Status and trade also improved
upon a fuller entry into the economy of the ancient Mediterranean. In 653 BC,
Psammetichus, profiting from Assyria's internal problems, threw off the foreign
yoke, allowing Egypt once more to be a dominant power in the Near East. The
gradual Assyrian collapse was, however, leaving a dangerous power vacuum in the
area. Like vultures, other nations hovered over the death throes the
Babylonians under Nabopolassar, the Medes and the Scythians particularly.
Nabopolassar created havoc in 629-627 BC, advancing as far as southern
Palestine where he was repulsed at Ashdod on the coast by the Egyptians.
Psammetichus, realizing the potential danger for Egypt of an Assyrian collapse,
actually assisted Assyria against the Babylonians in 616 BC, but did not have
sufficient forces to sway the day for them. A joint Scythian and Persian army
attacked Assyria a year later, culminating in the fall of its capital Nineveh
in 612 BC and the extinction of the royal line.
Nekau (III), better known
as Necho, continued the foreign involvements of his father Psammetichus,
when he came to the throne in 610 BC. Palestine once more became an Egyptian
possession and much of the history of Egypt’s involvement in the area is enshrined
in the Biblical account in the second Book of Kings. It was now, in the late 7th
century, that Greece was expanding her trading contacts and Necho took the
opportunity of recruiting displaced Ionian Greeks to form an Egyptian navy. (Peter
Clayton, Chronicles of the Pharaohs [London: Thames & Hudson, 1994],
195-96)