the help of Hezekiah, but they were defeated at Eltekeh and driven back. Sen. thereupon swept the country of Judah, capturing 46 fortresses and carrj-ing into exile 200,150 person.s. While he was besieging Lachish, Hezekiah sent rich presents to him, in the vain hope of buying oft' his attack. The presents consisted of 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, precious stones, couches and seats inlaid with ivory, girls and eunuchs, male and female musicians (?). But all was of no avaU: Lachish was taken and plundered, and the Rab- shakeh or Vizier sent a letter to Hezekiah de- manding the surrender of his city (2 K 19' ff.). Then came the catastrophe, which obliged Sen. to leave Judah without punishing his rebellious vassal, and over which he draws a veil of silence in his annals. The events and the date of this campaign are fully discussed by FrASek in a series of articles in the Expos. Times, xii., xiii. (1901-2). Prdsek contends that there were two campaigns of Sennacherib to the West and against Judah.
The following year he again entered Babylonia, of which he maae his son Assur-nadin-sum king, and drove Merodach-baladan out of the marshes. A few years later he had a Heet of ships built on the Euphrates, at Til-Barsip near Birejik, which he manned with lonians and Phoenicians. They then sailed across the Persian Gulf to the moutn of the Euheus, where the followers of Merodach- baladan had taken refuge, and burnt and plun- dered the Chald:i;an colony. In return for this Assur-nadin-sum was carried off to Elam, and the Elaraites made Nergal-yusezib king in his place (B.C. 694). The usurper was defeated and captured by the Assyrians, but with little result, since the Elamites remained all-powerful in Babylonia for a time. In B.C. 691, however. Sen. again marched into the country. At the battle of KhalulS the Bab. and Elamite forces were obliged to retreat after a hard-fought day, but two years more were required before Babylonia could be finally sub- dued. Sen. had already attempted to invade Elam, but the winter had set in before he began his march, and the snow obliged him to return. At last, in B.C. 689, Babylon was taken and razed to the ground, and the canal Arakhtu, which flowed by it, was choked with its ruins.
On the 20th of Tebet, B.C. 681, Sen. wasmnrdered by his two sons (2 K 19^). The deed seems to have been prom])ted by jealousy of their brother Esarhaddon, who was at the time conducting a campaign against Ararat. For 42 days the con- spirators held Nineveh ; then they were compelled to Hy to the king of Ararat and seek his aid against their brother. (The subject of the assas- sination of Sennacherib, and esp. the question whether this was the work of one or of two of his sons, is treated in art. Sharezer, No. 1).
Sen. was vain and boastful, with none of the military skill and endurance which distinguished his father. He built the palace of Kouyunjik at Nineveh, 1500 ft. long by 700 ft. broad, and restored a second palace on the mound of Nebi- yunus. He constructed brick embankments along the sides of the Tigris, and repaired the ancient aqueducts which had gone to decay. To him also Avas due the great wall of Nineveh, 8 miles ia circumference. A. H. Sayce.
SEORIM (oii'^ ; B 'Ztwpelfi, A Teaplv). — The name of the fomth of the twenty-four classes of priests, 1 Ch 24».
SEPARATION. — For ' separation * In the sense of .■nj, see artt. RED Hkifer, p. 208", UNCLEANNESS, and in sense of IJJ art. Naziritb.
SEPHAR {.Tj^q [with n locale] ; LXX A Za<t>^ipa\
SEPHARAD
SEnUAGIXT
437
Gn lO". — Given as a limit of the territory occupied by tho Joktanides, and apparently identified with the Eastern mountain. This place is ordinarily identified (since tlie time of Fresnel, ap. Ges. The.f.) with Zafar, the name of two places of im- portance in S. Arabia — one of them the capital of the Himyarites, near Sana in Yemen, the other a coast town in the district of Shihr, to the extreme east of Hiidramaut, and, indeed, a place, from its situation with regard to Hadramaut and the great Dabna, likely to serve as a landmark. So in the Taj al-'arua (iii. 370) this place is said to be ' at the extreme end of Yemen.' Wellsted ( Travels, n. 153) says of it : ' Dofar is situated beneath a lofty mountain ; the country around is well culti- vated,' but it only deserves to be called ' a miser- able village.' Apparently, then, with the depopu- lation of S. Arabia that has gone on for some centuries, the place has declined from the import- ance which the Arabic geographers sometmies assign to it. Against this identification Glaser (Skizze, ii. 437) urges that we cannot prove Zafar to have existed at so early a period ; liut we also have no record of its foundation. The repre- sentation of the Arabic Z by o is surprising, out scarcely constitutes a serious objection, when the situation of the place corresponds so well with what the Biblical writer intends.
D. S. Margoliouth. SEPHARAD (-019 ; BA 'Etppadi, Q* Za<papi5, Q* ZippaBd ; Vulg. in Bospuro). — Ob*" speaks of Jews ' who were in captivity in the land of Sepharad. Sepharad or [see Driver, LOT' 320] Siphan'd is the Saparda of the Assyr. inscriptions, who, in concert with the Kiramerians, Medes, and Minni, attacked Assyria in the reign of Esarhaddon. Their allies would seem to indicate that they came from tlie north-east of Assyria ; but in thi! inscriptions of Darius H^staspis at Behistun and Naksh-i-Kustem the province of Sparda is named between Ewpt and Ionia in one instance, and between Cappadocia and Ionia in another. A Bab. inscription (Km. 710. 31, 36) states that in 'the 37th year of Antiochus and Soleucu.s, the 9th day of Adar, the governor of Chaldtea and an ofHcer of the king, who had gone to the country of Sapardu in the previous year to meet the king, returned to the city of Seleucia.' We may gather from this that the district was in the northern part of Asia Minor, though, in the annals of Sargon, Saparda is placed to the ea.st of As.syria. The Targum of Jonathan identified Sepharad with Spain, probably in con- sequence of the similarity of the name to that of Hesperis ; hence the Spanish Jews are at i)rosent known as Sephardira, as distinguished from the Ashkenuzim or German Jews. See, further, art. Obadiah, vol. iii. p. 579". A. H. Savce.