* Jer. xlvi. 2; cf. 2 Kings xxiv. 7, where the editor,
without mentioning the battle of Carchemish, recalls in
passing that “the King of Babylon had taken, from the brook
of Egypt unto the river Euphrates, all that pertained to the
King of Egypt.”
The religious party in Judah, whose hopes had been disappointed by the victory of Pharaoh at Megiddo, now rejoiced at his defeat, and when the remains of his legions made their way back across the Philistine plain, closely pressed by the enemy, Jeremiah hailed them as they passed with cutting irony. Two or three brief, vivid sentences depicting the spirit that had fired them a few months before, and then the picture of their disorderly flight: “Order ye the buckler and shield, and draw near to battle. Harness the horses; and get up, ye horsemen, and stand forth with your helmets; furbish the spears, put on the coats of mail. Wherefore have I seen it? They are dismayed and turn backward; and their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace, and look not back; terror is on every side, saith the Lord. Let not the swift flee away, nor the mighty man escape; in the north by the river Euphrates have they stumbled and fallen.... Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin daughter of Egypt; in vain dost thou use many medicines; there is no healing for thee. The nations have heard of thy shame, and the earth is full of thy cry: for the mighty man hath stumbled against the mighty, they are fallen both of them together.” * Nebuchadrezzar received by the way the submission of Jehoiakim, and of the princes of Ammon, Moab, and the Philistines;** he was nearing Pelusium on his way into Egypt, when a messenger brought him the news of his father’s death.
* Jer. xlvi. 3-6, 11, 12.
** The submission of all these peoples is implied by the
passage already cited in 2 Kings xxiv. 7; Berosus speaks of
the Phoenician, Jewish, and Syrian prisoners whom
Nebuchadrezzar left to his generals, when he resolved to
return to Babylon by the shortest route.
He feared lest a competitor should dispute his throne—perhaps his younger brother, that Nabu-shum-lishir who had figured at his side at the dedication of a temple to Marduk. He therefore concluded an armistice with Necho, by the terms of which he remained master of the whole of Syria between the Euphrates and the Wady el-Arish, and then hastily turned homewards. But his impatience could not brook the delay occasioned by the slow march of a large force, nor the ordinary circuitous route by Carchemish and through Mesopotamia. He hurried across the Arabian desert, accompanied by a small escort of light troops, and presented himself unexpectedly at the gates of Babylon. He found all in order. His Chaldæan ministers had assumed the direction of affairs, and had reserved the throne for the rightful heir; he had only to appear to be acclaimed and obeyed (B.C. 605).
His reign was long, prosperous, and on the whole peaceful. The recent changes in Asiatic politics had shut out the Chaldæans from the majority of the battle-fields on which the Assyrians had been wont to wage warfare with the tribes on their eastern and northern frontiers. We no longer see stirring on the border-land those confused masses of tribes and communities of whose tumultuous life the Ninevite annals make such frequent record: Elam as an independent state no longer existed, neither did Philipi and Namri, nor the Cossæans, nor Parsua, nor the Medes with their perpetual divisions, nor the Urartians and the Mannai in a constant state of ferment within their mountain territory; all that remained of that turbulent world now constituted a single empire, united under the hegemony of the Medes, and the rule of a successful conqueror. The greater part of Blam was already subject to those Achæmenides who called themselves sovereigns of Anshân as well as of Persia, and whose fief was dependent on the kingdom of Ecbatana:* it is probable that Chaldasa received as her share of the ancient Susian territory the low countries of the Uknu and the Ulai, occupied by the Aramæan tribes of the Puqudu, the Eutu, and the Grambulu;** but Susa fell outside her portion, and was soon transformed into a flourishing Iranian town.
* “The king and the princes of Elam” mentioned in Jer. xxv.
25, xlix.35-39, and in Ezele. xxxii. 24, 25, in the time of
Nebuchadrezzar, are probably the Persian kings of Anshân and
their Elamite vassals—not only, as is usually believed, the
kings and native princes conquered by Assur-bani-pal; the
same probably holds good of the Elam which an anonymous
prophet associates with the Medes under Nabonidus, in the
destruction of Babylon (Isa. xxi. 2). The princes of Malamîr
appear to me to belong to an anterior epoch.
