Josiah

Josiah became king of Judah at eight years old after his father Amon was assassinated, and in the eighteenth year of his reign workers repairing the temple found a forgotten scroll of the law, whose reading triggered Judah's last great religious reform: Josiah tore down pagan altars across the kingdom, reinstated Passover on a scale not seen since the days of the judges, and executed the priests of the high places he destroyed. He died young, killed in battle at Megiddo trying to block the Egyptian army from reinforcing Assyria, and Judah's slide toward Babylonian exile resumed almost immediately under his successors. The Babylonian Chronicle, a cuneiform tablet recording the same Egyptian campaign, confirms the military situation that cost Josiah his life.