Chapter III: The Medes and the Second Chaldæan Empire (5)

Pteria and its surrounding hills formed a kind of natural fortress which overlooked the whole bend of the Halys; it constituted, in the land of the Lydians, an outpost which effectually protected their possessions in Phrygia and Papnlagonia against an attack from the East; in the hands of the Medes it would be a dominant position which would counteract the defensive features of the Halys, and from it they might penetrate into the heart of Asia Minor without encountering any serious obstacles. The struggle between the two sovereigns was not so unequal as might at first appear. No doubt the army of Alyattes was inferior in numbers, but the bravery of its component forces and the ability of its leaders compensated for its numerical inferiority, and Cyaxares had no troop to be compared with the Carian lancers, with the hoplites of Ionia, or with the heavy Mæonian cavalry. During six years the two armies met again and again--fate sometimes favouring one and sometimes the other--and were about to try their fortune once more, after several indecisive engagements, when an eclipse of the sun suspended operations (585). The Iranian peoples would fight only in full daylight, and their adversaries, although warned, so it is said, by the Milesian philosopher Thaïes of the phenomenon about to take place in the heavens, were perhaps not completely reassured as to its significance, and the two hosts accordingly separated without coming to blows.*

* This eclipse was identified at one time with that of Sept.
30, 610, at another with that of May 28, 585. The latter of
these two dates appears to me to be the correct one, and is
the only one which agrees with what we know of the general
history of the sixth century.

Nebuchadrezzar had followed, not without some misgivings, the vicissitudes of the campaign, and his anxiety was shared by the independent princes of Asia Minor, who were allies of the Lydians; he and they alike awaited with dread a decisive action, which, by crushing one of the belligerents beyond hope of recovery, would leave the onlookers at the mercy of the victor in the full flush of his success. Tradition relates that Syennesis of Cilicia and the Babylonian Nabonidus had taken advantage of the alarm produced by the eclipse to negotiate an armistice, and that they were soon successful in bringing the rival powers to an agreement.* The Halys remained the recognised frontier of the two kingdoms, but the Lydians probably obtained advantages for their commerce, which they regarded as compensatory for the abandonment of their claim to the district of Pteria. To strengthen the alliance, it was agreed that Alyattes should give his daughter Aryenis in marriage to Ishtuvigu, or, as the Greeks called him, Astyages, the son of Cyaxares.** According to the custom of the times, the two contracting parties, after taking the vow of fidelity, sealed the compact by pricking each others arms and sucking the few drops of blood which oozed from the puncture.***

* The name Labynetos given by Herodotus is a transcript of
Nabonidus, but cannot here designate the Babylonian king of
that name, for the latter reigned more than thirty years
after the peace was concluded between the Lydians and the
Medes. If Herodotus has not made the mistake of putting
Labynetos for Nebuchadrezzar, we may admit that this
Labynetos was a prince of the royal family, or simply a
general who was commanding the Chaldoan auxiliaries of
Cyaxares.

** The form Ishtuvigu is given us by the Chaldoan documents.
Its exact transcript was Astuigas, Astyigas, according to
Ctosias; in fact, this coincides so remarkably with the
Babylonian mode of spelling, that we may believe that it
faithfully reproduces the original pronunciation.

*** Many ancient authors have spoken of this war, or at
least of the eclipse which brought it to an end. Several of
them place the conclusion of peace not in the reign of
Cyaxares, but in that of Astyages--Cicero, Solinus, and the
Armenian Eusebius--and their view has been adopted by some
modern historians. The two versions of the account can be
reconciled by saying that Astyages was commanding the Median
army instead of his father, who was too old to do so, but
such an explanation is unnecessary, and Cyaxares, though
over seventy, might still have had sufficient vigour to wage
war. The substitution of Astyages for Cyaxares by the
authors of Roman times was probably effected with the object
of making the date of the eclipse agree with a different
system of chronology from that followed by Herodotus.

Cyaxares died in the following year (584), full of days and renown, and was at once succeeded by Astyages. Few princes could boast of having had such a successful career as his, even in that century of unprecedented fortunes and boundless ambitions. Inheriting a disorganised army, proclaimed king in the midst of mourning, on the morrow of a defeat in which the fate of his kingdom had hung in the balance, he succeeded within a quarter of a century in overthrowing his enemies and substituting his supremacy for theirs throughout the whole of Western Asia. At his accession Media had occupied only a small portion of the Iranian table-land; at his death, the Median empire extended to the banks of the Halys. It is now not difficult to understand why Nebuchadrezzar abstained from all expeditions in the regions of the Taurus, as well as in those of the Upper Tigris. He would inevitably have come into contact with the allies of the Lydians, perchance with the Lydians themselves, or with the Medes, as the case might be; and he would have been drawn on to take an active part in their dangerous quarrels, from which, after all, he could not hope to reap any personal advantage. In reality, there was one field of action only open to him, and that was Southern Syria, with Egypt in her rear. He found himself, at this extreme limit of his dominions, in a political situation almost identical with that of his Assyrian predecessors, and consequently more or less under the obligation of repeating their policy. The Saites, like the Ethiopians before them, could enjoy no assured sense of security in the Delta, when they knew that they had a great military state as their nearest neighbour on the other side of the isthmus; they felt with reason that the thirty leagues of desert which separated Pelusium from Gaza was an insufficient protection from invasion, and they desired to have between themselves and their adversary a tract of country sufficiently extensive to ward off the first blows in the case of hostilities. If such a buffer territory could be composed of feudal provinces or tributary states, Egyptian pride would be flattered, while at the same time the security of the kingdom would be increased, and indeed the victorious progress of Necho had for the moment changed their most ambitious dreams into realities. Driven back into the Nile valley after the battle of Carchemish, their pretensions had immediately shrunk within more modest limits; their aspirations were now confined to gaining the confidence of the few surviving states which had preserved some sort of independence in spite of the Assyrian conquest, to detaching them from Chaldoan interests and making them into a protecting zone against the ambition of a new Esarhaddon. To this work Necho applied himself as soon as Nebuchadrezzar had left him in order to hasten back to Babylon. The Egyptian monarch belonged to a persevering race, who were never kept, down by reverses, and had not once allowed themselves to be discouraged during the whole of the century in which they had laboured to secure the crown for themselves; his defeat had not lessened his tenacity, nor, it would seem, his certainty of final success. Besides organising his Egyptian and Libyan troops, he enrolled a still larger number of Hellenic mercenaries, correctly anticipating that the restless spirits of the Phoenicians and Jews would soon furnish him with an opportunity of distinguishing himself upon the scene of action.

