The pharaoh Psamtik IRaid till Egypt
Shortly after Madyes's assassination, some time between 623 and 616 BC, the Scythians took advantage
of the power vacuum created by the crumbling of the power of their former Assyrian allies and overran
the Levant.[19][124]
This Scythian raid into the Levant reached as far south as Palestine, and was foretold by
the Judahite prophets Jeremiah and Zephaniah as a pending "disaster from the north," which they
believed would result in the destruction of Jerusalem,[100] but Jeremiah was discredited and in
consequence temporarily stopped prophetising and lost favour with the Judahite king Josiah when the
Scythian raid did not affect Jerusalem and or Judah.[100][125]
The Scythian expedition instead reached up to the borders of Egypt, where their advance was stopped
by the marshes of the Nile Delta,[19][124] after which the pharaoh Psamtik I met them and convinced them
to turn back by offering them gifts.[48][126]
The Scythians retreated by passing through the Philistine city of Ascalon largely without any incident,
although some stragglers looted the temple of ʿAštart in the city,[127] which was considered to be the
most ancient of all temples to that goddess, as a result of which the perpetrators of this sacrilege and
their descendants were allegedly cursed by ʿAštart with a “female disease,” due to which they became a
class of transvestite diviners called the Anarya (meaning “unmanly” in Scythian[19]).[48]
War against Assyria
According to Babylonian records, around 615 BC the Scythians were operating as allies of Cyaxares and
the Medes in their war against Assyria, with the Scythians' abandonment of their alliance with Assyria to
instead side with the Babylonians and the Medes being a critical factor in worsening the position of the
Neo-Assyrian Empire,[128] and the Scythians participated in the Medo-Babylonian conquests of Aššur in
614 BC, Nineveh in 612 BC, and Ḫarran in 610 BC, which permanently destroyed the Neo-Assyrian
Empire.[129][50][122]
The presence of Scythian-style arrowheads at locations where the Neo-Babylonian Empire is known to
have conducted military campaigns, and which are associated with the destruction layers of these
campaigns, suggests that certain contingents composed of Scythians or of Medes who had adopted
Scythian archery techniques might have recruited by the Neo-Babylonian army during this war.[130]