Sennacherib had been compelled to retire from Syria before the Egyptians and Ethiopians, before the army of Tirhaka. If he did not seek to compensate this failure by new campaigns to Syria, if he omitted to attempt the subjugation of Syria a second time, the reason obviously lay in the fact, that his arms were occupied nearer home by the rebellion of Babylonia, the attitude of Merodach Baladan in South Chaldæa, and his combination with Elam. We are acquainted with the series of rebellions and struggles which Sennacherib had to meet here, till in the year 694 B.C. he finally succeeded in overcoming the confederates leagued against him in a great battle, and capturing the city of Babylon (p. 118). Yet even after these important successes, Sennacherib's armies, so far as we see, never appeared again in Syria. The Books of the Hebrews tell us nothing of any further attacks of Sennacherib on Judah: they merely say: "Sennacherib afterwards remained in Nineveh." The accounts preserved in the inscriptions of the campaigns of Sennacherib do not go beyond the capture of Babylon: the account which reaches furthest down is dated 691 B.C. Of the next ten years, during which Sennacherib continued to sit on the throne of Assyria, we have no connected information. Even the inscriptions which collect the acts of Sennacherib, the inscription of Nebbi Yunus, and the inscription of Bavian, end their account of his military deeds with the battle of Chaluli and the capture of Babylon. Indications lead to the conclusion that Sennacherib, even in this last decade of his reign, was so actively engaged in contests on the lower Euphrates and against Elam, that he was compelled to leave Syria to her fate. The fragment of an inscription speaks of Sennacherib's wars against a queen of the Arabs; in an inscription of his successor also we hear of a conquest of Sennacherib in Arabia.[314] Tiglath Pilesar had fought against Samsieh, the queen of the Arabs, Sargon had received tribute from her, and Sargon and Tiglath Pilesar had also received the tribute of the Sabæans.[315] Herodotus, as we saw (p. 141), calls Sennacherib the king of "the Arabians and Assyrians," from which we may conclude that in the tradition of Egypt, on which this account given by Herodotus of Sennacherib was based, he was a ruler to whom a considerable part of Arabia was subject. In the inscriptions of the successor of Sennacherib, we find at his accession Nabuzir, a son of Merodach Baladan, in possession of Bit Yakin, the land of the sea, the old domain of his race.[316] He must, therefore, have won it back in Sennacherib's time, and though he may have had to pay tribute he must have maintained his conquest. Lastly, we hear that Halludus, the successor of Uman Minanu of Elam, made a vigorous resistance to Sennacherib, and that Sennacherib won from him Bit Imbi, a border fortress.[317]