It was perhaps at this juncture that he decided to strengthen his position by the co-operation of a fleet. The superiority of the Chaldoan battalions had been so clearly manifested, that he could scarcely hope for a decisive victory if he persisted in seeking it on land; but if he could succeed in securing the command of the sea, his galleys, by continually cruising along the Syrian coast, and conveying troops, provisions, arms, and money to the Phoenician towns, would so successfully foster and maintain a spirit of rebellion, that the Chaldæans would not dare to venture into Egypt until they had dealt with this source of danger in their rear. He therefore set to work to increase the number of his war-vessels on the Bed Sea, but more especially on the Mediterranean, and as he had drawn upon Greece for his troops, he now applied to her for shipbuilders.*

* Herodotus tells us that in his time the ruins of the docks
which Necho had made for the building of his triremes could
still be seen on the shore of the Red Sea as well as on that
of the Mediterranean. He seems also to say that the building
of the fleet was anterior to the first Syrian expedition.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph sent by G. Benédite.

The trireme, which had been invented by either the Samian or Corinthian naval constructors, had as yet been little used, and possibly Herodotus is attributing an event of his own time to this earlier period when he affirms that Necho filled a dockyard with a whole fleet of these vessels; he possessed, at any rate, a considerable number of them, and along with them other vessels of various build, in which the blunt stem and curved poop of the Greeks were combined with the square-cabined barque of the Egyptians. At the same time, in order to transport the squadron from one sea to another when occasion demanded, he endeavoured to reopen the ancient canal.

He improved its course and widened it so as to permit of two triremes sailing abreast or easily clearing each other in passing. The canal started from the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, not far from Patumos, and skirted the foot of the Arabian hills from west to east; it then plunged into the Wady Tumilat, and finally entered the head of the bay which now forms the Lake of Ismaïlia. The narrow channel by which this sheet of water was anciently connected with the Gulf of Suez was probably obstructed in places, and required clearing out at several points, if not along its entire extent. A later tradition states that after having lost 100,000 men in attempting this task, the king abandoned the project on the advice of an oracle, a god having been supposed to have predicted to him that he was working for the barbarians.*

* The figures, 100,000 men, are evidently exaggerated, for
in a similar undertaking, the digging of the Mahmudiyeh
canal, Mehemet-Ali lost only 10,000 men, though the work was
greater.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph taken from the railway
between Ismaïlia and Suez, on the eastern shore of the lake.

Another of Nechos enterprises excited the admiration of his contemporaries, and remained for ever in the memory of the people. The Carthaginians had discovered on the ocean coast of Libya, a country rich in gold, ivory, precious woods, pepper, and spices, but their political jealousy prevented other nations from following in their wake in the interests of trade. The Egyptians possibly may have undertaken to dispute their monopoly, or the Phoenicians may have desired to reach their colony by a less frequented highway than the Mediterranean. The merchants of the Said and the Delta had never entirely lost touch with the people dwelling on the shores of the Red Sea, and though the royal fleets no longer pursued their course down it on their way to Punt as in the days of Hâtshopsîtu and Ramses III., private individuals ventured from time to time to open trade communications with the ancient Ladders of Incense. Necho despatched the Phoenician captains of his fleet in search of new lands, and they started from the neighbourhood of Suez, probably accompanied by native pilots accustomed to navigate in those waters. The undertaking, fraught with difficulty even in the last century, was, indeed, a formidable one for the small vessels of the Saite period. They sailed south for months with the east to the left of them, and on their right the continent which seemed to extend indefinitely before them. Towards the autumn they disembarked on some convenient shore, sowed the wheat with which they were provided, and waited till the crop was ripe; having reaped the harvest, they again took to the sea. Any accurate remembrance of what they saw was soon effaced; they could merely recollect that, having reached a certain point, they observed with astonishment that the sun appeared to have reversed its course, and now rose on their right hand. This meant that they had turned the southern extremity of Africa and were unconsciously sailing northwards. In the third year they passed through the pillars of Hercules and reached Egypt in safety. The very limited knowledge of navigation possessed by the mariners of that day rendered this voyage fruitless; the dangerous route thus opened up to commerce remained unused, and its discovery was remembered only as a curious feat devoid of any practical use.*

* The Greek writers after Herodotus denied the possibility
of such a voyage, and they thought that it could not be
decided whether Africa was entirely surrounded by water, and
that certainly no traveller had ever journeyed above 5000
stadia beyond the entrance to the Red Sea. Modern writers
are divided on the point, some denying and others
maintaining the authenticity of the account. The observation
made by the navigators of the apparent change in the course
of the sun, which Herodotus has recorded, and which neither
he nor his authorities understood, seems to me to be so
weighty an argument for its authenticity, that it is
impossible to reject the tradition until we have more
decided grounds for so doing.

