoenicia to Nineveh. Zidon was accordingly razed to the ground, and the Assyrian arms carried as far as Cyprus; Tyre and Carchemish, however, rather than Nineveh, profited by the event. Egypt, then under the Ethiopian Tirhakah, was invaded, the Assyrians being supplied with water during their march across the desert by the king of the Arabians. Memphis and its treasures were captured, and Egypt as far as Thebes was made an Assyrian province, and divided into twenty satrapies. These twenty satrapies Herodotus has turned into a dodecarchy, and connected with the twelve courts of the Labyrinth built centuries before. ...