Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/38

 26 EARLY PEOPLES AND EMPIRES This was the position when Nabopolassar died. His son, Nebuchadnezzar, who was engaged at the time in pushing the Chaldean claim in the far south-west (where the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho, the son of Psammetichus i., was trying to take advantage of Assyria's collapse), made a swift march back to Babylon, stamped out all resistance, and secured the succession. Then he returned to the south, and completed the establishment of his power as far as the bounds of Egypt proper. In the process, he carried off the Jews into their Babylonian captivity. The Egyptian Pharaoh of this time was the Hophra of the Old Testa- ment, called Apries by Herodotus. Nebuchadnezzar was a successful warrior ; he was also a mighty engineer and builder, who constructed the 'hanging Nebuchad- gardens of Babylon ' which were numbered among nezzar. the seven wonders of the world, designed great canal- works for the military defence of Babylon, fortified the northern frontier, and built many temples. He would seem to have further organised the empire which had now acquired a greater extent than that of Sargon or Hammurabi. But it was destined to a brief duration. A few years after his death in 561, the sceptre passed to Nabonidus, in whose reign a new power arose among the Medes, which displaced the Median supremacy, conquered and swallowed up Lydia and the Chaldean empire, and had added Egypt to its dominion before the century closed. Of this we shall read in the next chapter.