* The king to whom Amasis made this offering is called Patarmis, and the similarity of this name with the Patarbemis of Herodotus seems to indicate a variant of the legend, in which Patarmis or Patarbemis took the place of Apries.

The story goes on to say that while he was haranguing the rebels, one of them, slipping behind him, suddenly placed on his head the rounded helmet of the Pharaohs: the bystanders immediately proclaimed him king, and after a slight show of resistance he accepted the dignity. As soon as the rumour of these events had reached Sais, Apries despatched Patarbemis, one of his chief officers, with orders to bring back the rebel chief alive. The latter was seated on his horse, on the point of breaking up his camp and marching against his former patron, when the envoy arrived. On learning the nature of his mission, Amasis charged him to carry back a reply to the effect that he had already been making preparation to submit, and besought the sovereign to grant him patiently a few days longer, so that he might bring with him the Egyptian subjects of Pharaoh. Tradition adds that, on receiving this insolent defiance, Apries fell into a violent passion, and without listening to remonstrance, ordered the nose and ears of Patarbemis to be cut off, whereupon the indignant people, it is alleged, deserted his cause and ranged themselves on the side of Amasis. The mercenaries, however, did not betray the confidence reposed in them by their Egyptian lords. Although only thirty thousand against a whole people, they unflinchingly awaited the attack at Momemphis (569 B.C.); but, being overwhelmed by the numbers of their assailants, disbanded and fled, after a conflict lasting one day. Apries, taken prisoner in the rout, was at first well treated by the conqueror, and seems even to have retained for a time the external pomp of royalty; but the populace of Sais demanding his execution with vehemence, Amasis was at length constrained to deliver him up to their vengeance, and Apries was strangled by the mob. He was honourably interred between the royal palace and the temple of Nit, not far from the spot where his predecessors reposed in their glory,* and the usurper made himself sole master of the country. It was equivalent to a change of dynasty, and Amasis had recourse to the methods usual in such cases to consolidate his power. He entered into a marriage alliance with princesses of the Saite line, and thus legitimatised his usurpation as far as the north was concerned.**

* It was probably from this necropolis that the coffin of Psammetichus II. came.

** The wife of Amasis, who was mother of Psammetichus III., the queen Tintkhiti, daughter of Petenit, prophet of Phtah, was probably connected with the royal family of Sais.

In the south, the "divine worshippers" had continued to administer the extensive heritage of Amon, and Nitocris, heiress of Shapenuapit, had adopted in her old age a daughter of her great-nephew, Psammetichus IL, named Ankhnasnofiribri: this princess was at this time in possession of Thebes, and Amasis appears to have entered into a fictitious marriage with her in order to assume to himself her rights to the crown. He had hardly succeeded in establishing his authority on a firm basis when he was called upon to repel the Chaldaean invasion. The Hebrew prophets had been threatening Egypt with this invasion for a long time, and Ezekiel, discounting the future, had already described the entrance of Pharaoh into Hades, to dwell among the chiefs of the nations—Assur, Elam, Meshech, Tubal, Edom, and Philistia—who, having incurred the vengeance of Jahveh, had descended into the grave one after the other: "Pharaoh and all his army shall be slain by the sword, saith the Lord God! For I have put this terror in the land of the living: and he shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised, with them that are slain by the sword, even Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord God!" Nebuchadrezzar had some hesitation in hazarding his fortune in a campaign on the banks of the Nile: he realised tolerably clearly that Babylon was not in command of such resources as had been at the disposal of Nineveh under Esarhaddon or Assur-bani-pal, and that Egypt in the hands of a Saite dynasty was a more formidable foe than when ruled by the Ethiopians. The report of the revolution of which Apries had become a victim at length determined him to act; the annihilation of the Hellenic troops, and the dismay which the defeat at Irasa had occasioned in the hearts of the Egyptians, seemed to offer an opportunity too favourable to be neglected. The campaign was opened by Nebuchadrezzar about 568, in the thirty-seventh year of his reign,* but we have no certain information as to the issue of his enterprise.

