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 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN AND SEMITIC EMPIRES 25 against his brother whom Esarhaddon had selected. He promptly recaptured Egypt ; as soon as his back was turned, Tirhakah's successor won it back, only to be finally expelled by sardana another Assyrian expedition. The Egyptians, how- paius, 668. ever, being rid of the Ethiopians, at once threw off the yoke of the conqueror, who had too much on his hands elsewhere to leave an adequate army of occupation in the south. The twenty- sixth Egyptian dynasty begins with Psammetichus. The Cimmerians were now sweeping over Asia Minor, and playing havoc with Lydia and the neighbouring dominions which were beyond the Assyrian sphere ; Ashurbanipal did not intervene. But unfortunately he was impelled to attack Elam, that elusive state on the east, which was still at least a barrier between Mesopotamia and the advancing Aryan hordes on that side, as Urartu had been on the other. On the whole Ashurbanipal, whose name has also the more familiar form of Sardanapalus, was a successful ruler. He was also an energetic collector of records and of literature, to whose labours we owe almost all our information. But after his death, about 630, Assyria rapidly collapsed. In Babylon the Chaldeans, the party persistently hostile to Assyria, captured the throne. The Chaldean king, Nabopolassar, allied himself with the Median chief (called Cyaxares The End of by the Greek historian Herodotus), who had won an Assyria, imperial position in that nation. Chaldeans from the south and Medes from the east advanced upon upper Mesopotamia. The Cimmerians had already disappeared, having been finally broken up by the Lydian power. The 'Ashkuza,' the Aryan group intermediate between Medes and Cimmerians, were allies of Assyria, but were expelled by Cyaxares, who captured and sacked Nineveh, which was levelled to the ground, and other cities of Northern Assyria, which simply ceased to exist. The new Chaldean empire claimed for its share Chaldea, Mesopotamia, and everything south of the Euphrates and west as The Chaldean far as Mount Taurus and Phoenicia ; the new Median Empires, 605. empire claimed everything from the Persian Gulf upwards, on the east and north of the Tigris, as far west as the river Halys. On the west of Asia Minor, Lydia was paramount.