* The submission of the Phoenicians to Necho is gathered
from a passage in Berosus, where he says that the Egyptian
army beaten at Carchemish comprised Phoenicians, besides
Syrians and Arabs.
Drawn by Faucher-
Gudin, from a
photograph
published in
Mariette.
The Jews had rescued the body of their king and had brought it back in his chariot to Jerusalem; they proclaimed in his stead, not his eldest son Eliakim, but the youngest, Shallum, who adopted the name of Jehoahaz on ascending the throne. He was a young man, twenty-three years of age, light and presumptuous of disposition, opposed to the reform movement, and had doubtless been unwise enough to display his hostile feelings towards the conqueror. Necho summoned him to Eiblah, deposed him after a reign of three months, condemned him to prison, and replaced him by Eliakim, who changed his name to that of Jehoiakim—“he whom Jahveh exalts;” and after laying Judah under a tribute of one hundred talents of silver and one of gold, the Egyptian monarch returned to his own country. Certain indications lead us to believe that he was obliged to undertake other punitive expeditions. The Philistines, probably deceived by false rumours of his defeat, revolted against him about the time that he was engaged in hostilities in Northern Syria, and on receiving news not only of his safety, but of the victory he had gained, their alarm was at once aroused. Judah forgot her own sorrows on seeing the peril in which they stood, and Jeremiah pronounced against them a prophecy full of menace. “Behold,” he cried, “waters rise up out of the north, and shall become an overflowing stream, and shall overflow the land and all that is therein, the city and them that dwell therein; and the men shall cry, and all the inhabitants of the land shall howl... for the Lord will spoil the Philistines, the remnant of the Isle of Caphtor. Baldness is come upon Gaza; Ascalon is dumb with terror, and you, all that are left of the giants, how long will ye tear your faces in your mourning?” * Ascalon was sacked and then Gaza,** and Necho at length was able to re-enter his domains, doubtless by the bridge of Zalu, following in this his models, his heroic ancestors of the great Theban dynasties.
* [R.V., “Ashkolon is brought to nought, the remnant of
their valley: how long wilt thou cut thyself?”—Tr.]
** Jer. xlvii., which is usually attributed to a period
subsequent to the defeat at Carchemish or even later; the
title, which alone mentions the Egyptians, is wanting in the
LXX. If we admit that the enemy coming from the north is the
Egyptian and not the Chaldaean, as do most writers, the only
time that danger could have threatened Philistia from the
Egyptians coming from the north, was when Necho, victorious,
was returning from his first campaign. In this case, the
Kadytis of Herodotus, which has caused so much trouble to
commentators, would certainly be Gaza, and there would be no
difficulty in explaining how the tradition preserved by the
Greek historian placed the taking of this town after the
battle of Megiddo.
He wished thereupon to perpetuate the memory of the Greeks who had served him so bravely, and as soon as the division of the spoil had been made, he sent as an offering to the temple of Apollo at Miletus, the cuirass which he had worn throughout the campaign.
We can picture the reception which his subjects gave him, and how the deputations of priests and nobles in white robes flocked out to meet him with garlands of flowers in their hands, and with acclamations similar to those which of old had heralded the return of Seti I. or Ramses II. National pride, no doubt, was flattered by this revival of military glory, but other motives than those of vanity lay at the root of the delight exhibited by the whole country at the news of the success of the expedition. The history of the century which was drawing to its close, had demonstrated more than once how disadvantageous it was to Egypt to be separated from a great power merely by the breadth of the isthmus. If Taharqa, instead of awaiting the attack on the banks of the Nile, had met the Assyrians at the foot of Carmel, or even before Gaza, it would have been impossible for Esarhaddon to turn the glorious kingdom of the Pharaohs into an Assyrian province after merely a few weeks of fighting. The dictates of prudence, more than those of ambition, rendered, therefore, the conquest of Syria a necessity, and Necho showed his wisdom in undertaking it at the moment when the downfall of Nineveh reduced all risk of opposition to a minimum; it remained to be seen whether the conquerors of Sin-shar-ishkun would tolerate for long the interference of a third robber, and would consent to share the spoil with these Africans, who, having had none of the trouble, had hastened to secure the profit. All the Mediterranean dependencies of Assyria, such as Mesopotamia, Syria, and Judæ, fell naturally within the sphere of Babylon rather than that of Media, and, indeed, Cyaxares never troubled himself about them; and Nabopolassar, who considered them his own by right, had for the moment too much in hand to permit of his reclaiming them. The Aramæans of the Khabur and the Balikh, the nomads of the Mesopotamian plain, had not done homage to him, and the country districts were infested with numerous bands of Cimmerians and Scythians, who had quite recently pillaged the sacred city of Harrân and violated the temple of the god Sin.* Nabopolassar, who was too old to command his troops in person, probably entrusted the conduct of them to Nebuchadrezzar, who was the son he had appointed to succeed him, and who had also married the Median princess. Three years sufficed this prince to carry the frontier of the new Chaldæan empire as far as the Syrian fords of the Euphrates, within sight of Thapsacus and Carchemish. Harrân remained in the hands of the barbarians,** probably on condition of their paying a tribute, but the district of the Subaru was laid waste, its cities reduced to ashes, and the Babylonian suzerainty established on the southern slopes of the Masios.
* Inscrip. of the Cylinder of Nabonidus mentions the
pillage of Harrân as having taken place fifty-four years
before the date of its restoration by Nabonidus. This was
begun, as we know, in the third year of that king, possibly
in 554-3. The date of the destruction is, therefore, 608-7,
that is to say, a few months before the destruction of
Nineveh.
** The passage in the Cylinder of Nabonidus shows that the
barbarians remained in possession of the town.
Having brought these preliminary operations to a successful issue, Nabopolassar, considering himself protected on the north and north-east by his friendship with Cyaxares, no longer hesitated to make an effort to recover the regions dominated by Egyptian influence, and, if the occasion presented itself, to reduce to submission the Pharaoh who was in his eyes merely a rebellious satrap. Nebuchadrezzar again placed himself at the head of his troops; Necho, warned of his projects, hastened to meet him with all the forces at his disposal, and, owing probably to the resistance offered by the garrisons which he possessed in the Hittite fortresses, he had time to continue his march as far as the Euphrates. The two armies encountered each other at Carchemish; the Egyptians were completely defeated in spite of their bravery and the skilful tactics of their Greek auxiliaries, and the Asiatic nations, who had once more begun to rely on Egypt, were obliged to acknowledge that they were as unequal to the task of overcoming Chaldaea as they had been of sustaining a struggle with Assyria.*