* A fragment of his Annals, discovered by Pinches, mentions in the thirty-seventh year of his reign a campaign against [Ah]masu, King of Egypt; and Wiedemann, from the evidence of this document combined with the information derived from one of the monuments in the Louvre, thought that the fact of a conquest of Egypt as far as Syeno might be admitted; at that point the Egyptian general Nsihor would have defeated the Chaldaeans and repelled the invasion, and this event would have taken place during the joint reign of Apries and Amasis. A more attentive examination of the Egyptian monument shows that it refers not to a Chaldaean war, but to a rebellion of the garrisons in the south of Egypt, including the Greek and Semitic auxiliaries.

According to Chaldaean tradition, Nebuchadrezzar actually invaded the valley of the Nile and converted Egypt into a Babylonian province, with Amasis as its satrap.* We may well believe that Amasis lost the conquests won by his predecessor in Phoenicia, if, indeed, they still belonged to Egypt at his accession: but there is nothing to indicate that the Chaldaeans ever entered Egypt itself and repeated the Assyrian exploit of a century before.

* These events would have taken place in the twenty-third year of Nebuchadrezzar; the reigning king (Apries) being killed and his place taken by one of his generals (Amasis), who remained a satrap of the Babylonian empire.

This was Nebuchadrezzar's last war, the last at least of which history makes any mention. As a fact, the kings of the second Babylonian empire do not seem to have been the impetuous conquerors which we have fancied them to be. We see them as they are depicted to us in the visions of the Hebrew prophets, who, regarding them and their nation as a scourge in the hands of God, had no colours vivid enough or images sufficiently terrible to portray them. They had blotted out Nineveh from the list of cities, humiliated Pharaoh, and subjugated Syria, and they had done all this almost at their first appearance in the field—such a feat as Assyria and Egypt in the plenitude of their strength had been unable to accomplish: they had, moreover, destroyed Jerusalem and carried Judah into captivity. There is nothing astonishing in the fact that this Nebuchadrezzar, whose history is known to us almost entirely from Jewish sources, should appear as a fated force let loose upon the world. "O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into the scabbard; rest and be still! How canst thou be quiet, seeing the Lord hath given thee a charge?" But his campaigns in Syria and Africa, of which the echoes transmitted to us still seem so formidable, were not nearly so terrible in reality as those in which Blam had perished a century previously; they were, moreover, the only conflicts which troubled the peace of his reign. The Arabian chroniclers affirm, indeed, that the fabulous wealth of Yemen had incited him to invade that region. Nebuchadrezzar, they relate, routed, not far from the town of Dhat-irk, the Joctanides of Jorhom, who had barred his road to the Kaabah, and after seizing Mecca, reached the borders of the children of Himyra: the exhausted condition of his soldiers having prevented him from pressing further forward in his career of conquest, he retraced his steps and returned to Babylon with a great number of prisoners, including two entire tribes, those of Hadhura and Uabar, whom he established as colonists in Chaldaea.* He never passed in this direction beyond the limits reached by Assur-bani-pal, and his exploits were restricted to some successful raids against the tribes of Kedar and Nabatsea.**

* Most of the Arabic legends relating to these conquests of Nebuchadrezzar are indirectly derived from the biblical story; but it is possible that the history of the expeditions against Central Arabia is founded on fact.

** This seems to follow from Jeremiah's imprecations upon Kedar

The same reasons which at the commencement of his reign had restrained his ambition to extend his dominions towards the east and north, were operative up to the end of his life. Astyages had not inherited the martial spirit of his father Cyaxares, and only one warlike expedition, that against the Cadusians, is ascribed to him.*

* Moses of Chorene attributes to him long wars against an Armenian king named Tigranes; but this is a fiction of a later age.

