Necho II of Egypt

“ In order to obtain any practical results from the arduous voyage, it would have been necessary for Egypt to devote a considerable part of its resources to the making of such expeditions, whereas the country preferred to concentrate all its energies on its Tyrian policy. Necho certainly possessed the sympathies of the Tyrians, who had transferred their traditional hatred of the Assyrians to the Chaldæans. He could also count with equal certainty on the support of a considerable party in Moab, Ammon, and Edom, as well as among the Nabatæans and the Arabs of Kedar ”

“ He was in all probability thought fitter than any of his brethren to make head against the king of Egypt. He was twenty-three years old when he began to reign, and he reigned about three months only in Jerusalem, in the year of the world 3395. King Necho, at his return from the expedition against Carchemish, provoked at the people of Judah for having placed this prince upon the throne without his consent, sent for him to Riblah, in Syria, divested him of the kingdom, loaded him with chains, and sent him into Egypt, where he died, Jer. ”

“ Psammetich I, a Libyan soldier, recognizing in the crumbling of Assyrian power his own opportunity, made himself master of the country and established a new dynasty in Egypt. His son and successor, Pharaoh Necho, grasped the chance given him by Nabopolassar's attack on Nineveh to win back the provinces along the Mediterranean, that had been Egyptian before they were conquered by Assyria.
Without further ado, therefore, Necho, with a great army, started north, to conquer all of Assyria that he could and add it to his own Empire. This meant an invasion of Judah. ”

“ A like crisis occurred and like party divisions had broken out around Jehoiakim similar to those at the court of Ahaz and Hezekiah a century earlier. The populace, the soldiery, and most of the court officials, in short, all who adhered to the old popular form of religion or were attracted to strange devotions, hoped to rid themselves of the Chaldæans by earthly means, and since Necho declared himself an implacable enemy of their foe, their principal aim was to come to terms with Egypt. ”

“ Egypt freed herself from foreign domination as soon as the possibilities of war with Elam had shown themselves, and it was Psammetichus of Sais, son of Necho, one of the princes most favoured by the court of Nineveh, who set on foot this campaign against his former patron. He expelled the Assyrian garrisons, reduced the petty native princes to submission, and once more set up the kingdom of the Pharaohs from Elephantine to the Syrian desert, without Assur-bani-pal having been able to spare a single soldier to prevent him, or to bring him back to a sense of his duty. ”

“ From the time of Psammeticus, when the Greeks were allowed to settle in Egypt, frequent intercourse and correspondence was kept up between them and their countrymen in Greece; and from this circumstance the Egyptian history may henceforth be more firmly depended upon. It has already been remarked, that as the alleged circumnavigation of Africa by the Phoenicians took place during the reign of Necho, the successor of Psammeticus, the grounds for its authenticity are much stronger than if it had occurred previously to the intercourse of the Greeks with Egypt. ”

“ Necho went forward to the Euphrates, put the land to tribute, and, in the case of Judah at any rate, filled the throne with his own nominee (see Jehoiakim) . The fall of Nineveh and the division of the spoil gave to Nabopolasser, king of Babylon, the inheritance of the Assyrians in the west, and he at once despatched his son Nebuchadrezzar to fight Necho. The Babylonian and Egyptian forces met at Carchemish (605) , and the rout of the latter was so complete that Necho relinquished Syria and might have lost Egypt as well had not the death of Nabopolasser recalled the victor to Babylon. ”

“ Nebuchadrezzar again placed himself at the head of his troops; Necho, warned of his projects, hastened to meet him with all the forces at his disposal, and, owing probably to the resistance offered by the garrisons which he possessed in the Hittite fortresses, he had time to continue his march as far as the Euphrates. The two armies encountered each other at Carchemish ”

“ For the future Egypt was no longer to find confederates in Southern Syria, and support in Jerusalem. The stubborn resistance of the Jews was to be broken; an end must be put for ever to their intrigues with Egypt. Zedekiah, who was placed on the throne by Nebuchadnezzar himself, and swore obedience to him, was not to escape the punishment of this breach of faith. Nebuchadnezzar was not with the besieging army; he was at Riblah, on the Orontes, the grassy plain where Necho had pitched his camp after the battle of Megiddo. ”

