especially the more distant ones, greatly weakened.  Phoenicia is likely to have detached herself from Assyria at latest during the time that the Scyths were dominant, which was probably from about B.C. 630 to B.C. 610.  When Assyrian protection was withdrawn from Syria, as it must have been during this period, and when every state and town had to look solely to itself for deliverance from a barbarous and cruel enemy, the fiction of a nominal dependence on a distant power could scarcely be maintained.  Without any actual revolt, the Phoenician cities became their own masters, and the speedy fall of Assyria before the combined attack of the Medes and Babylonians,[14191] after the Scythians had withdrawn, prevented for some time any interference with their recovered independence.

A double danger, however, impended.  On the one side Egypt, on the other Babylon, might be confidently expected to lay claim to the debatable land which nature had placed between the seats of the great Asiatic and the great African power, and which in the past had almost always been possessed by the one or the other of them.  Egypt was the nearer of the two, and probably seemed the most to be feared.  She had recently fallen under the power of an enterprising native monarch, who had already, before the fall of Assyria, shown that he entertained ambitious designs against the Palestinian towns, having begun attacks upon Ashdod soon after he ascended the throne.[14192] Babylon was, comparatively speaking, remote and had troublesome neighbours, who might be expected to prevent her from undertaking distant expeditions.  It was clearly the true policy for Phoenicia to temporise, to enter into no engagements with either Babylon or Egypt, to strengthen her defences, to bide her time, and, so far as possible, to consolidate herself.  Something like a desire for consolidation would seem to have come over the people; and Tyre, the leading city in all but the earliest times, appears to have been recognised as the centre towards which other states must gravitate, and to have risen to the occasion.  If there ever was such a thing as a confederation of all the Phoenician cities, it would seem to have been at this period.  Sidon forgot her ancient rivalry, and consented to furnish the Tyrian fleet with mariners.[14193] Arvad gave not only rowers to man the ships, but also men-at-arms to help in guarding the walls.[14194] The “ancients of Gebal” lent their aid in the Tyrian dockyards.[14195] The minor cities cannot have ventured to hold aloof.  Tyre, as the time approached for the contest which was to decide whether Egypt or Babylon should be the great power of the East, appears to have reached the height of her strength, wealth, and prosperity.  It is now that Ezekial says of her—­“O Tyrus, thy heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God in the midst of the seas—­Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel, there is no secret that they can hide from thee: