The new king continued the struggle at first courageously, but the advent of Nebuchadrezzar so clearly convinced him of the futility of the defence, that he suddenly decided to lay down his arms.  He came forth from the city with his mother Nehushta, the officers of his house, his ministers, and his eunuchs, and prostrated himself at the feet of his suzerain.  The Chaldaen monarch was not inclined to proceed to extremities; he therefore exiled to Babylon Jehoiachin and the whole of his seditious court who had so ill-advised the young king, the best of his officers, and the most skilful artisans, in all 3023 persons, but the priests and the bulk of the people remained at Jerusalem.  The conqueror appointed Mattaniah, the youngest son of Josiah, to be their ruler, who, on succeeding to the crown, changed his name, after the example of his predecessors, adopting that of Zedekiah.  Jehoiachin had reigned exactly three months over his besieged city (596).*

The Egyptians made no attempt to save their ally, but if they felt themselves not in a condition to defy the Chaldasans on Syrian territory, the Chaldaeans on their side feared to carry hostilities into the heart of the Delta.  Necho died two years after the disaster at Jerusalem, without having been called to account by, or having found an opportunity of further annoying, his rival, and his son Psammetichus II. succeeded peacefully to the throne.** He was a youth at this time,*** and his father’s ministers conducted the affairs of State on his behalf, and it was they who directed one of his early campaigns, if not the very first, against Ethiopia.****

     * 2 Kings xxiv. 11-17; cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 10.

** The length of Necho’s reign is fixed at sixteen years by Herodotus, and at six or at nine years by the various abbreviators of Manetho.  The contemporaneous monuments have confirmed the testimony of Herodotus on this point as against that of Manetho, and the stelse of the Florentine Museum, of the Leyden Museum, and of the Louvre have furnished certain proof that Necho died in the sixteenth year, after fifteen and a half years’ reign.

     *** His sarcophagus, discovered in 1883, and now preserved
     in the Gizeh Museum, is of such small dimensions that it can
     have been used only for a youth.

**** The graffiti of Abu-Simbel have been most frequently attributed to Psammetichus I., and until recently I had thought it possible to maintain this opinion.  A. von Gutsehmid was the first to restore them to Psammetichus IL, and his opinion has gained ground since Wiedemann’s vigorous defence of it.  The Alysian mercenary’s graffito contains the Greek translation of the current Egyptian phrase “when his Majesty came on his first military expedition into this country,” which seems to point to no very early date in a reign for a first campaign.  Moreover, one of the generals in command of the expedition is a Psammetichus,