of Judah and the submission of Tyre; the successes of Aprics in
Phoenicia--The Greeks in Libya and the founding of Cyrene: the defeat of
Irasa and the fall of Apries--Amasis and the campaign of Nebuchadrezzar
against Egypt--Relations between Nebuchadrezzar and Astyages--The
fortifications of Babylon and the rebuilding of the Great Ziggurat--The
successors of Nebuchadrezzar: Nabonidus._

[Illustration: 263.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

CHAPTER III--THE MEDES AND THE SECOND CHALDAEAN EMPIRE

_The fall of Nineveh and the rise of the Chaldaean and Median
empires--The XXVIth Egyptian dynasty: Cyaxares, Alyattes, and
Nebuchadrezzar._

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the silver vase of
Tchertomlitsk, now in the museum of the Hermitage. The
vignette is also drawn by Faucher-Gudin, and represents an
Egyptian torso in the Turin museum; the cartouche which is
seen upon the arm is that of Psammetichus I.

The East was ever a land of kaleidoscopic changes and startling dramatic
incidents. An Oriental empire, even when built up by strong hands and
watched over with constant vigilance, scarcely ever falls to pieces in
the slow and gradual process of decay arising from the ties that bind
it together becoming relaxed or its constituent elements growing
antiquated. It perishes, as a rule, in a cataclysm; its ruin comes like
a bolt from the blue, and is consummated before the commencement of it
is realised. One day it stands proud and stately in the splendour of its
glory; there is no report abroad but that which tells of its riches,
its industry, its valour, the good government of its princes and the
irresistible might of its gods, and the world, filled with envy or with
fear, deeming its good fortune immutable, never once applies to it, even
in thought, the usual commonplaces on the instability of human things.
Suddenly an ill wind, blowing up from the distant horizon, bursts upon
it in destructive squalls, and it is overthrown in the twinkling of
an eye, amid the glare of lightning, the resounding crash of thunder,
whirlwinds of dust and rain: when the storm has passed away as quickly
as it came, its mutterings heralding the desolation which it bears to
other climes, the brightening sky no longer reveals the old contours
and familiar outlines, but the sun of history rises on a new empire,
emerging, as if by the touch of a magic wand, from the ruins which the
tempest has wrought. There is nothing apparently lackin