Sprung from a priestly tribe in Babylonia, as the Median poems tell us--and other evidence confirms the statement--and in the confidence of the king of Assyria, Nabopolassar was nominated to be the viceroy of Babylonia. For some years he holds this office, and then resolves on a revolt; it is he who sets on foot and accomplishes the union of Media and Babylonia, and establishes it by the alliance of his own house with that of the Median king. It is he who relieves Media from the Lydian war, and establishes peace and a marriage between Media and Lydia, so that Media can turn with all her power against the remnant of Assyria. The share which Nabopolassar receives in the prize of victory when the goal has been won corresponds to his share in the decisive struggle. The land of Assyria, so Herodotus tells us, fell to Media, "as far as the Babylonian portion." From this it is clear that Cyaxares received the Assyrian land as far as the Tigris. Had not this region been under the supremacy of the Medes before the Persian dominion, the ruins of Nineveh and Chalah could not have been pointed out to Xenophon as the ruins of Median cities. The land to the west of the Tigris, Mesopotamia, as far as the foot of the Armenian mountains, fell to the share of Nabopolassar. We are definitely told by the Hebrews that the region of the Chaboras belonged to the new kingdom of Babylon,[589] and, as we saw, it was not the Median army which Necho met at Biredshik, but the Babylonians, the army of Nabopolassar. Whether it was Nabopolassar's intention to extend his power to the west beyond the Euphrates, and enter upon the inheritance of Assyria as the sovereign over Syria, or whether it was the advance of Necho into Syria, and his march to the Euphrates, which first called forth this intention, we cannot decide. In no case was he likely to suffer Egypt to establish herself in Syria. Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabopolassar, after his victory at Karchemish, followed the retreating army of Egypt. The Syrian lands once more looked forward to becoming the scene and seat of the war between Babylonia and Egypt, as in previous times they had witnessed the war between Assyria and Egypt. If the dominion of Egypt had been recently imposed upon them in the place of the dominion of Assyria, it depended on the approaching struggle of arms, whether they were to become the subjects of a new master, of the new crown of Babylon.