of which the prophets had spoken as the irresistible emissary of the Most High—­had not only failed to recover from the injuries she had received at the hands, first of the Medes, and then of the Scythians, but had with each advancing year seen more severe wounds inflicted upon her, and hastening her irretrievably to her ruin.  And besides this, Egypt and Chaldaea, the ancient kingdoms which had for a short time bent beneath her yoke, had now once more arisen, and were astonishing the world by their renewed vigour.  Psammetichus, it is true, after having stretched his arm across the desert and laid hands upon the citadel which secured to him an outlet into Syria for his armies, had proceeded no further, and thus showed that he was not inclined to reassert the ancient rights of Egypt over the countries of the Jordan and the Orontes; but he had died in 611, and his son, Necho II., who succeeded him, did not manifest the same peaceful intentions.*

* The last dated stele of Psammetichus I. is the official epitaph of the Apis which died in his fifty-second year.  On the other hand, an Apis, born in the fifty-third year of Psammetichus, died in the sixteenth year of Necho, after having lived 16 years, 7 months, 17 days.  A very simple calculation shows that Psammetichus I. reigned fifty-four years, as stated by Herodotus and Manetho, according to Julius Africanus.

If he decided to try his fortune in Syria, supported by his Greek and Egyptian battalions, what would be the attitude that Judah would assume between moribund Assyria and the kingdom of the Pharaohs in its renewed vigour?  It was in the spring of 608 that the crisis occurred.  Nineveh, besieged by the Medes, was on the point of capitulating, and it was easy to foresee that the question as to who should rule there would shortly be an open one:  should Egypt hesitate longer in seizing what she believed to be her rightful heritage, she would run the risk of finding the question settled and another in possession.  Necho quitted Memphis and made his way towards the Asiatic frontier with the army which his father had left to him.  It was no longer composed of the ill-organised bands of the Ethiopian kings or the princes of the Delta, temporarily united under the rule of a single leader, but all the while divided by reciprocal hatreds and suspicions which doomed it to failure.  All the troops which constituted it—­Egyptians, Libyans, and Greeks alike—­were thoroughly under the control of their chief, and advanced in a compact and irresistible mass “like the Nile:  like a river its volume rolls onward.  It said:  I arise, I inundate the earth, I will drown cities and people!  Charge, horses!  Chariots, fly forward at a gallop!  Let the warriors march, the Ethiopian and the Libyan under the shelter of his buckler, the fellah bending the bow!"*