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Updated: May 5, 2025
It was a lesson which neither he nor his successors forgot, like the similar lesson impressed a few years later upon the Egyptian prince Necho. The Assyrian conquest of Egypt has been already described.
The Babylonian army which was besieging Jerusalem retired on the approach of Psammetikhos II., who had succeeded his father Necho, and the Jewish statesmen again breathed freely. But the respite lasted for only six years.
Necho, one of the kings of Egypt, was desirous to have joined the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, and is said in history to have commanded some Phenicians to sail from the Red Sea by the Straits of Mecca, and to endeavour to return to Egypt by the Mediterranean . This they accomplished, and sailed along the coast of Melinda, Quiloa, and Sofala, till they reached the Cape of Good Hope, which they doubled; and, continuing their course to the north, they sailed along the coast of Guinea all the way to the Mediterranean, and returned to Egypt after two years absence, being the first who had circumnavigated Africa.
In Egypt he had learnt much; among other things, the art of managing the exchequer of his kingdom wisely; for this reason he held the Egyptians in high esteem, and granted them many privileges, amongst others a canal to connect the Nile with the Red Sea, which was greatly to the advantage of their commerce. Under Necho they were recommenced, and possibly finished by Darius.
Psammetikhos had succeeded his father Necho, who had been put to death by Tuant-Amon. He was a man of vigour and ability, and he aimed at nothing less than sovereignty over an united and independent Egypt. His opportunity came in B.C. 655. The Assyrian empire was shaken to its foundations by a revolt of which Babylonia was the centre and which had spread to its other provinces.
He undertook to oppose the encroachments of Necho II, king of Egypt, an able, warlike, and enterprising monarch, distinguished for his naval expeditions, whose ships doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and returned to Egypt in safety, after a three years' voyage.
The Egyptians, who during the last two centuries had sometimes seen their temples plundered and their trade crushed by the grasping tyranny of the Persian satraps, and had at other times been almost as much hurt by their own vain struggles for freedom, now found themselves in the quiet enjoyment of good laws, with a prosperity which promised soon to equal that of the reigns of Necho or Amasis.
Josiah was succeeded by his son Shallum, who assumed the crown under the name of Jehoaz, which event it seems gave umbrage to the king of Egypt. So he despatched an army to Jerusalem, which yielded at once, and King Jehoaz was sent as a captive to the banks of the Nile. His elder brother Eliakim was appointed king in his place, under the name of Jehoiakim, who thus became the vassal of Necho.
Why then is it that the actual myths and legends of Egypt concerning the origin of the world and its civilization should have failed to impress the Hebrew mind, which, on the other hand, was so responsive to those of Babylon? One obvious answer would be, that it was Nebuchadnezzar II, and not Necho, who carried the Jews captive.
Though this monarch also despatched investigators to ascertain the sources of the Nile, and determine the causes of its rise, it was doubtless in the hope of making such knowledge of use in a material or economical point of view, and therefore it may be supposed that the circumnavigation of Africa was undertaken upon the anticipated or experienced failure of the advantages expected to arise from the reopening of the canal; for the great fleets which Necho and his father had built could not be advantageously handled unless they could be transferred as circumstances required, either by the circumnavigation or by the canal, from one sea to the other.
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