* The account of this Phoenician campaign is contained in one of the inscriptions discovered and commented on by Pognon. Winckler, the only one to my knowledge who has tried to give a precise chronological position to the events recorded in the inscription, places them at the very beginning of the reign, after the victory of Carchemish, about the time when Nebuchadrezzar heard that his father had just died. I think that this date is not justified by the study of the inscription, for the king speaks therein of the great works that he had accomplished, the restoration of the temples, the rebuilding of the walls of Babylon, and the digging of canals, all of which take us to the middle or the end of his reign. We are therefore left to choose between one of two dates, namely, that of 590-587, during the Jewish war, and that from the King's thirty-seventh year to 568 B.C., during the war against Amasis which will be treated below. I have chosen the first, because of Nebuchadrezzar's long sojourn at Riblah, which gave him sufficient time for the engraving of the stelse on Lebanon: the bas-reliefs of Wady. Brissa could have been cut before the taking of Jerusalem, for no allusion to the war against the Jews is found in them. The enemy mentioned in the opening lines is perhaps Apries, whose fleet was scouring the Phoenician coasts. The other force bore down upon Zedekiah, and made war upon him ruthlessly. It burnt the villages and unwalled towns, gave the rural districts over as a prey to the Philistines and the Edomites, surrounded the two fortresses of Lachish and Azekah, and only after completely exhausting the provinces, appeared before the walls of the capital. Jerusalem was closely beset when the news reached the Chaldaeans that Apries was approaching Gaza; Zedekiah, in his distress, appealed to him for help, and the promised succour at length came upon the scene. The Chaldaeans at once raised the siege with the object of arresting the advancing enemy, and the popular party, reckoning already on a Chaldean defeat, gave way to insolent rejoicing over the prophets of evil. Jeremiah, however, had no hope of final success. "Deceive not yourselves, saying, The Chaldaeans shall surely depart from us; for they shall not depart. For though ye had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that fight against you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they rise up every man in his tent, and burn this city with fire." What actually took place is not known; according to one account, Apries accepted battle and was defeated; according to another, he refused to be drawn into an engagement, and returned haughtily to Egypt.*