In order to obtain any practical results from the arduous voyage, it would have been necessary for Egypt to devote a considerable part of its resources to the making of such expeditions, whereas the country preferred to concentrate all its energies on its Tyrian policy. Necho certainly possessed the sympathies of the Tyrians, who had transferred their traditional hatred of the Assyrians to the Chaldæans. He could also count with equal certainty on the support of a considerable party in Moab, Ammon, and Edom, as well as among the Nabatæans and the Arabs of Kedar; but the key of the whole position lay with Judah--that ally without whom none of Nechos other partisans would venture to declare openly against their master. The death of Josiah had dealt a fatal blow to the hopes of the prophets, and even long after the event they could not recall it without lamenting the fate of this king after their own heart. And like unto him, exclaims their chronicler, was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him. *

* 2 Kings xxiii. 25.

The events which followed his violent death--the deposition of Jehoahaz, the establishment and fall of the Egyptian supremacy, the proclamation of the Chaldæan suzerainty, the degradation of the king and the misery of the people brought about by the tribute exacted from them by their foreign masters,--all these revolutions which had succeeded each other without break or respite had all but ruined the belief in the efficacy of the reform due to Hilkiahs discovery, and preached by Jeremiah and his followers. The people saw in these calamities the vengeance of Jahveh against the presumptuous faction which had overthrown His various sanctuaries and had attempted to confine His worship to a single temple; they therefore restored the banished attractions, and set themselves to sacrifice to strange gods with greater zest than ever.

A like crisis occurred and like party divisions had broken out around Jehoiakim similar to those at the court of Ahaz and Hezekiah a century earlier. The populace, the soldiery, and most of the court officials, in short, all who adhered to the old popular form of religion or were attracted to strange devotions, hoped to rid themselves of the Chaldæans by earthly means, and since Necho declared himself an implacable enemy of their foe, their principal aim was to come to terms with Egypt. Jeremiah, on the contrary, and those who remained faithful to the teaching of the prophets, saw in all that was passing around them cogent reasons for rejecting worldly wisdom and advice, and for yielding themselves unreservedly to the Divine will in bowing before the Chaldæan of whom Jahveh made use, as of the Assyrian of old, to chastise the sins of Judah. The struggle between the two factions constantly disturbed the public peace, and it needed little to cause the preaching of the prophets to degenerate into an incitement to revolt. On a feast-day which occurred in the early months of Jehoiakims reign, Jeremiah took up his station on the pavement of the temple and loudly apostrophised the crowd of worshippers. Thus saith the Lord: If ye will not hearken unto Me, to walk in My law, which I have set before you, to hearken to the words of My servants the prophets, whom I send unto you, even rising up early and sending them, but ye have not hearkened; then will I make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth. Such a speech, boldly addressed to an audience the majority of whom were already moved by hostile feelings, brought their animosity to a climax; the officiating priests, the prophets, and the pilgrims gathered round Jeremiah, crying, Thou shalt surely die. The people thronged into the temple, the princes of Judah went up to the kings house and to the house of the Lord, and sat in council in the entry of the new gate. They decreed that Jeremiah, having spoken in the name of the Lord, did not merit death, and some of their number, recalling the precedent of Micaiah the Morasthite, who in his time had predicted the ruin of Jerusalem, added, Did Hezekiah King of Judah and all Judah put him at all to death? Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, one of those who had helped in restoring the law, took the prophet under his protection and prevented the crowd from injuring him, but some others were not able to escape the popular fury. The prophet Uriah of Kirjath-jearim, who unweariedly prophesied against the city and country after the manner of Jeremiah, fled to Egypt, but in vain; Jehoiakim despatched Elnathan, the son of Achbor, and certain men with him, who brought him back to Judah, slew him with the sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people. * If popular feeling had reached such a pitch before the battle of Carchemish, to what height must it have risen when the news of Nebuchadrezzars victory had given the death-blow to the hopes of the Egyptian faction! Jeremiah believed the moment ripe for forcibly arresting the popular imagination while it was swayed by the panic of anticipated invasion. He dictated to his disciple Baruch the prophecies he had pronounced since the appearance of the Scythians under Josiah, and on the day of the solemn fast proclaimed throughout Judah during the winter of the fifth year of the reign, a few months after the defeat of the Egyptians, he caused the writing to be read to the assembled people at the entry of the new gate.**

* Jer. xxvi., where the scene takes place at the beginning
of Jehoiakims reign, i.e. under the Egyptian domination.

** The date given in Jer. xxxvi. 9 makes the year begin in
spring, since the ninth month occurs in winter; this date
belongs, therefore, to the later recensions of the text. It
is nevertheless probably authentic, representing the exact
equivalent of the original date according to the old
calendar.

