Death put an end to his projects, but he would not for a moment have entertained them had not Ardys been at that time at the head of a renowned and flourishing kingdom. The renewal of international commerce followed closely on the re-establishment of peace, and even if the long period of Scythian invasion, followed by the destruction of Nineveh, rendered the overland route less available for regular traffic than before, at all events relations between the inhabitants of the Euphrates valley and those of the iEgean littoral were resumed to such good purpose that before long several fresh marts were opened in Lydia.

Kymê and Ephesus put the region of the Messogis and the Tmolus into communication with the sea, but the lower valleys of the Hermos and the Masander were closed by the existence of Greek colonies at Smyrna, Clazomenas, Colophon, Priênê, and Miletus—all hostile to the Mermnadæ—which it would be necessary to overcome if these countries were to enjoy the prosperity shared by other parts of the kingdom; hence the principal effort made by the Lydians was either directly to annex these towns, or to impose such treaties on them as would make them their dependencies. Ardys seized Priênê towards 620, and after having thus established himself on the northern shore of the Latrnio Gulf,* he proceeded to besiege Miletus in 616, at the very close of his career. Hostilities were wearily prolonged all through the reign of Sadyattes (615-610), and down to the sixth year of Alyattes.**

The position of Miletus was too strong to permit of its being carried by a coup de main; besides which, the Lydians were unwilling to destroy at one blow a town whose colonies, skilfully planted at the seaports from the coasts of the Black Sea to those of Egypt, would one day furnish them with so many outlets for their industrial products. Their method of attacking it resolved itself into a series of exhausting raids. “Every year, as soon as the fruit crops and the harvests began to ripen, Alyattes set out at the head of his troops, whom he caused to march and encamp to the sound of instruments. Having arrived in the Milesian territory, he completely destroyed the crops and the orchards, and then again withdrew.” In these expeditions he was careful to avoid any excesses which would have made the injury inflicted appear irretrievable; his troops were forbidden to destroy dwelling-houses or buildings dedicated to the gods; indeed, on one occasion, when the conflagration which consumed the lands accidentally spread to the temple of Athena near Assêsos, he rebuilt two temples for the goddess at his own expense. The Milesians sustained the struggle courageously, until two reverses at Limeneion and in the plain of the Maeander at length induced them to make terms. Their tyrant, Thrasybulus, acting on the advice of the Delphic Apollo and by the mediation of Periander of Corinth, concluded a treaty with Alyattes in which the two princes, declaring themselves the guest and the ally one of the other, very probably conceded extensive commercial privileges to one another both by land and sea (604).*

Alyattes rewarded the oracle by the gift of a magnificent bowl, the work of Glaucus of Chios, which continued to be shown to travellers of the Roman period as one of the most remarkable curiosities of Delphi. Alyattes continued his expeditions against the other Greek colonies, but directed them prudently and leisurely, so as not to alarm his European friends, and provoke the formation against himself of a coalition of the Hellenic communities shattered over the isles or along the littoral of the Ægean. We know that towards the end of his reign he recovered Colophon, which had been previously acquired by Gyges, but had regained its independence during the Cimmerian crisis;* he razed Smyrna to the ground, and forced its inhabitants to occupy unfortified towns, where his suzerainty could not be disputed;** he half devastated Clazomense, whose citizens saved it by a despairing effort, and he renewed the ancient alliances with Ephesus, Kymê, and the cities of the region of the Caicus and the Hellespont,*** though it is impossible to attribute an accurate date to each of these particular events.

Most of them had already taken place or were still proceeding when the irruption of the Medes across the Halys obliged him to concentrate all his energies on the eastern portion of his kingdom.

The current tradition in Lydia of a century later attributed the conflict of the two peoples to a romantic cause. It related that Cyaxares had bestowed his favour on the bands of Scythians who had become his mercenaries on the death of Madyes, and that he had entrusted to them the children of some of the noblest Medic families, that they might train them to hunt and also teach them the use of the bow. One day, on their returning from the chase without any game, Cyaxares reproached them for their want of skill in such angry and insulting terms, that they resolved on immediate revenge. They cut one of the children in pieces, which they dressed after the same manner as that in which they were accustomed to prepare the game they had killed, and served up the dish to the king; then, while he was feasting upon it with his courtiers, they lied in haste and took refuge with Alyattes. The latter welcomed them, and refused to send them back to Cyaxares; hence the outbreak of hostilities. It is, of course, possible that the emigration of a nomad horde may have been the cause of the war,* but graver reasons than this had set the two nations at variance.

The hardworking inhabitants of the valleys of the Iris and the Halys were still possessed of considerable riches, in spite of the losses they had suffered from the avaricious Cimmerians, and their chief towns, Comana, Pteria and Teiria, continued to enjoy prosperity under the rule of their priest-kings. Pteria particularly had developed in the course of the century, thanks to her favourable situation, which had enabled her to offer a secure refuge to the neighbouring population during the late disasters.

The town itself was crowded into a confined plain, on the left bank of a torrent which flowed into the Halys, and the city walls may still be clearly traced upon the soil; the outline of the houses, the silos, cisterns, and rock-cut staircases are still visible in places, besides the remains of a palace built of enormous blocks of almost rough-hewn limestone. The town was defended by wide ramparts, and also by two fortresses perched upon enormous masses of rock, while a few thousand yards to the east of the city, on the right bank of the torrent, three converging ravines concealed the sanctuary of one of those mysterious oracles whose fame attracted worshippers from far and wide during the annual fairs.

The bas-reliefs which decorate them belong to that semi-barbarous art which we have already met with in the monuments attributed to the Khâfci, near the Orontes and Euphrates, on both slopes of the Amanus, in Cilioia, and in the ravines of the Taurus.

Long processions of priests and votaries defile before figures of the gods and goddesses standing erect upon their sacred animals; in one scene, a tall goddess, a Cybele or an Anaitis, leans affectionately upon her chosen lover, and seems to draw him with her towards an image with a lion’s body and the head of a youth.*

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.*

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 other’s arms and sucking the few drops of blood which oozed from the puncture.***

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.*

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.*

Another of Necho’s 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.*

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 Necho’s 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.” *

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 Hilkiah’s 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 Jehoiakim’s 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 king’s 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 Nebuchadrezzar’s 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.**

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 scribe’s 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.” *

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.*

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.” Nebuchadrezzar’s 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 monarch’s 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.**

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 father’s 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.****

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 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.