Naturally indolent, lacking in decision, superstitious and cruel, he passed a life of idleness amid the luxury of a corrupt court, surrounded by pages, women, and eunuchs, with no more serious pastime than the chase, pursued within the limits of his own parks or on the confines of the desert. But if the king was weak, his empire was vigorous, and Nebuchadrezzar, brought up from his youth to dread the armies of Media, retained his respect for them up to the end of his life, even when there was no longer any occasion to do so. Nebuchadrezzar was, after all, not so much a warrior as a man of peace, whether so constituted by nature or rendered so by political necessity in its proper sense, and he took advantage of the long intervals of quiet between his campaigns to complete the extensive works which more than anything else have won for him his renown. During the century which had preceded the fall of Nineveh, Babylonia had had several bitter experiences; it had suffered almost entire destruction at the hands of Sennacherib; it had been given up to pillage by Assur-bani-pal, not to mention the sieges and ravages it had sustained in the course of continual revolts. The other cities of Babylonia, Sippara, Borsippa, Kutha, Nipur, Uruk, and Uru, had been subjected to capture and recapture, while the surrounding districts, abandoned in turn to Elamites, Assyrians, and the Kalda, had lain uncultivated for many years. The canals at the same time had become choked with mud, the banks had fallen in, and the waters, no longer kept under control, had overflowed the land, and the plains long since reclaimed for cultivation had returned to their original condition of morasses and reed-beds; at Babylon itself the Arakhtu, still encumbered with the debris cast into it by Sennacherib, was no longer navigable, and was productive of more injury than profit to the city: in some parts the aspect of the country must have been desolate and neglected as at the present day, and the work accomplished by twenty generations had to be begun entirely afresh. Nabopolassar had already applied himself to the task in spite of the anxieties of his Assyrian campaigns, and had raised many earthworks in both the capital and the provinces. But a great deal more still remained to be done, and Nebuchadrezzar pushed forward the work planned by his father, and carried it to completion undeterred and undismayed by any difficulties.* The combined system of irrigation and navigation introduced by the kings of the first Babylonian empire twenty centuries previously, was ingeniously repaired; the beds of the principal canals, the Royal river and the Arakhtu, were straightened and deepened; the drainage of the country between the Tigris and the Euphrates was regulated by means of subsidiary canals and a network of dykes; the canals surrounding Babylon or intersecting in the middle of the city were cleaned out, and a waterway was secured for navigation from one river to the other, and from the plateau of Mesopotamia to the Nar-Marratum.**

* The only long inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar which we possess, are those commemorating the great works he designed and executed.

** The irrigation works of Nebuchadrezzar are described at length, and perhaps exaggerated, by Abydenus, who merely quotes Berosus more or less inaccurately. The completion of the quays along the Arakhtu, begun by Nabopolassar, is noticed in the East India Company's Inscription. A special inscription, publ. by H. Rawlinson, gives an account of the repairing of the canal Libil-khigallu, which crossed Babylon.

We may well believe that all Nebuchadrezzar's undertakings were carried out in accordance with a carefully prepared scheme for perfecting the defences of the kingdom while completing the system of internal communication. The riches of Karduniash, now restored to vigour by continued peace, and become the centre of a considerable empire, could not fail to excite the jealousy of its neighbours, and particularly that of the most powerful among them, the Medes of Ecbatana. It is true that the relations between Nebuchadrezzar and Astyages continued to be cordial, and as yet there were no indications of a rupture; but it was always possible that under their successors the good understanding between the two courts might come to an end, and it was needful to provide against the possibility of the barbarous tribes of Iran being let loose upon Babylon, and attempting to inflict on her the fate they had brought upon Nineveh. Nebuchadrezzar, therefore, was anxious to interpose, between himself and these possible foes, such a series of fortifications that the most persevering enemy would be worn out by the prolonged task of forcing them one after another, provided that they were efficiently garrisoned. He erected across the northern side of the isthmus between the two rivers a great embankment, faced with bricks cemented together with bitumen, called the Wall of Media; this wall, starting from Sippara, stretched from the confluence of the Saklauiyeh with the Euphrates to the site of the modern village of Jibbara on the Tigris; on both sides of it four or five deep trenches were excavated, which were passable on raised causeways or by bridges of boats, so arranged as to be easily broken up in case of invasion.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief of the time of Sargon, in the Museum of the Louvre.

The eastern frontier was furnished with a rampart protected by a wide moat, following, between Jibbara and Nipur, the contours of a low-lying district which could be readily flooded. The western boundary was already protected by the Pallakottas, and the lakes or marshes of Bahr-i-Nejif: Nebuchadrezzar multiplied the number of the dikes, and so arranged them that the whole country between the suburbs of Borsippa and Babylon could be inundated at will. Babylon itself formed as it were the citadel in the midst of these enormous outlying fortifications, and the engineers both of Nabopo-lassar and of his son expended all the resources of their art on rendering it impregnable. A triple rampart surrounded it and united it to Borsippa, built on the model of those whose outline is so frequently found on the lowest tier of an Assyrian bas-relief.



Reproduced by Faucher-Gudin, from the restoration by Dieulafoy.