Micaiah, the son of Gremariah, was among those who listened, and noting that the audience were moved by the denunciations which revived the memory of their recent misfortunes, he hastened to inform the ministers sitting in council within the palace of what was passing. They at once sent for Baruch, and begged him to repeat to them what he had read. They were so much alarmed at its recital, that they advised him to hide himself in company with Jeremiah, while they informed the king of the matter. Jehoiakim was sitting in a chamber with a brazier burning before him on account of the severe cold: scarcely had they read three or four pages before him when his anger broke forth; he seized the roll, slashed it with the scribes penknife, and threw the fragments into the fire. Jeremiah recomposed the text from memory, and inserted in it a malediction against the king. Thus saith the Lord concerning Jehoiakim, King of Judah: He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David: and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost. And I will punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity: and I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, all the evil that I have pronounced against them; but they hearkened not. *

* Jer. xxxvi. Attempts have been made to reconstruct the
contents of Jeremiahs roll, and most of the authors who
have dealt with this subject think that the roll contained
the greater part of the fragments which, in the book of the
prophet, occupy chaps, i. 4-11, ii., iii. 1-5, 19-25, iv.-
vi., vii., viii., ix. 1-21, x. 17-25, xi., xii. 1-6, xvii.
19-27, xviii., xix. 1-13, which it must be admitted have not
in every case been preserved in their original form, but
have been abridged or rearranged after the exile. Other
chapters evidently belong to the years previous to the fifth
year of Jehoiakim, as well as part of the prophecies against
the barbarians, but they could not have been included in the
original roll, as the latter would then have been too long
to have been read three times in one day.

The Egyptian tendencies evinced at court, at first discreetly veiled, were now accentuated to such a degree that Nebuchadrezzar became alarmed, and came in person to Jerusalem in the year 601. His presence frustrated the intrigues of Pharaoh. Jehoiakim was reduced to order for a time, but three years later he revolted afresh at the instigation of Necho, and this time the Chaldæan satraps opened hostilities in earnest. They assembled their troops, which were reinforced by Syrian, Moabite, and Ammonite contingents, and laid siege to Jerusalem.*

* 2 Kings xxiv. 1-4. The passage is not easy to be
understood as it stands, and it has been differently
interpreted by historians. Some have supposed that it refers
to events immediately following the battle of Carchemish,
and that Jehoiakim defended Jerusalem against Nebuchadrezzar
in 605. Others think that, after the battle of Carchemish,
Jehoiakim took advantage of Nebuchadrezzars being obliged
to return at once to Babylon, and would not recognise the
authority of the Chaldæans; that Nebuchadrezzar returned
later, towards 601, and took Jerusalem, and that it is to
this second war that allusion is made in the Book of Kings.
It is more simple to consider that which occurred about 600
as a first attempt at rebellion which was punished lightly
by the Chaldæans.

Jehoiakim, left to himself, resisted with such determination that Nebuchadrezzar was obliged to bring up his Chaldæan forces to assist in the attack. Judah trembled with fear at the mere description which her prophet Habakkuk gave of this fierce and sturdy people, which march through the breadth of the earth to possess dwelling-places which are not theirs. They are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their dignity proceed from themselves. Their horses also are swifter than leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves; and their horsemen spread themselves; yea, their horsemen come from far; they fly as an eagle that hasteneth to devour. They come all of them for violence; their faces are set eagerly as the east wind, and they gather captives as the sand. Yea, he scoffeth at kings, and princes are a derision unto him: he derideth every stronghold: for he heapeth up dust and taketh it. Then shall he sweep by as a wind, and shall pass over the guilty, even he whose might is his god. Nebuchadrezzars army must have presented a spectacle as strange as did that of Necho. It contained, besides its nucleus of Chaldæn and Babylonian infantry, squadrons of Scythian and Median cavalry, whose cruelty it was, no doubt, that had alarmed the prophet, and certainly bands of Greek hoplites, for the poet Alcasus had had a brother, Antimenidas by name, in the Chaldæan monarchs service. Jehoiakim died before the enemy appeared beneath the walls of Jerusalem, and was at once succeeded by his son Jeconiah,* a youth of eighteen years, who assumed the name of Jehoiachin.**

* [Jehoiachin is called Coniah in Jer. xxii. 24 and xxiv. 1,
and Jeconiah in 1 Chron. iii. 16.--Tr.]

** 2 Kings xxiv. 5-10; cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6-9, where the
writer says that Nebuchadrezzar bound Jehoiakim in
fetters, to carry him to Babylon.

The new king continued the struggle at first courageously, but the advent of Nebuchadrezzar so clearly convinced him of the futility of the defence, that he suddenly decided to lay down his arms. He came forth from the city with his mother Nehushta, the officers of his house, his ministers, and his eunuchs, and prostrated himself at the feet of his suzerain. The Chaldæn monarch was not inclined to proceed to extremities; he therefore exiled to Babylon Jehoiachin and the whole of his seditious court who had so ill-advised the young king, the best of his officers, and the most skilful artisans, in all 3023 persons, but the priests and the bulk of the people remained at Jerusalem. The conqueror appointed Mattaniah, the youngest son of Josiah, to be their ruler, who, on succeeding to the crown, changed his name, after the example of his predecessors, adopting that of Zedekiah. Jehoiachin had reigned exactly three months over his besieged city (596).*

The Egyptians made no attempt to save their ally, but if they felt themselves not in a condition to defy the Chaldasans on Syrian territory, the Chaldaeans on their side feared to carry hostilities into the heart of the Delta. Necho died two years after the disaster at Jerusalem, without having been called to account by, or having found an opportunity of further annoying, his rival, and his son Psammetichus II. succeeded peacefully to the throne.** He was a youth at this time,*** and his fathers ministers conducted the affairs of State on his behalf, and it was they who directed one of his early campaigns, if not the very first, against Ethiopia.****

* 2 Kings xxiv. 11-17; cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 10.

