Thus Assur-bani-pal forgave the Egyptian prince of Sais when, like Manasseh, he had been sent in chains to Assyria after an unsuccessful rebellion, and restored him to his old principality.

What was done by Assur-bani-pal might well have been done by the more merciful Esar-haddon, who showed himself throughout his reign anxious to conciliate the conquered populations.

It is even possible that Assur-bani-pal himself was the sovereign against whom Manasseh rebelled and before whom he was brought.

In this case Manasseh's revolt would have been part of that general revolt of the Assyrian provinces under the leadership of Babylon, which shook the empire to its foundations, and in which the Assyrian king expressly tells us Palestine joined.

The Jewish king would thus have been carried to Babylon after the capture of that city by the Assyrian forces of Assur-bani-pal.
But the recent history of Oriental archaeology is strewn with instances of the danger of historical scepticism where the evidence is defective, and a single discovery may at any moment throw new and unexpected light on the materials we possess.