The account of Herodotus coincides in the main with the history of the Old Testament about Pharaoh Necho and Josiah. The great city of Syria which he calls Κάδυτις seems to be Jerusalem, though Wesseling (ad Herodot. iii, 5) and other able critics dispute the identity. See Volney, Recherches sur l’Hist. Anc. vol. ii, ch. 13, p. 239: “Les Arabes ont conservé l’habitude d’appeler Jerusalem la Sainte par excellence, el Qods. Sans doute les Chaldéens et les Syriens lui donnèrent le même nom, qui dans leur dialecte est Qadouta, dont Hérodote rend bien l’orthographie quand il écrit Κάδυτις.”
[625] Jeremiah, xlvi, 2; 2d book of Kings, xxiii and xxiv; Josephus, Ant. J. x, 5, 1; x, 6, 1.
About Nebuchadnezzar, see the Fragment of Berosus ap. Joseph. cont. Apion. i, 19-20, and Antiqq. J. x, 11, 1, and Berosi Fragment. ed. Ritcher pp. 65-67.
[626] Menander ap. Joseph. Antiq. J. ix, 14, 2. Ἐπὶ Εἰθωβάλου τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπολιόρκησε Ναβουχοδονόσορος τὴν Τύρον ἐπ᾽ ἔτε δεκάτρια. That this siege of thirteen years ended in the storming, capitulation, or submission (we know not which, and Volney goes beyond the evidence when he says, “Les Tyriens furent emportés d’assaut par le roi de Babylone,” Recherches sur l’Histoire Ancienne, vol. ii, ch. 14, p. 250) of Tyre to the Chaldæan king, is quite certain from the mention which afterwards follows of the Tyrian princes being detained captive in Babylonia. Hengstenberg (De Rebus Tyriorum, pp. 34-77) heaps up a mass of arguments, most of them very inconclusive, to prove this point, about which the passage cited by Josephus from Menander leaves no doubt. What is not true, is, that Tyre was destroyed and laid desolate by Nebuchadnezzar: still less can it be believed that that king conquered Egypt and Libya, as Megasthenes, and even Berosus, so far as Egypt is concerned, would have us believe,—the argument of Larcher ad Herodot. ii, 168, is anything but satisfactory. The defeat of the Egyptian king at Carchemisch, and the stripping him of his foreign possessions in Judæa and Syria, have been exaggerated into a conquest of Egypt itself.
[627] Herodot. ii, 161. He simply mentions what I have stated in the text; while Diodorus tells us (i, 68) that the Egyptian king took Sidon by assault, terrified the other Phenician towns into submission, and defeated the Phenicians and Cyprians in a great naval battle, acquiring a vast spoil.
What authority Diodorus here followed, I do not know; but the measured statement of Herodotus is far the most worthy of credit.
[628] Herodot. iii, 19.
[629] Herodot. ii, 161; iv, 159.
[630] Herodot. ii, 162-169; Diodor. i, 68.
[631] Herodot. ii, 153.