** The length of Nechos reign is fixed at sixteen years by
Herodotus, and at six or at nine years by the various
abbreviators of Manetho. The contemporaneous monuments have
confirmed the testimony of Herodotus on this point as
against that of Manetho, and the stelse of the Florentine
Museum, of the Leyden Museum, and of the Louvre have
furnished certain proof that Necho died in the sixteenth
year, after fifteen and a half years reign.

*** His sarcophagus, discovered in 1883, and now preserved
in the Gizeh Museum, is of such small dimensions that it can
have been used only for a youth.

**** The graffiti of Abu-Simbel have been most frequently
attributed to Psammetichus I., and until recently I had
thought it possible to maintain this opinion. A. von
Gutsehmid was the first to restore them to Psammetichus IL,
and his opinion has gained ground since Wiedemanns vigorous
defence of it. The Alysian mercenarys graffito contains
the Greek translation of the current Egyptian phrase when
his Majesty came on his first military expedition into this
country, which seems to point to no very early date in a
reign for a first campaign. Moreover, one of the generals in
command of the expedition is a Psammetichus, son of
Theocles, that is, a Greek with an Egyptian name. A
considerable lapse of time must have taken place since
Psammetichus first dealings with the Greeks, for otherwise
the person named after the king would not have been of
sufficiently mature age to be put at the head of a body of
troops.

They organised a small army for him composed of Egyptians, Greeks, and Asiatic mercenaries, which, while the king was taking up his residence at Elephantine, was borne up the Nile in a fleet of large vessels.* It probably went as far south as the northern point of the second cataract, and not having encountered any Ethiopian force,** it retraced its course and came to anchor at Abu-Simbel.

* The chief graffito at Abu-Simbel says, in fact, that the
king came to Elephantine, and that only the troops
accompanying the General Psammetichus, the son of Theocles,
went beyond Kerkis. It was probably during his stay at
Elephantine, while awaiting the return of the expedition,
that Psammetichus II. had the inscriptions containing his
cartouches engraved upon the rocks of Bigga, Abaton, Philo,
and Konosso, or among the ruins of Elephantine and of
Phila?.

** The Greek inscription says _above Kerlcis_. Wiedemann has
corrected _Kerkis_ into _Kortis_, the Korte of the first
cataract, but the reading Kerkis is too well established for
there to be any reason for change. The simplest explanation
is to acknowledge that the inscription refers to a place
situated a few miles above Abu-Simbel, towards Wady-Halfa.

The officers in command, after having admired the rock-cut chapel of Ramses II., left in it a memento of their visit in a fine inscription cut on the right leg of one of the colossi. This inscription informs us that King Psammatikhos having come to Elephantine, the people who were with Psammatikhos, son of Theocles, wrote this. They ascended above Kerkis, to where the river ceases; Potasimto commanded the foreigners, Amasis the Egyptians. At the same time also wrote Arkhôn, son of Amoibikhos, and Peleqos, son of Ulamos. Following the example of their officers, the soldiers also wrote their names here and there, each in his own language--Ionians, Rhodians, Carians, Phoenicians, and perhaps even Jews; e.g. Elesibios of Teos, Pabis of Colophon, Telephos of Ialysos, Abdsakon son of Petiehvê, Gerhekal son of Hallum. The whole of this part of the country, brought to ruin in the gradual dismemberment of Greater Egypt, could not have differed much from the Nubia of to-day; there were the same narrow strips of cultivation along the river banks, gigantic temples half buried by their own ruins, scattered towns and villages, and everywhere the yellow sand creeping insensibly down towards the Nile. The northern part of this province remained in the hands of the Saite Pharaohs, and the districts situated further south just beyond Abu-Simbel formed at that period a sort of neutral ground between their domain and that of the Pharaohs of Napata. While all this was going on, Syria continued to plot in secret, and the faction which sought security in a foreign alliance was endeavouring to shake off the depression caused by the reverses of Jehoiakim and his son; and the tide of popular feeling setting in the direction of Egypt became so strong, that even Zedekiah, the creature of Nebuchadrezzar, was unable to stem it. The prophets who were inimical to religious reform, persisted in their belief that the humiliation of the country was merely temporary.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Daniel Héron.

