The fighting continued, as the Assyrian king held out against the alliance until 607 BC, when he was eventually ejected by the Medes, Babylonians, Scythians and their allies, and prevented in an attempt to regain the city the same year. The Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II, whose dynasty had been installed as vassals of Assyria in 671 BC, belatedly tried to aid Egypt's former Assyrian masters, possibly out of fear that Egypt would be next to succumb to the new powers without Assyria to protect them, having already been ravaged by the Scythians. The Assyrians fought on with Egyptian aid until what was probably a final decisive victory was achieved against them at Carchemish in northwestern Assyria in 605 BC. The seat of empire was thus transferred to Babylonia for the first time since Hammurabi over a thousand years before. Nabopolassar was followed by his son Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BC), whose reign of 43 years made Babylon once more the ruler of much of the civilized world, taking over portions of the former Assyrian Empire, with the eastern and northeastern portion being taken by the Medes and the far north by the Scythians. Nebuchadnezzar II may have also had to contend with remnants of the Assyrian resistance. Some sections of the Assyrian army and administration may have still continued in and around Dur-Katlimmu in northwest Assyria for a time, however, by 599 BC Assyrian imperial records from this region also fell silent. The fate of Ashur-uballit II remains unknown, and he may have been killed attempting to regain Harran, at Carchemish, or continued to fight on, eventually disappearing into obscurity. The Scythians and Cimmerians, erstwhile allies of Babylonia under Nabopolassar, now became a threat, and Nebuchadnezzar II was forced to march into Anatolia and rout their forces, ending the northern threat to his Empire. The Egyptians attempted to remain in the Near East, possibly in an effort to aid in restoring Assyria as a secure buffer against Babylonia and the Medes and Persians, or to carve out an empire of their own. Nebuchadnezzar II campaigned against the Egyptians and drove them back over the Sinai. However, an attempt to take Egypt itself as his Assyrian predecessors had succeeded in doing failed, mainly due to a series of rebellions from the Israelites of Judah and the former kingdom of Ephraim, the Phoenicians of Caanan and the Arameans of the Levant. The Babylonian