** The enumeration given in Ezelc. xxiii. 23, “the
Babylonians and all the Chaldæans, Pelted, and Shoa, and
Koa,” shows us probably that the Aramæans of the Lower
Tigris represented by Pekôd, as those of the Lower Euphrates
are by the Chaldæans, belonged to the Babylonian empire in
the time of the prophet. They are also considered as
belonging to Babylon in the passage of an anonymous prophet
(Jer. I. 21), who wrote in the last days of the Chaldæn
empire: “Go up against the land of Merathaim, even against
it and the inhabitants of Pekod.” Translators and
commentators have until quite recently mistaken the import
of the name Pekôd.
The plains bordering the right bank of the Tigris, from the Uknu to the Turnat or the Eadanu, which had belonged to Babylon from the very earliest times, were no doubt still retained by her;* but the mountain district which commanded them certainly remained in the hands of Cyaxares, as well as the greater part of Assyria proper, and there is every reason to believe that from the Eadanu northwards the Tigris formed the boundary between the two allies, as far as the confluence of the Zab.
* This is what appears to me to follow from the account of
the conquest o£ Babylon by Cyrus, as related by Herodotus.
The entire basin of the Upper Tigris and its Assyrian colonies, Amidi and Tushkân were now comprised in the sphere of Medic influence, and the settlement of the Scythians at Harrân, around one of the most venerated of the Semitic sanctuaries, shows to what restrictions the new authority of Chaldasa was subjected, even in the districts of Mesopotamia, which were formerly among the most faithful possessions of Nineveh. If these barbarians had been isolated, they would not long have defied the King of Babylon, but being akin to the peoples who were subject to Cyaxares, they probably claimed his protection, and regarded themselves as his liege men; it was necessary to treat them with consideration, and tolerate the arrogance of their presence upon the only convenient road which connected the eastern with the western provinces of the kingdom. It is therefore evident that there was no opening on this side for those ever-recurring struggles in which Assyria had exhausted her best powers; one war was alone possible, that with Media, but it was fraught with such danger that the dictates of prudence demanded that it should be avoided at all costs, even should the alliance between the two courts cease to be cemented by a royal marriage. However great the confidence which he justly placed in the valour of his Chaldæans, Nebuchadrezzar could not hide from himself the fact that for two centuries they had always been beaten by the Assyrians, and that therefore he would run too great a risk in provoking hostilities with an army which had got the better of the conquerors of his people. Besides this, Cyaxares was fully engaged in subjecting the region which he had allotted to himself, and had no special desire to break with his ally. Nothing is known of his history during the years which followed the downfall of Nineveh, but it is not difficult to guess what were the obstacles he had to surmount, and the result of the efforts which he made to overcome them. The country which extends between the Caspian and the Black Sea—the mountain block of Armenia, the basins of the Araxes and the Kur, the valleys of the Halys, the Iris, and the Thermodon, and the forests of the Anti-Taurus and the Taurus itself—had been thrown into utter confusion by the Cimmerians and the Scythians. Nothing remained of the previous order of things which had so long prevailed there, and the barbarians who for a century and a half had destroyed everything in the country seemed incapable of organising anything in its place. Urartu had shrunk within its ancient limits around Ararat, and it is not known who ruled her; the civilisation of Argistis and Menuas had almost disappeared with the dynasty which had opposed the power of Assyria, and the people, who had never been much impregnated by it, soon fell back into their native rude habits of life. Confused masses of European barbarians were stirring in Etiaus and the regions of the Araxes, seeking a country in which to settle themselves, and did not succeed in establishing themselves firmly till a much later period in the district of Sakasênê, to which was attached the name of one of their tribes.*
* Strabo states that Armenia and the maritime regions of
Cappadocia suffered greatly from the invasion of the
Scythians.