well and saw no
evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven and
to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and
have been consumed by the sword and by the famine."

There still remained to these misguided Jews one consolation which
they shared in common with the prophets--the certainty of seeing the
hereditary foes of Israel involved in the common overthrow: Ammon had
been already severely chastised; Tyre, cut off from the neighbouring
mainland, seemed on the point of succumbing, and the turn of Egypt
must surely soon arrive in which she would have to expiate in bitter
sufferings the wrongs her evil counsels had brought upon Jerusalem.
Their anticipated joy, however, of witnessing such chastisements was not
realised. Tyre defied for thirteen years the blockade of Nebuchadrezzar,
and when the city at length decided to capitulate, it was on condition
that its king, Ethbaal III., should continue to reign under the almost
nominal suzerainty of the Chaldeans (574 B.C.).*

* The majority of Christian writers have imagined, contrary
to the testimony of the Phoenician annals, that the island
of Tyre was taken by Nebuchadrezzar; they say that the
Chaldaeans united the island to the mainland by a causeway
similar to that constructed subsequently by Alexander. It is
worthy of notice that a local tradition, still existing in
the eleventh century of our era, asserted that the besiegers
were not successful in their enterprise.

Egypt continued not only to preserve her independence, but seemed to
increase in prosperity in proportion to the intensity of the hatred
which she had stirred up against her.

[Illustration: 436.jpg BRONZE LION OF BOHBAIT]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an engraving in Mariette.

Apries set about repairing the monuments and embellishing the temples:
he erected throughout the country stelae, tables of offerings, statues
and obelisks, some of which, though of small size, like that which
adorns the Piazza della Minerva at Borne,* erected so incongruously on
the back of a modern elephant, are unequalled for purity of form and
delicacy of cutting. The high pitch of artistic excellence to which the
schools of the reign of Psam-metichus II. had attained was maintained
at the same exalted level. If the granite sphinxes** and bronze lions of
this period lack somewhat in grace of form, it must be acknowledged that
they displa