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The parallel to the account in 2 Kings xix is very marked, but the childishness of H.'s tradition is in strong contrast to the dignified simplicity of the Jewish one. The sudden break-off in Sennacherib's inscription (the Taylor cylinder now in B. M.) confirms the fact of the disaster to his army. For the mouse as a symbol of plague cf. 1 Sam. vi. 4-5 and Iliad, i. 39, where Apollo, as sender of plague, is invoked as ‘Sminthian’ (from σμίνθος, a mouse). There is an interesting Egyptian parallel in the vision of Ptah seen by Merneptah, before his victory over the Libyans and their allies (Breasted, iii. 582); ‘but the form of the inscription ἐς ἐμέ and the pointing of the moral are both Greek’ (Griffith, u. s.).

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