His camp fell into the possession of the victor, with all its
contents--chariots, horses, mules, camels, and herds of cattle belonging
to the commissariat department of the army: Babylon threw open its gates
without resistance, hoping, no doubt, that Sennacherib would at length
resolve to imitate the precedent set by his father and retain the royal
dignity for himself. He did, indeed, consent to remit the punishment for
this first insurrection, and contented himself with pillaging the
royal treasury and palace, but he did not deign to assume the crown,
conferring it on Belibni, a Babylonian of noble birth, who had been
taken, when quite a child, to Nineveh and educated there under the eyes
of Sargon.*

* The name is transcribed Belibos in Greek, and it seems as
if the Assyrian variants justify the pronunciation Belibush.

While he was thus reorganising the government, his generals were
bringing the campaign to a close: they sacked, one after another,
eighty-nine strongholds and eight hundred and twenty villages of
the Kaldâ; they drove out the Arabian and Aramaean garrisons which
Merodach-baladan had placed in the cities of Karduniash, in Urak, Nipur,
Kuta, and Kharshag-kalamma, and they re-established Assyrian supremacy
over all the tribes on the east of the Tigris up to the frontiers of
Elam, the Tumuna, the Ubudu, the Gambulu, and the Khindaru, as also over
the Nabataeans and Hagarenes, who wandered over the deserts of Arabia to
the west of the mouths of the Euphrates. The booty was enormous: 208,000
prisoners, both male and female, 7200 horses, 11,073 asses, 5230 camels,
80,100 oxen, 800,500 sheep, made their way like a gigantic horde of
emigrants to Assyria under the escort of the victorious army. Meanwhile
the Khirimmu remained defiant, and showed not the slightest intention
to submit: their strongholds had to be attacked and the inhabitants