the West, and it was just Esar-haddon who rebuilt Babylon after its
destruction by his father, and made it his residence during a part of
the year. Moreover, other instances are known in which a revolted prince
was reinstated in his former power. 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. It is even
possible that Assur-bani-pal himself was the sovereign against whom
Manasseh rebelled and before whom he was brought. In this case
Manasseh's revolt would have been part of that general revolt of the
Assyrian provinces under the leadership of Babylon, which shook the
empire to its foundations, and in which the Assyrian king expressly
tells us Palestine joined. The Jewish king would thus have been carried
to Babylon after the capture of that city by the Assyrian forces of
Assur-bani-pal.

But the recent history of Oriental archaeology is strewn with instances
of the danger of historical scepticism where the evidence is defective,
and a single discovery may at any moment throw new and unexpected light
on the materials we possess. Who, for instance, could have supposed that
the name of the Israelites would ever be found on an Egyptian monument?
They were but a small and despised body of public slaves, settled in
Goshen, on the extreme skirts of the Egyptian territory. And yet in 1886
a granite stela was found by Professor Flinders Petrie containing a hymn
of victory in honour of Meneptah the son of Ramses II., and declaring
how, among other triumphs, "the Israelites" had been left "without
seed." The names of all the other vanquished or subject peoples
mentioned in the hymn have attached to them the determinative of place;