Sennacherib never recovered from the blow he had suffered in Judah. He made no more expeditions against Palestine, and during the rest of his reign Judah remained unmolested. Babylonia, moreover, gave him constant trouble. In the year after his campaign in the west (B.C. 700) a Chaldean, named Nergal-yusezib, stirred up a revolt which Sennacherib had some difficulty in suppressing. Two years later he appointed his eldest son, Assur-nadin-sumi, viceroy of Babylon. In B.C. 694, he determined to attack the followers of Merodach-Baladan in their last retreat at the mouth of the Eulæus, where land had been given to them by the Elamite king after their expulsion from Babylonia. Ships were built and manned by Phœnicians in the Persian Gulf, by means of which the settlements of the Chaldean refugees were burnt and destroyed. Meanwhile, however, Babylonia itself was invaded by the Elamites; the Assyrian viceroy was carried into captivity, and Nergal-yusezib placed on the throne of the country. He defeated the Assyrian forces in a battle near Nipur, but died soon afterwards, and was followed by Musezib-Merodach, who like his predecessor is called Suzub in Sennacherib's inscriptions. He defied the Assyrian power for nearly four years. But in B.C. 690 the combined Babylonian and Elamite army was overthrown in the decisive battle of Khalule, and before another year was past Sennacherib had captured Babylon, and given it up to fire and sword. Its inhabitants were sold into slavery, and the waters of the Araxes canal allowed to flow over its ruins. Sennacherib now assumed the title of king of Babylonia, but with the exception of a campaign into the Cilician mountains he seems to have undertaken no more military expeditions. The latter years of his life were passed in constructing canals and aqueducts, in embanking the Tigris, and in rebuilding the palace of Nineveh on a new and sumptuous scale. On the 20th of Tebet, or December, B.C. 681, he was murdered by his two elder sons, Adrammelech and Nergal-sharezer, who were jealous of the favour shown to their younger brother, Esar-haddon. Esar-haddon was at the time conducting a campaign against Erimenas, king of Armenia, to whom his insurgent brothers naturally fled. Between seven and eight weeks after the murder of the old king, a battle was fought near Malatiyeh, in Kappadokia, between the veterans of Esar-haddon and the forces under his brothers and Erimenas, which ended in the complete defeat of the latter. Esar-haddon was proclaimed king, and the event proved that a wiser choice could not have been made.