Those of them who still remained in Jerusalem repeated at every turn, Ye shall not serve the King of Babylon... the vessels of the Lords house shall now shortly be brought again from Babylon. Jeremiah endeavoured to counteract the effect of their words, but in vain; the people, instead of listening to the prophet, waxed wroth with him, and gave themselves more and more recklessly up to their former sins. Incense was burnt every morning on the roofs of the houses and at the corners of the streets in honour of Baal, lamentations for Tammuz again rent the air at the season of his festival; the temple was invaded by uncircumcised priests and their idols, and the king permitted the priests of Moloch to raise their pyres in the valley of Hinnom. The exiled Jews, surrounded on all sides by heathen peoples, presented a no less grievous spectacle than their brethren at Jerusalem; some openly renounced the God of their fathers, others worshipped their chosen idols in secret, while those who did not actually become traitors to their faith, would only listen to such prophets as promised them a speedy revenge--Ahab, Zedekiah, son of Maaseiah, and Shemaiah. There was one man, however, who appeared in their midst, a priest, brought up from his youth in the temple and imbued with the ideas of reform--Ezekiel, son of Buzi, whose words might have brought them to a more just appreciation of their position, had they not drowned his voice by their clamour; alarmed at their threats, he refrained from speech in public, but gathered round him a few faithful adherents at his house in Tel-AMb, where the spirit of the Lord first came upon him in their presence about the year 592.*

* Ezelc. i. 1, 2. We see him receiving the elders in his
house in chaps, viii. 1, xiv. 1, xx. 1, et. seq.

This little band of exiles was in constant communication with the mother-country, and the echo of the religious quarrels and of the controversies provoked between the various factions by the events of the political world, was promptly borne to them by merchants, travelling scribes, or the kings legates who were sent regularly to Babylon with the tribute.* They learnt, about the year 590, that grave events were at hand, and that the moment had come when Judah, recovering at length from her trials, should once more occupy, in the sight of the sun, that place for which Jahveh had destined her. The kings of Moab, Ammon, Edom, Tyre, and Sidon had sent envoys to Jerusalem, and there, probably at the dictation of Egypt, they had agreed on what measures to take to stir up a general insurrection against Chaldæa.** The report of their resolutions had revived the courage of the national party, and of its prophets; Hananiah, son of Azzur, had gone through the city announcing the good news to all.***

* Jer. xxix. 3 gives the names of two of these transmitters
of the tribute--Elasah the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah the
son of Hilkiah, to whom Jeremiah had entrusted a message for
those of the captivity.

** Jer. xxvii. 1-3. The statement at the beginning of this
chapter: _In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim_,
contains a copyists error; the reading should be: _In the
beginning of the reign of Zedekiah_ (see ver. 12).

*** Jer. xxvii., xxviii.

Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, saying, I have broken the yoke of the King of Babylon. Within two full years will I bring again into this place all the vessels of the Lords house .. . and Jeconiah the son of Jehoiakim, King of Judah, with all the captives of Judah that went to Babylon! But Jeremiah had made wooden yokes and had sent them to the confederate princes, threatening them with divine punishment if they did not bow their necks to Nebuchadrezzar; the prophet himself bore one on his own neck, and showed himself in the streets on all occasions thus accoutred, as a living emblem of the slavery in which Jahveh permitted His people to remain for their spiritual good. Hananiah, meeting the prophet by chance, wrested the yoke from him and broke it, exclaiming, Thus saith the Lord: Even so will I break the yoke of Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon, within two full years from off the neck of all the nations. The mirth of the bystanders was roused, but on the morrow Jeremiah appeared with a yoke of iron, which Jahveh had put upon the neck of all the nations, that they may serve Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon. Moreover, to destroy in the minds of the exiled Jews any hope of speedy deliverance, he wrote to them: Let not your prophets that be in the midst of you, and your diviners, deceive you, neither hearken ye to your dreams which ye cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely unto you in My name: I have not sent them, saith the Lord. The prophet exhorted them to resign themselves to their fate, at all events for the time, that the unity of their nation might be preserved until the time when it might indeed please Jahveh to restore it: Build ye houses and dwell in them, and plant gardens and eat the fruit of them: take ye wives and beget sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply ye there and be not diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace. Psammetichus II. died in 589,* and his reign, though short, was distinguished by the activity shown in rebuilding and embellishing the temples.

* Herodotus reckoned the length of the reign of Psammetichus
II. at six years, in which he agrees with the Syncellus,
while the abbreviators of Manetho fix it at seventeen years.
The results given by the reading of a stele of the Louvre
enable us to settle that the figure 6 is to be preferred to
the other, and to reckon the length of the reign at five
years and a half.

His name is met with everywhere on the banks of the Nile--at Karnak, where he completed the decoration of the great columns of Taharqa, at Abydos, at Heliopolis, and on the monuments that have come from that town, such as the obelisk set up in the Campus Martius at Borne. The personal influence of the young sovereign did not count for much in the zeal thus displayed; but the impulse that had been growing during three or four generations, since the time of the expulsion of the Assyrians, now began to have its full effect. Egypt, well armed, well governed by able ministers, and more and more closely bound to Greece by both mercantile and friendly ties, had risen to a very high position in the estimation of its contemporaries; the inhabitants of Elis had deferred to her decision in the question whether they should take part in the Olympic games in which they were the judges, and following the advice she had given on the matter, they had excluded their own citizens from the sports so as to avoid the least suspicion of partiality in the distribution of the prizes.* The new king, probably the brother of the late Pharaoh, had his prenomen of Uahibn from his grandfather Psammetichus I., and it was this sovereign that the Greeks called indifferently Uaphres and Apries.**

* Diodorus Siculus has transferred the anecdote to Amasis,
and the decision given is elsewhere attributed to one of the
seven sages. The story is a popular romance, of which
Herodotus gives the version current among the Greeks in
Egypt.

** According to Herodotus, Apries was the son of Psammis.
The size of the sarcophagus of Psammetichus II., suitable
only for a youth, makes this filiation improbable.
Psammetichus, who came to the throne when he was hardly more
than a child, could have left behind him only children of
tender age, and Apries appears from the outset as a prince
of full mental and physical development.