“ The two new states gradually increased in power by successive conquests, each annexing by degrees the ancient provinces of Assyria nearest to its own frontier. ** This seems to be implied by the terms in which Berosus speaks of Necho: he considers him as a rebel satrap over the provinces of Egypt, Coele-Syria, and Phoenicia, and enumerates Egypt in conjunction with Syria, Phoenicia, and Arabia among the dependencies of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadrezzar. ”

“ Headed by Necho of Sais, they invited the Ethiopians to return; but the plot was discovered, and Necho and his fellow-conspirators sent in chains to Nineveh. Sais, Mendes, and other cities of northern Egypt were sacked, and Taharka, who had advanced as far as Thebes and even Memphis, fled to Ethiopia and there died. Meanwhile Necho had been pardoned and loaded with honours by the Assyrian king; his son, who took an Assyrian name, was made satrap of Athribis, near the modern Benha, and the satraps of the Delta henceforward remained faithful to their Assyrian master. ”

“ In the thirty-first year of his reign, Necho, the king of Egypt, made war against the king of Babylon, who had now established his empire on the banks of the Euphrates, over the ruins of the old Assyrian monarchy. Josiah rashly embarked in the contest, either with a view of giving his aid to the king of Babylon, or to prevent the march of Necho, which lay through the great plain of Esdrælon. ”

“ Jehoahaz, or Shallum, his third son, a wicked young man, only reigned while Necho was fighting a battle with the Babylonians on the Euphrates, and then was carried off in chains to Egypt, while Necho set up Eliakim, or Jehoiakim, another brother, in his stead. Jehoiakim was idolatrous, cruel, and violent; he persecuted the prophets, and did everything to draw on himself the punishment of Heaven. Necho, making another invasion, was defeated by the great Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and hunted back by him into Egypt. ”

“ Egypt was reorganised under Assyrian rule, and measures taken to prevent the return of the Ethiopians. It was divided into twenty satrapies, the native princes being appointed to govern them for their Assyrian master. At their head was placed Necho, the vassal king of Sais. Esar-haddon now returned to Nineveh, and on the cliffs of the Nahr el-Kelb, near Beyrout, he engraved a record of his conquest of Egypt and Thebes by the side of the monument whereon, seven centuries previously, Ramses ii. ”

“ It is probably to this battle that Herodotus alludes when he says that Necho overcame the Syrians at Magdôlos. The identity of Magdôlos and Megiddo, accepted by almost all historians, was disputed by Gutschmid, who sees in the Magdôlos of Herodotus the Migdol of the Syro-Egyptian frontier, and in the engagement itself, an engagement of Necho with the Assyrians and their Philistine allies; also by Th. Reinach, who prefers to identify Magdôlos with one of the Migdols near Ascalon, and considers this combat as fought against the Assyrian army of occupation. ”

“ Incorporated with an empire which extended over three continents, Egypt had access to regions whither the products of her industry and her soil had never yet been carried. The produce of Ethiopia and the Sudan passed through her emporia on its way to attract customers in the markets of Tyre, Sidon, Babylon, and Susa, and the isthmus of Suez and Kosseir were the nearest ports through which Arabia and India could reach the Mediterranean. Darius therefore resumed the work of Necho, and beginning simultaneously at both extremities, he cut afresh the canal between the Nile and the Gulf of Suez. ”

“ The attempt of Pharaoh Necho to win for Egypt the inheritance of Assyria was overthrown at the battle of Carchemish, and when Nebuchadrezzar succeeded his father in B. C. 604, he found himself the undisputed lord of Western Asia. Palestine was coerced in 602, and the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 laid a way open for the invasion of Egypt, which took place twenty years later. Tyre also underwent a long siege of thirteen years, but it is doubtful whether it was taken after all. Babylon was now enriched with the spoils of foreign conquest. ”

