of the 800 given in the Assyrian document (2 Kings xviii.
14), and authorities have tried to reconcile this divergence
by speculating on the different values represented by a
talent in different countries and epochs.

Hezekiah issued from the struggle with his territory curtailed and his
kingdom devastated; the last obstacle which stood in the way of the
Assyrians' victorious advance fell with him, and Sennacherib could
now push forward with perfect safety towards the Nile. He had, indeed,
already planned an attack on Egypt, and had reached the isthmus, when a
mysterious accident arrested his further progress. The conflict on
the plains of Altaku had been severe; and the army, already seriously
diminished by its victory, had been still further weakened during the
campaign in Judæa, and possibly the excesses indulged in by the soldiery
had developed in them the germs of one of those terrible epidemics which
had devastated Western Asia several times in the course of the century:
whatever may have been the cause, half the army was destroyed by
pestilence before it reached the frontier of the Delta, and Sennacherib
led back the shattered remnants of his force to Nineveh.*

* The Assyrian texts are silent about this catastrophe, and
the sacred books of the Hebrews seem to refer it to the camp
at Libnah in Palestine (2 Kings xix. 8-35); the Egyptian
legend related by Herodotus seems to prove that it took
place near the Egyptian frontier. Josephus takes the king as
far as Pelusium, and describes the destruction of the
Assyrian army as taking place in the camp before this town.
He may have been misled by the meaning "mud," which attaches
to the name of Libnah as well as to that of Pelusium. Oppert
upheld his opinion, and identified the Libnah of the