After reigning gloriously over Assyria for seventeen years, and for the last five of them over Babylonia also, Sargon died, leaving his crown to the most celebrated of all the Assyrian Monarchs, his son Sennacherib, who began to reign B.C. 705.  The long notices which we possess of this monarch in the books of the Old Testament, his intimate connection with the Jews, the fact that he was the object of a preternatural exhibition of the Divine displeasure, and the remarkable circumstance that this miraculous interposition appears under a thin disguise in the records of the Greeks, have always attached an interest to his name which the kings of this remote period and distant region very rarely awaken.  It has also happened, curiously enough, that the recent Mesopotamian researches have tended to give to Sennacherib a special prominence over other Assyrian monarchs, more particularly in this country, our great excavator having devoted his chief efforts to the disinterment of a palace of this king’s construction, which has supplied to our National Collection almost one-half of its treasures.  The result is, that while the other sovereigns who bore sway in Assyria are generally either wholly unknown, or float before the mind’s eye as dim and shadowy forms, Sennacherib stands out to our apprehension as a living and breathing man, the impersonation of all that pride and greatness which we assign to the Ninevite kings, the living embodiment of Assyrian haughtiness, Assyrian violence, and Assyrian power.  The task of setting forth the life and actions of this prince, which the course of the history now imposes on its compiler, if increased in interest, is augmented also in difficulty, by the grandeur of the ideal figure which has possession of men’s minds.

The reign of Sennacherib lasted twenty-four years, from B.C. 705 to B.C. 681.  The materials which we possess for his history consist of a record written in his fifteenth year, describing his military expeditions and his buildings up to that time; of the Scriptural notices to which reference has already been made; of some fragments of Polyhistor preserved by Eusebius; and of the well-known passage of Herodotus which contains a mention of his name.  From these documents we shall be able to make out in some detail the chief actions of the earlier portion of his reign, but they fail to supply any account of his later years, unless we may assign to that portion of his life some facts mentioned by Polyhistor, to which there is no allusion in the native records.

It seems probable that troubles both abroad and at home greeted the new reign.  The Canon of Ptolemy shows a two years’ interregnum at Babylon (from B.C. 704 to B.C. 702) exactly coinciding with the first two years of Sennacherib.  This would imply a revolt of Babylon from Assyria soon after his accession, and either a period of anarchy or rapid succession of pretenders, none of whom held the throne for so long a time as a twelvemonth.  Polyhistor gives