Note 626 — Chapter XX · EGYPTIANS.

Menander ap. Joseph. Antiq. J. ix, 14, 2. Ἐπὶ Εἰθωβάλου τοῦ βασιλέως ἐπολιόρκησε Ναβουχοδονόσορος τὴν Τύρον ἐπ᾽ ἔτε δεκάτρια. That this siege of thirteen years ended in the storming, capitulation, or submission (we know not which, and Volney goes beyond the evidence when he says, “Les Tyriens furent emportés d’assaut par le roi de Babylone,” Recherches sur l’Histoire Ancienne, vol. ii, ch. 14, p. 250) of Tyre to the Chaldæan king, is quite certain from the mention which afterwards follows of the Tyrian princes being detained captive in Babylonia. Hengstenberg (De Rebus Tyriorum, pp. 34-77) heaps up a mass of arguments, most of them very inconclusive, to prove this point, about which the passage cited by Josephus from Menander leaves no doubt. What is not true, is, that Tyre was destroyed and laid desolate by Nebuchadnezzar: still less can it be believed that that king conquered Egypt and Libya, as Megasthenes, and even Berosus, so far as Egypt is concerned, would have us believe,—the argument of Larcher ad Herodot. ii, 168, is anything but satisfactory. The defeat of the Egyptian king at Carchemisch, and the stripping him of his foreign possessions in Judæa and Syria, have been exaggerated into a conquest of Egypt itself.