captured Azotus.

When Psammetichus began to reign the situation of Egypt was very
different from what it had been under the Empire. The development of
trade in the Mediterranean and contact with new peoples and new
civilizations in peace and war had given birth to new ideas among the
Egyptians and at the same time to a loss of confidence in their own
powers. The Theban supremacy was gone and the Delta was now the wealthy
and progressive part of Egypt; piety increased amongst the masses,
unenterprising and unwarlike, but proud of their illustrious antiquity.
Thebes and Ammon and the traditions of the Empire savoured too much now
of the Ethiopian; the priests of the Memphite and Deltaic dynasty
thereupon turned deliberately for their models to the times of the
ancient supremacy of Memphis, and the sculptures and texts on tomb and
temple had to conform as closely as possible to those of the Old
Kingdom. In other than religious matters, however, the Egyptians were
inventing and perhaps borrowing. To enumerate a few examples of this
which are already definitely known: we find that the forms of legal and
business documents became more precise; the mechanical arts of casting
in bronze on a core and of moulding figures and pottery were brought to
the highest pitch of excellence; and portraiture in the round on its
highest plane was better than ever before and admirably lifelike,
revealing careful study of the external anatomy of the individual.

Psammetichus died in the fifty-fourth year of his reign and was
succeeded by his son Necho, 610-594 B.C. Taking advantage of the
helpless state of the Assyrians, whose capital was assailed by the Medes
and the Babylonians, the new Pharaoh prepared an expedition to recover
the ancient possessions of the Empire in Syria. Josiah alone, faithful
to the king of Assyria, opposed him with his feeble force at Megiddo and
was easily overcome and slain. 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 Nabop