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 Judaea, 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 biblical narrative with the Pelusium of Herodotus. It is probable that each of the two nations referred the scene of the miracle to a different locality.