of Kadesh;[14205] here had Deborah and Barak, the son of Abinoam, utterly destroyed the mighty army of Jabin, king of Canaan, under Sisera.[14206] Here now the gallant, if rash, Judaean king elected to take his stand, moved either by a sense of duty, because he regarded himself as a Babylonian feudatory, or simply determined to defend the Holy Land against any heathen army that, without permission, trespassed on it.  In vain did Neco seek to induce Josiah to retire and leave the way open, by assuring him that he had no hostile intentions against Judaea, but was marching on Carchemish by the Euphrates, there to contend with the Babylonians.[14207] The Jewish king persisted in his rash enterprise, and Neco was forced to brush him from his path.  His seasoned and disciplined troops easily overcame the hasty levies of Josiah; and Josiah himself fell in the battle.

We have no details with respect to the remainder of the expedition.  Neco, no doubt, pressed forward through Galilee and Coele-Syria towards the Euphrates.  Whether he had to fight any further battles we are not informed.  It is certain that he occupied Carchemish,[14208] and made it his headquarters, but whether it submitted to him, or was besieged and taken, is unknown.  All Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine were overrun, and became temporarily Egyptian possessions.[14209] But Phoenicia does not appear to have been subdued by force.  Tyrian prosperity continued, and the terms on which Phoenicia stood towards Egypt during the remainder of Neco’s reign were friendly.  Phoenicians at Neco’s request accomplished the circumnavigation of Africa;[14210] and we may suspect that it was Neco who granted to Tyre the extraordinary favour of settling a colony in the Egyptian capital, Memphis.[14211] Probably Phoenicia accepted at the hands of Neco the same sort of position which she had at first occupied under Assyria, a position, as already explained, satisfactory to both parties.

But the glory and prosperity which Egypt had thus acquired were very short-lived.  Within three years Babylonia asserted herself.  In B.C. 605, the crown prince, Nebuchadnezzar, acting on behalf of his father, Nabopolassar, who was aged and infirm,[14212] led the forces of Babylon against the audacious Pharaoh, who had dared to affront the “King of kings,” “the Lord of Sumir and Accad,” had taken him off his guard, and deprived him of some of his fairest provinces.  Babylonia, under Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, was no unworthy successor of the mighty power which for seven hundred years had held the supremacy of Western Asia.  Her citizens were as brave; her armies as well disciplined; her rulers as bold, as sagacious, and as unsparing.  Habakkuk’s description of a Babylonian army belongs to about this date, and is probably drawn from the life—­“Lo, I raise up the Chaldaeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling-places that are not theirs.