A moat of great width, with banks of masonry, communicating with the Euphrates, washed the foot of the outer wall, which retained the traditional name of Imgur-bel: behind this wall rose Nimitti-bel, the true city wall, to a height of more than ninety feet above the level of the plain, appearing from a distance, with its battlements and towers, more like a mountain chain than a rampart built by the hand of man; finally, behind Nimitti-bel ran a platform on the same level as the curtain of Imgur-bel, forming a last barrier behind which the garrison could rally before finally owning itself defeated and surrendering the city. Large square towers rose at intervals along the face of the walls, to the height of some eighteen feet above the battlements: a hundred gates fitted with bronze-plated doors, which could be securely shut at need, gave access to the city.*

* The description of the fortifications of the city is furnished by Herodotus, who himself saw them still partially standing; the account of their construction has been given by Nebuchadrezzar himself, in the East India Company's Inscription.

The space within the walls was by no means completely covered by houses, but contained gardens, farms, fields, and, here and there, the ruins of deserted buildings. As in older Babylon, the city proper clustered round the temple of Merodach, with its narrow winding streets, its crowded bazaars, its noisy and dirty squares, its hostelries and warehouses of foreign merchandise.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch in Layard.

The pyramid of Esarhad-don and Assur-bani-pal, too hastily built, had fallen into ruins: Nebuchadrezzar reconstructed its seven stages, and erected on the topmost platform a shrine furnished with a table of massive gold, and a couch on which the priestess chosen to be the spouse of the god might sleep at night. Other small temples were erected here and there on both banks of the river, and the royal palace, built in the marvellously short space of fifteen days, was celebrated for its hanging gardens, where the ladies of the harem might walk unveiled, secure from vulgar observation. No trace of all these extensive works remains at the present day.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch in Layard.

Some scattered fragments of crumbling walls alone betray the site of the great ziggurat, a few bas-reliefs are strewn over the surface of the ground, and a lion of timeworn stone, lying on its back in a depression of the soil, is perhaps the last survivor of those which kept watch, according to custom, at the gates of the palace. But the whole of this vast work of reconstruction and ornamentation must not be attributed to Nebuchadrezzar alone. The plans had been designed by Nabopolassar under the influence of one of his wives, who by a strange chance bears in classic tradition the very Egyptian name of Nitocris; but his work was insignificant compared with that accomplished by his son, and the name of Nebuchadrezzar was justly connected with the marvels of Babylon by all ancient writers. But even his reign of fifty-five years did not suffice for the completion of all his undertakings, and many details still remained imperfect at his death in the beginning of 562 B.C. Though of Kaldu origin, and consequently exposed to the suspicions and secret enmity of the native Babylonians, as all of his race, even Mero-dach-Baladan himself, had been before him, he had yet succeeded throughout the whole of his reign in making himself respected by the turbulent inhabitants of his capital, and in curbing the ambitious pretensions of the priests of Merodach. As soon as his master-hand was withdrawn, the passions so long repressed broke forth, and proved utterly beyond the control of his less able or less fortunate successors.*

* The sequel of this history is known from the narrative of Berosus. Its authenticity is proved by passages on the Cylinder of Nabonidus. Messer-schmidt considers that Amil- marduk and Labashi-marduk were overthrown by the priestly faction, but a passage on the Cylinder, in which Nabonidus represents himself as inheriting the political views of Nebuchadrezzar and Nergal-sharuzur, leads me to take the opposite view. We know what hatred Nabonidus roused in the minds of the priests of Merodach because his principles of government were opposed to theirs: the severe judgment he passed on the rule of Amil-marduk and Labashi-marduk seems to prove that he considered them as belonging to the rival party in the state, that is, to the priestly faction. The forms of the names and the lengths of the several reigns have been confirmed by contemporary monuments, especially by the numerous contract tablets. The principal inscriptions belonging to the reign of Nergal-sharuzur deal only with public works and the restoration of monuments.



Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph furnished by Father Scheil.

