I took by storm, putting to death both small and great.’ Soon after this the gallant Tirhakah died, after a reign of twenty-six years, and his successor, Urdamaneh, following in his steps, occupied Thebes, and once more attempted to wrest Egypt from the invader. Assur-bani-pal took the field in person, and again compelled his foe to retire to the far south. On Thebes he took dire vengeance. ‘My warriors attacked the city, and razed it to the ground like a thunderbolt.’ Thebes certainly was not ‘razed to the ground,’ as the proud conqueror boasts, but the destruction was terrible, and the city never recovered the blow. ‘Gold and silver, the treasures of the land, precious stones, horses, men and women, huge apes from the mountains—my soldiers took out of the midst of the city as spoil. They brought it to Nineveh, the city of my dominion, and they kissed my feet.’ Not far from Nineveh there was living at this time an exile from Israel, who may himself have seen the Egyptian prisoners and the spoil of Thebes. In his indignant denunciation of Nineveh and her king, he thus addresses the magnificent and cruel city: ‘Art thou better than No-Amon “(the city of Amen = Thebes),” that was enthroned among the streams, and the floods were round about her; her rampart was upon the river, and the waters her defence. Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength, and it was infinite; Put and Lubim were her helpers. Yet was she carried away and went into captivity; her young children were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: they cast lots for her honourable men, and her great men were bound with chains’ (Nahum iii. 8-10).[90] It was little more than half a century later that Nineveh herself fell with a mightier and more overwhelming destruction. FOOTNOTES: [79] The Egyptian Pa-Bast, or the city of Bast. It was situated in the eastern portion of the Delta, and was of immemorial antiquity. Under the kings of the twenty-second dynasty, it attained great splendour, and the worship of Bast became wide-spread and popular. Herodotus saw her magnificent temple, and the festival celebrated in her honour with such splendour and revelry. Bast was almost identical with Sechet—the lioness and the cat were sacred to her. Her worship was exceedingly popular under the later dynasties, and this led to the wide-spread reverence with which the cat was regarded in those days. [80] Probably a princess of the dynasty ruling at Tanis; the priest-kings, whose seat of power was in the far south, are less likely to have connected themselves with the kingdom of Israel. [81] The Apis must be black, with certain white marks of mystical import. [82] One mode of consulting the sacred bull was by offering him food. Germanicus is said to have thus consulted him; the Apis refused to eat, and this unfavourable reception was considered to have foreboded his untimely fate. [83] The country known as Nubia then formed part of the land of Kush, _i.e._ Ethiopia.