Drawn by Boudier, from the bronze statuette in the Louvre
Museum.

He was young, ambitious, greedy of fame and military glory, and longed to use the weapon that his predecessors had for some fifteen years past been carefully whetting; his emissaries, arriving at Jerusalem at the moment when the popular excitement was at its height, had little difficulty in overcoming Zede-kiahs scruples. Edoni, Moab, and the Philistines, who had all taken their share in the conferences of the rebel party, hesitated at the last moment, and refused to sever their relations with Babylon. Tyre and the Ammonites alone persisted in their determination, and allied themselves with Egypt on the same terms as Judah.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Pognon. The figures
have been carefully defaced with the hammer, but the outline
of the king can still be discerned on the left; he seizes
the rampant lion by the right paw, and while it raises its
left paw against him, he plunges his dagger into the body of
the beast.

Nebuchadrezzar, thus defied by three enemies, was at a loss to decide upon which to make his first attack. Ezekiel, whose place of exile put him in a favourable position for learning what was passing, shows him to us as he stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he shook the arrows to and fro, he consulted the teraphim, he looked in the liver. Judah formed as it were the bridge by which the Egyptians could safely enter Syria, and if Nebuchadrezzar could succeed in occupying it before their arrival, he could at once break up the coalition into three separate parts incapable of rejoining one another--Ammon in the desert to the east, Tyre and Sidon on the seaboard, and Pharaoh beyond his isthmus to the south-west. He therefore established himself in a central position at Eiblah on the Orontes, from whence he could observe the progress of the operations, and hasten with his reserve force to a threatened point in the case of unforeseen difficulties; having done this, he despatched the two divisions of his army against his two principal adversaries. One of these divisions crossed the Lebanon, seized its fortresses, and, leaving a record of its victories on the rocks of the Wady Brissa, made its way southwards along the coast to blockade Tyre.*

* The account of this Phoenician campaign is contained in
one of the inscriptions discovered and commented on by
Pognon. Winckler, the only one to my knowledge who has tried
to give a precise chronological position to the events
recorded in the inscription, places them at the very
beginning of the reign, after the victory of Carchemish,
about the time when Nebuchadrezzar heard that his father had
just died. I think that this date is not justified by the
study of the inscription, for the king speaks therein of the
great works that he had accomplished, the restoration of the
temples, the rebuilding of the walls of Babylon, and the
digging of canals, all of which take us to the middle or the
end of his reign. We are therefore left to choose between
one of two dates, namely, that of 590-587, during the Jewish
war, and that from the Kings thirty-seventh year to 568
B.C., during the war against Amasis which will be treated
below. I have chosen the first, because of Nebuchadrezzars
long sojourn at Riblah, which gave him sufficient time for
the engraving of the stelse on Lebanon: the bas-reliefs of
Wady. Brissa could have been cut before the taking of
Jerusalem, for no allusion to the war against the Jews is
found in them. The enemy mentioned in the opening lines is
perhaps Apries, whose fleet was scouring the Phoenician
coasts.

The other force bore down upon Zedekiah, and made war upon him ruthlessly. It burnt the villages and unwalled towns, gave the rural districts over as a prey to the Philistines and the Edomites, surrounded the two fortresses of Lachish and Azekah, and only after completely exhausting the provinces, appeared before the walls of the capital. Jerusalem was closely beset when the news reached the Chaldæans that Apries was approaching Gaza; Zedekiah, in his distress, appealed to him for help, and the promised succour at length came upon the scene. The Chaldæans at once raised the siege with the object of arresting the advancing enemy, and the popular party, reckoning already on a Chaldean defeat, gave way to insolent rejoicing over the prophets of evil. Jeremiah, however, had no hope of final success. Deceive not yourselves, saying, The Chaldæans shall surely depart from us; for they shall not depart. For though ye had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they rise up every man in his tent, and burn this city with fire. What actually took place is not known; according to one account, Apries accepted battle and was defeated; according to another, he refused to be drawn into an engagement, and returned haughtily to Egypt.*

* That, at least, is what Jeremiah seems to say (xxxvii. 7):
Behold, Pharaohs army, which is come forth to help you,
shall return to Egypt into their own land. There is no hint
here of defeat or even of a battle.

His fleet probably made some effective raiding on the Phoenician coast. It is easy to believe that the sight of the Chaldoan camp inspired him with prudence, and that he thought twice before compromising the effects of his naval campaign and risking the loss of his fine army--the only one which Egypt possessed--in a conflict in which his own safety was not directly concerned. Nebuchadrezzar, on his side, was not anxious to pursue so strongly equipped an adversary too hotly, and deeming himself fortunate in having escaped the ordeal of a trial of strength with him, he returned to his position before the walls of Jerusalem.

