eir ally, but if they felt
themselves not in a condition to defy the Chaldasans on Syrian
territory, the Chaldaeans on their side feared to carry hostilities
into the heart of the Delta. Necho died two years after the disaster at
Jerusalem, without having been called to account by, or having found an
opportunity of further annoying, his rival, and his son Psammetichus II.
succeeded peacefully to the throne.** He was a youth at this time,***
and his father's ministers conducted the affairs of State on his behalf,
and it was they who directed one of his early campaigns, if not the very
first, against Ethiopia.****

* 2 Kings xxiv. 11-17; cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 10.

** The length of Necho's reign is fixed at sixteen years by
Herodotus, and at six or at nine years by the various
abbreviators of Manetho. The contemporaneous monuments have
confirmed the testimony of Herodotus on this point as
against that of Manetho, and the stelse of the Florentine
Museum, of the Leyden Museum, and of the Louvre have
furnished certain proof that Necho died in the sixteenth
year, after fifteen and a half years' reign.

*** His sarcophagus, discovered in 1883, and now preserved
in the Gizeh Museum, is of such small dimensions that it can
have been used only for a youth.

**** The graffiti of Abu-Simbel have been most frequently
attributed to Psammetichus I., and until recently I had
thought it possible to maintain this opinion. A. von
Gutsehmid was the first to restore them to Psammetichus IL,
and his opinion has gained ground since Wiedemann's vigorous
defence of it. The Alysian mercenary's graffito contains
the Greek translation of the current Egyptian phrase "when
his Majesty came on his first military expedition into this
country," which seems to point to no very early date in a
reign for a first campaign. Moreover, one of the generals in
command of the expedition is a Psammetichus, son of
Theocles, that is, a Greek with an Egyptian name. A
considerable lapse of time must have taken place since
Psammetichus' first dealings with the Greeks, for otherwise
the person named after the king would not have been of
sufficiently mature age to be put at the head of a body of
troops.

They organised a small army for him composed of Egyptians, Greeks, and
Asiatic mercenaries, which, while the king was ta