Necho had already occupied the throne for three or four years when the invasion of 670 B.C. delivered him from the Ethiopian supremacy. He is represented as being brave, energetic, and enterprising, ready to hazard everything in order to attain the object towards which the ambition of his ancestors had been tending for a century past, namely, to restore unity to the ancient kingdom under the rule of the house of Sais. The extent of his realm, and, above all, the possession of Memphis, gave him a real superiority, and Esarhaddon did not hesitate to esteem him above his competitors; the Ninevite scribes placed him in the first rank, and he heads the list of the Egyptian vassals. He soon had an opportunity of proving his devotion to his foreign suzerain. Taharqa did not quietly accept his defeat, and Egypt looked to him to be revenged on the Assyrian as soon as he should have reorganised his army. He once more, accordingly, took the field in the middle of 669 B.C.; the barons of the Said rallied to his standard without hesitation, and he soon re-entered the "White Wall," but there his advance was arrested. Necho and the neighbouring chiefs of the Delta, held in check by the presence of Semitic garrisons, did not venture to proclaim themselves on his side, and awaited under arms the arrival of Assyrian reinforcements.* Esarhaddon, in spite of failing health, assumed command of the troops, and before leaving home carried out the project to which the conspiracy of the preceding year had given rise; he assigned the government of Babylon to Shamash-shumukin, and solemnly designated Assur-bani-pal as the heir to Assyria proper, and to the suzerainty over the whole empire.** * The first Egyptian campaign of Assur-bani-pal is also the last campaign of Esarhaddon, and Assur-bani-pal appropriated all the earlier incidents of it, some of which belong to the sole reign of his father, and some to the few weeks in which he shared the throne with him. ** The association of Assur-bani-pal with his father on the throne was pointed out by G. Smith, who thought he could fix the date about 673 B.C., three or four years before the death of Esarhaddon. Tielo showed that Assur-bani-pal was then only made viceroy, and assigned his association in the sovereignty to the year 671 or 670 B.C., about the time of the second Egyptian campaign, while Hommel brought it down to 669. Winckler has, with much reason, placed the date in 668 B.C. The Assyrian documents do not mention the coronation of Shamash-shuniukin, for Assur-bani-pal afterwards affected to consider his brother a mere viceroy, appointed by himself after the death of his father Esarhaddon; but an examination of all the circumstances has shown that the enthronement of Shamash-shumukin at Babylon was on a par with that of Assur-bani-pal at Nineveh, and that both owed their elevation to their father.