NECOH'S CAMPAIGN (PP.162, 163).

In addition to the accounts in the Books of Kings and Chronicles of Pharaoh Necoh's advance into Asia in pursuance of his claim for a share of the crumbling Assyrian Empire there are two independent records: (1) Jeremiah XLVII.1 -- and Pharaoh smote Gaza -- a headline (with other particulars) wrongly prefixed by the Hebrew text, but not by the Greek, to an Oracle upon an invasion of Philistia not from the south but from the north (see above, pp.13, 61); (2) by Herodotus, II.159, who says that "Necoh (Nekos) making war by land on the Syrians defeated them at Magdolos and after the battle took Kadutis, a great city of Syria." Magdolos is probably Megiddo, unless it stands for Megdel, which, as well as Rumman (= Hadad-rimmon, the scene of the mourning for Josiah, Zech. XII.11) lies near Megiddo. If, as is usually held, Kadutis be Gaza, Herodotus has reversed the proper order of Necoh's two actions; but Kadutis also suggests hak-Kodesh, the holy, an epithet of Jerusalem (Jerusalem, I.270) which would suit Herodotus' order, for it was after Megiddo that Necoh became master of Jerusalem and Judah. The suggestion, though worth mentioning, is doubtful; the epithet is late, exilic and post-exilic; and Herodotus' phrase took Kadutis is hardly equivalent to became paramount there as Necoh became paramount in Jerusalem.