The city receiving no further succour, its fall was merely a question of time, and resistance served merely to irritate the besiegers. The Jews nevertheless continued to defend it with the heroic obstinacy and, at the same time, with the frenzied discord of which they have so often shown themselves capable. During the respite which the diversion caused by Apries afforded them, Jeremiah had attempted to flee from Jerusalem and seek refuge in Benjamin, to which tribe he belonged. Arrested at the city gate on the pretext of treason, he was unmercifully beaten, thrown into prison, and the king, who had begun to believe in him, did not venture to deliver him. He was confined in the court of the palace, which served as a gaol, and allowed a ration of a loaf of bread for his daily food.1 The courtyard was a public place, to which all comers had access who desired to speak to the prisoners, and even here the prophet did not cease to preach and exhort the people to repentance: He that abideth in this city shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence; but he that goeth forth to the Chaldæans shall live, and his life shall be unto him for a prey, and he shall live. Thus saith the Lord, This city shall surely be given into the hand of the army of the King of Babylon, and he shall take it.

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of the original in the
British Museum.

The princes and officers of the king, however, complained to Zedekiah of him: Let this man, we pray thee, be put to death; forasmuch as he weakeneth the hands of the men of war, and the hands of all the people in speaking such words. Given up to his accusers and plunged in a muddy cistern, he escaped by the connivance of a eunuch of the royal household, only to renew his denunciations with greater force than ever.

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from several engravings in Botta.
The mutilated remains of several bas-reliefs have been
combined so as to form a tolerably correct scene; the
prisoners have a ring passed through their lips, and the
king holds them by a cord attached to it.

The king sent for him secretly and asked his advice, but could draw from him nothing but threats: If thou wilt go forth unto the King of Babylons princes, then thy soul shall live, and this city shall not be burned with fire, and thou shalt live and thine house: but if thou wilt not go forth to the King of Babylons princes, then shall this city be given into the hand of the Chal-dseans, and they shall burn it with fire, and thou shalt not escape out of their hand. Zedekiah would have asked no better than to follow his advice, but he had gone too far to draw back now. To the miseries of war and sickness the horrors of famine were added, but the determination of the besieged was unshaken; bread was failing, and yet they would not hear of surrender. At length, after a year and a half of sufferings heroically borne, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the eleventh month, and the fourth day of the month, a portion of the city wall fell before the attacks of the battering-rams, and the Chaldæan army entered by the breach. Zedekiah assembled his remaining soldiers, and took counsel as to the possibility of cutting his way through the enemy to beyond the Jordan; escaping by night through the gateway opposite the Pool of Siloam, he was taken prisoner near Jericho, and carried off to Eiblah, where Nebuchadrezzar was awaiting with impatience the result of the operations. The Chaldæans were accustomed to torture their prisoners in the fashion we frequently see represented on the monuments of Nineveh, and whenever an unexpected stroke of good fortune brings to light any decorative bas-relief from their palaces, we shall see represented on it the impaling stake, rebels being flayed alive, and chiefs having their tongues torn out. Nebuchadrezzar, whose patience was exhausted, caused the sons of Zedekiah to be slain in the presence of their father, together with all the prisoners of noble birth, and then, having put out his eyes, sent the king of Babylon loaded with chains. As for the city which had so long defied his wrath, he gave it over to Nebuzaradan, one of the great officers of the crown, with orders to demolish it and give it up systematically to the flames. The temple was despoiled of its precious wall-coverings, the pillars and brazen ornaments of the time of Solomon which still remained were broken up, and the pieces carried off to Chaldoa in sacks, the masonry was overthrown and the blocks of stone rolled down the hill into the ravine of the Kedron. The survivors among the garrison, the priests, scribes, and members of the upper classes, were sent off into exile, but the mortality during the siege had been so great that the convoy barely numbered eight hundred and thirty-two persons.

Some of the poorer population were allowed to remain in the environs, and the fields and vineyards of the exiles were divided among them.1 Having accomplished the work of destruction, the Chal-dseans retired, leaving the government in the hands of Gedaliah, son of Ahikam,* a friend of Jeremiah. Gedaliah established himself at Mizpah, where he endeavoured to gather around him the remnant of the nation, and fugitives poured in from Moab, Ammon, and Edom.

*Chron. xxxvi. 17-20. The following is the table of the
kings of Judah from the death of Solomon to the destruction
of Jerusalem:--

It seemed that a Jewish principality was about to rise again from the ruins of the kingdom. Jeremiah was its accredited counsellor, but his influence could not establish harmony among these turbulent spirits, still smarting from their recent misfortunes.* The captains of the bands which had been roaming over the country after the fall of Jerusalem refused, moreover, to act in concert with Gedaliah, and one of them, Ishmael by name, who was of the royal blood, assassinated him, but, being attacked in Gibeon by Johanan, the son of Kareah, was forced to escape almost alone and take refuge with the Ammonites.** These acts of violence aroused the vigilance of the Chaldasans; Johanan feared reprisals, and retired into Egypt, taking with him Jeremiah, Baruch, and the bulk of the people.*** Apries gave the refugees a welcome, and assigned them certain villages near to his military colony at Daphnae, whence they soon spread into the neighbouring nomes as far as Migdol, Memphis, and even as far as the Thebaid.****

* For the manner in which Jeremiah was separated from the
rest of the captives, set at liberty and sent back to
Gedaliah, see Jer. xxxix. 11-18, xl. 1-6.

** 2 Kings xxv. 23-25, and Jer. xl. 7-16, xli. 1-15, where
these events are recorded at length.

*** 2 Kings xxv. 26; Jer. xli. 16-18, xlii., xliii. 1-7.

**** Jer. xliv. 1, where the word of the Lord is spoken to
all the Jews... which dwelt at Migdol, and at Tahpanhes
(Daphno), and at Moph (corr. Moph, Memphis), and in the
country of Pathros.