a pitched battle, wherein he was worsted, and from which he was forced to fly into his own land, is uncertain.  Josephus positively declares that he took the braver and more honourable course:  the silence of Scripture as to any battle is thought to imply that he showed the white feather.  In either case, the result was the same.  Egypt recoiled before Babylon; Palestine was evacuated; and Zedekiah was left to himself.  In B.C. 586 Jerusalem fell; Zedekiah was made a prisoner and cruelly deprived of sight; the Temple and city were burnt, and the bulk of the people carried into captivity.  Babylon rounded off her dominion in this quarter by the absorption of the last state upon her south-western border that had maintained the shadow of independence:  and the two great powers of these parts, hitherto prevented from coming into contact by the intervention of a sort of political “buffer,” became conterminous, and were thus brought into a position in which it was not possible that a collision should for any considerable time be avoided.

Recognizing the certainty of the impending collision, Apries sought to strengthen his power for resistance by attaching to his own empire the Phoenician towns of the Syrian coast, whose adhesion to his side would secure him, at any rate, the maritime superiority.  He made an expedition against Tyre and Sidon both by land and sea, defeated the combined fleet of Phoenicia and Cyprus in a great engagement, besieged Sidon, and after a time compelled it to surrender.  He then endeavoured further to strengthen himself on the land side by bringing under subjection the Greek city of Cyrene, which had now become a flourishing community; but here his good fortune forsook him; the Cyrenaean forces defeated the army which he sent against them, with great slaughter; and the event brought Apries into disfavour with his subjects, who imagined that he had, of malice prepense, sent his troops into the jaws of destruction.  According to Herodotus, the immediate result was a revolt, which cost Apries his throne, and, within a short time, his life; but the entire narrative of Herodotus is in the highest degree improbable, and some recent discoveries suggest a wholly different termination to the reign of this remarkable king.

It is certain that in B.C. 568 Nebuchadnezzar made an expedition into Egypt According to all accounts this date fell into the lifetime of Apries.  Amasis, however, the successor of Apries, appears to have been Nebuchadnezzar’s direct antagonist, and to have resisted him in the field, while Apries remained in the palace at Sais.  The two were joint kings from B.C. 571 to B.C. 565.  Nebuchadnezzar, at first, neglected Sais, and proceeded, by way of Heliopolis and Bubastis (Ezek. xxx. 17), against the old capitals, Memphis and Thebes.  Having taken these, and “destroyed the idols and made the images to cease,” he advanced up the Nile valley to Elephantine, which he took, and then endeavoured to penetrate into Nubia.