New Kingdom has been typically Oriental, anticipating, at every change
of monarch, the history of Islamic Empires. There is no trace of
unanimous national sentiment for the Great King. One occupant of the
throne after another gains power by grace of a party and holds it by
mercenary swords.

Another imperial weakness was even more fatal. So far as can be learned
from Assyria's own records and those of others, she lived on her
territorial empire without recognizing the least obligation to render
anything to her provinces for what they gave--not even to render what
Rome gave at her worst, namely, peace. She regarded them as existing
simply to endow her with money and men. When she desired to garrison or
to reduce to impotence any conquered district, the population of some
other conquered district would be deported thither, while the new
subjects took the vacant place. What happened when Sargon captured
Samaria happened often elsewhere (Ashurbanipal, for example, made Thebes
and Elam exchange inhabitants), for this was the only method of
assimilating alien populations ever conceived by Assyria. When she
attempted to use natives to govern natives the result was such disaster
as followed Ashurbanipal's appointment of Psammetichus, son of Necho, to
govern Memphis and the Western Delta.

Rotten within, hated and coveted by vigorous and warlike races on the
east, the north and the south, Assyria was moving steadily towards her
catastrophe amid all the glory of "Sardanapal." The pace quickened when
he was gone. A danger, which had lain long below the eastern horizon,
was now come up into the Assyrian field of vision. Since Sargon's
triumphant raids, the Great King's writ had run gradually less and less
far into Media; and by his retaliatory invasions of Elam, which
Sennacherib had provoked, Ashurbanipal not only exhausted his military