io8 A Short History of The World He had defeated and slain King Josiah of Judah, a small country of which there is more to tell presently, at the battle of Megiddo in 608 B.C., and he pushed on to the Euphrates to encounter not a deca- dent Assyria but a renascent Babylonia. The Chaldeans dealt very vigorously with the Egyptians. Necho was routed and driven back to Egypt, and the Babylonian frontier pushed down to the ancient Egyptian boundaries. From 606 until 539 B.C. the Second Babylonian Empire flourished insecurely. It flourished so long as it kept the peace with the stronger hardier Median Empire to the north. And during these sixty- seven years not only life but learning flourished in the ancient city. Even under the Assyrian monarchs and especially under Sar- danapalus, Babylon had been a scene of great intellectual activity. Sardanapalus, though an Assyrian, had been quite Babylon-ized. He made a library, a library not of paper but of the clay tablets that were used for writing in Mesopotamia since early Sumerian days. His collection has been unearthed and is perhaps the most precious store of historical material in the world. The last of the Chaldean line of Babylonian monarchs, Xabonidus, had even keener literary tastes. He patronized antiquarian researches, and when a date was Seamd. BABiOOIMIAM in. idle aP T^Icbui^xa^iicziax' die (p-catr
