all these peoples is implied by the
passage already cited in 2 Kings xxiv. 7; Berosus speaks of
the Phoenician, Jewish, and Syrian prisoners whom
Nebuchadrezzar left to his generals, when he resolved to
return to Babylon by the shortest route.

He feared lest a competitor should dispute his throne--perhaps his
younger brother, that Nabu-shum-lishir who had figured at his side
at the dedication of a temple to Marduk. He therefore concluded an
armistice with Necho, by the terms of which he remained master of the
whole of Syria between the Euphrates and the Wady el-Arish, and then
hastily turned homewards. But his impatience could not brook the
delay occasioned by the slow march of a large force, nor the ordinary
circuitous route by Carchemish and through Mesopotamia. He hurried
across the Arabian desert, accompanied by a small escort of light
troops, and presented himself unexpectedly at the gates of Babylon. He
found all in order. His Chaldaean ministers had assumed the direction of
affairs, and had reserved the throne for the rightful heir; he had only
to appear to be acclaimed and obeyed (B.C. 605).

His reign was long, prosperous, and on the whole peaceful. The recent
changes in Asiatic politics had shut out the Chaldaeans from the majority
of the battle-fields on which the Assyrians had been wont to wage
warfare with the tribes on their eastern and northern frontiers. We no
longer see stirring on the border-land those confused masses of tribes
and communities of whose tumultuous life the Ninevite annals make such
frequent record: Elam as an independent state no longer existed, neither
did Philipi and Namri, nor the Cossaeans, nor Parsua, nor the Medes
with their perpetual divisions, nor the Urartians and the Mannai in
a constant state of ferment within their mountain territory; all that
remained of that turbulent world now constituted a single empire, united
under the hegemony of the Medes, and the rule of a successful conqueror.
The greater part of Blam was already subject to those Achaemenides who
called themselves sovereigns of Anshan as well as of Persia, and whose
fief was dependent on the kingdom of Ecbatana:* it is probable that
Chaldasa received as her share of the ancient Susian territory the low
countries of the Uknu and the Ulai, occupied by the Aramaean tribes
of the Puqudu, the Eutu, and the Grambulu;** but Susa fell outside her
portion, and was soon transformed into a flourishing I