As far as we are able to judge by the documents which have come down to us, two factions had arisen in the city since the fall of Nineveh, both of which aspired to power and strove to gain a controlling influence with the sovereign. The one comprised the descendants of the Kalda who had delivered the city from the Assyrian yoke, together with those of the ancient military nobility. The other was composed of the great priestly families and their adherents, who claimed for the gods or their representatives the right to control the affairs of the state, and to impose the will of heaven on the rulers of the kingdom. The latter faction seems to have prevailed at first at the court of Amil-marduk, the sole surviving son and successor of Nebuchadrezzar. This prince on his accession embraced a policy contrary to that pursued by his father: and one of his first acts was to release Jehoiachin, King of Judah, who had been languishing in chains for twenty-seven years, and to ameliorate the condition of the other expatriated Jews. The official history of a later date represented him as having been an unjust sovereign, but we have no information as to his misdeeds, and know only that after two years a conspiracy broke out against him, led by his own brother-in-law, Nergal-sharuzur, who assassinated him and seized the vacant throne (560 B.C.). Nergal-sharuzur endeavoured to revive the policy of Nebuchadrezzar, and was probably supported by the military party, but his reign was a short one; he died in 556 B.C., leaving as sole heir a youth of dissipated character named Labashi-marduk, whose name is stigmatised by the chroniclers as that of a prince who knew not how to rule. He was murdered at the end of nine months, and his place taken by a native Babylonian, a certain Nabonaid (Nabonidus), son of Nabo-balatsu-ikbi, who was not connected by birth with his immediate predecessors on the throne (556-555 B.C.).

No Oriental empire could escape from the effects of frequent and abrupt changes in its rulers: like so many previous dynasties, that of Nabopolassar became enfeebled as if from exhaustion immediately after the death of its most illustrious scion, and foundered in imbecility and decrepitude. Popular imagination, awe-struck by such a sudden downfall from exalted prosperity, recognised the hand of God in the events which brought about the catastrophe. A Chaldaean legend, current not long after, related how Nebuchadrezzar, being seized towards the end of his life with the spirit of prophecy, mounted to the roof of his palace, and was constrained, as a punishment for his pride, to predict to his people, with his own lips, the approaching ruin of their city; thereupon the glory of its monarch suffered an eclipse from which there was no emerging. The Jews, nourishing undying hatred for conqueror who had overthrown Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple of Solomon, were not satisfied with a punishment so inadequate. According to them, Nebuchadrezzar, after his victorious career, was so intoxicated with his own glory that he proclaimed himself the equal of God. "Is not this great Babylon," he cried, "which I have built for the royal dwelling-place, by the might of my power, and for the glory of my majesty!" and while he thus spake, there came a voice from heaven, decreeing his metamorphosis into the form of a beast. "He was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hair was grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws." For seven years the king remained in this state, to resume his former shape at the end of this period, and recover his kingdom after having magnified the God of Israel.*

* Dan. iv.

The founder of the dynasty which replaced that of Nebuchadrezzar, Nabonidus, was certainly ill fitted to brave the storms already threatening to break over his kingdom. It has not been ascertained whether he had any natural right to the throne, or by what means he attained supreme power, but the way in which he dwells on the names of Nebuchadrezzar and Nergal-sharuzur renders it probable that he was raised to the throne by the military faction. He did not prove, as events turned turned out, a good general, nor even a soldier of moderate ability, and it is even possible that he also lacked that fierce courage of which none of his predecessors was ever destitute. He allowed his army to dwindle away and his fortresses to fall into ruins; the foreign alliances existing at his accession, together with those which he himself had concluded, were not turned to the best advantage; his provinces were badly administered, and his subjects rendered discontented: his most salient characteristic was an insatiable curiosity concerning historical and religious antiquities, which stimulated him to undertake excavations in all the temples, in order to bring to light monuments of ages long gone by. He was a monarch of peaceful disposition, who might have reigned with some measure of success in a century of unbroken peace, or one troubled only by petty wars with surrounding inferior states; but, unfortunately, the times were ill suited to such mild sovereignty. The ancient Eastern world, worn out by an existence reckoned by thousands of years, as well as by its incessant conflicts, would have desired, indeed, no better fate than to enjoy some years of repose in the condition in which recent events had left it; but other nations, the Greeks and the Persians, by no means anxious for tranquillity, were entering the lists. For the moment the efforts of the Greeks were concentrated on Egypt, where Pharaoh manifested for them inexhaustible good will, and on Cyprus, two-thirds of which belonged to them; the danger for Chaldaea lay in the Persians, kinsfolk and vassals of the Medes, whose semi-barbarous chieftains had issued from their mountain homes some eighty years previously to occupy the eastern districts of Elam.

END OF VOL. VIII.