“ This traffic was carried on between the Arabian Gulf and the western coast of India, across the Indian Ocean. It may be that Lehi himself might have been familiar with a famous expedition by sea which was fitted out by Necho II. king of Egypt; for as near as we can ascertain this was done in his day. This Necho was the king of Egypt against whom Josiah, king of Judah, fought when he received his death wound (II. Chron. xxxv. 22) . He fitted out a fleet in the Red Sea, and having engaged some expert Phoenician pilots and sailors, he sent them on a voyage of discovery along the coast of Africa. ”

“ Both of them place the capture of Gaza in the time of Necho's march against the Assyrians under Josiah; Rosenmüller before the battle of Megiddo; Nägelsbach after that engagement, because he assumes, with all modern expositors, that Necho had landed with his army at the Bay of Acre. He endeavours to support this view by the observation that Necho, before marching farther north, sought to keep the way clear for a retreat to Egypt, since he would otherwise have been lost after the battle of Carchemish, if he did not previously reduce Gaza, the key of the high road to Egypt. ”

“ The tradition of Egypt imagines a voluntary retirement of the king of Ethiopia, or his abdication of the government of Egypt, and then represents the Egyptians as setting up 12 princes in the place of one: we have already seen that 20 were set up by Esarhaddon, and retained by Assurbanipal. Manetho's list says nothing either of the Assyrian dominion, or of the twelve; in it the rule of the last Ethiopian is followed by the dynasty of the Saites, two forefathers of Necho, and then by Necho and Psammetichus. ”

“ We saw that even from the times of the later Ramessids the military power of Egypt had been replaced by foreign mercenaries, especially by Libyans; that the house of the Pharaohs of Bubastis owed its rise to the command of these troops. We saw how under these Pharaohs, and those of the succeeding house of Tanis, the leaders of these troops became hereditary lords of the districts—how these dynasties summoned the Ethiopians against Tnephachtus and Bocchoris, and then others, including Necho and Psammetichus, joined Assyria against the Ethiopians. ”

“ Necho was succeeded by his son Psammis; and he by the Apries of Herodotus, the Pharaoh Hophra of the [277] Hebrew Scriptures. Egypt is still very rich and prosperous, and so he makes another attempt for the recovery of the dominion of Western Asia. In this effort he attacked Phœnicia both by sea and land. Still no change, or vacillation, is perceptible in the utterances of the Hebrew Prophets. They at all events are not misled, or dazzled, by the riches and greatness of Egypt. Ezekiel sees, just as Isaiah and Jeremiah had seen, that the valley of the Nile can no longer be the seat of Empire ”

“ Thebes never again recovered its prestige. Its treasures were transported to Nineveh. The Ethiopian supremacy in Egypt was finally extinguished, and Psamtik, son of Necho, who was appointed the Pharaoh, began to reign as the vassal of Assyria.
When the kings on the seacoasts of Palestine and Asia Minor found that they could no longer look to Egypt for help, they resigned themselves to the inevitable, and ceased to intrigue against Assyria. Gifts were sent to Ashur-bani-pal by the kings of Arvad, Tyre, Tarsus, and Tabal. The Arvad ruler, however, was displaced, and his son set on his throne. ”

“ It has also been observed by an accomplished scholar, who is much attached to the pursuit of Egyptian antiquities, that, according to the testimony of Herodotus, all the kings of this dynasty [Pg 33] were buried at Saïs, and that we must either reject this evidence, or admit that neither Psammis nor Necho can be the personage here represented. We may, however, hope, that future researches will furnish us with materials, that may enable us to remove this and many other difficulties, which at present envelope the chronology of the kings of Egypt. ”

“ They carried some of the articles which they brought from India through the straits of Babelmandel into Abyssinia and Egypt; some they transported to Babylon through the Persian Gulf and the Euphrates; and some by the way of the Red Sea to the port of Eziongeber. They thus became rich; though it is possible their wealth may have been too much magnified by the ancients. The eminence of the Egyptians, as a commercial nation, commences with the reign of Necho. Their commerce, nevertheless, was not great, till Alexander had destroyed Tyre and built Alexandria. ”