Herodotus, lib. ii. Thebes never regained the power which it then lost. Its crowded population had been fed by the rich corn-fields of the Delta, its priests and nobles had been enriched by the tributes of its foreign provinces, and by the trade which floated upon the Nile: it lost every thing when it lost Lower Egypt, and it soon found itself unable to hold Ethiopia. Shishank, also, if he was the same king as the Sesostris of Herodotus, overran Scythia and Thrace, and on his return home left a body of troops behind him, who founded the city of Colchis. He also tried to gain part of the trade of the Red Sea for Lower Egypt, by making a ship-canal between Suez and the nearest branch of the Aristoteles, Nile, but he was unable to finish the work. He set apart the soldiers as a privileged order in the state, as the priests had been since the time of Joseph. de Rep. vii. 10. Manetho. B. C. 900. Manetho. Wilkinson's Manetho. Osorkon I. followed his father Shishank, and also held Thebes; and after him some of the kings of the name of Rameses may have regained the throne of their fathers. But in a few years Takelothe, a king of Bubastus, is again reigning at Thebes. Osorkon II., Shishank II., and other kings of Tanis, then governed Egypt; and after them Bocchoris of Sais, one of the great Egyptian lawgivers; and it was no doubt from the weakness brought upon the country by these civil wars and changes that Egypt then fell an easy prey to the Ethiopians. The three kings of Ethiopia who held Egypt have left their names carved in hieroglyphics on the temples of Thebes; and were most likely of the same race, spoke the same tongue, and worshipped the same gods, as the other kings of Egypt. Sabacon, the first of them, conquered Thebes, Memphis, and Sais,—while the last of the kings of Tanis still held out in his own city; but Sevechus, or B. c. 729. So, was master of the whole of Egypt, and was courted by Hoshea 2 Kings, xvii. king of Israel, when he was in danger from his warlike neighbour the king of Assyria, because the Jews had left off paying the yearly tribute. The Assyrians, however, overran Judæa, and the Egyptian alliance was broken; and though Tirhakah, the third Ethiopian king of Egypt, threatened to march against Palestine, he does not seem to have done so. On the fall of the Ethiopians, the kings of Sais gained the mastery of Egypt; and under them the population, the trade, and the power of the country were very great; but, as their thoughts and wealth were not turned towards building or the arts, we have now but few traces of their greatness. Manetho. Ausonius, Ep. 409, 20. Nechepsus, the first of the Saïtic kings, has left a name known for his priestly learning; and his astronomical writings are quoted by Pliny. He was followed by Necho I., Psammetichus I., and Pliny, lib. ii. Necho II. The last stretched his arms from Ethiopia to the Euphrates, and slew Josiah king of Judah at Megiddo; and, when the 2 Kings, xxiii. Jews made Jehoahaz king, he took him prisoner, and made Eliakim, the elder brother, king in his place; and he made Judæa pay a yearly tribute to Egypt of one hundred talents of silver and one talent of gold, or about twenty thousand pounds sterling. But, five years Jeremiah,xlvi. afterwards, Necho was beaten in pitched battle by Nebuchadnezzar, and lost all that had belonged to Egypt between the Euphrates and the Nile. B. c. 608. lib. ii. Necho sent some Phenicians on a voyage of discovery, to circum- Herodotus, navigate Africa; they set sail down the Red Sea, and after a coasting voyage of two years, they again reached Egypt, through the Straits of Gibraltar. The account which they gave of what they saw, and which made Herodotus distrust the story, is the best proof Herodotus, lib. ii., and Jeremiah, xxxvii. Herodotus, lib. ii. that the voyage was really performed: they said that as they sailed towards the west the sun was on their right hand. This could only have been true on the south side of the equator. We do not know by what soldiers Shishank and the other kings of Lower Egypt overthrew the hardy troops of Rameses; but, as the Greeks had from the earliest time settled in the ports of the Delta, and had already proved to the world and to themselves their skill in arms, they most likely formed part of the armies. At any rate the throne of these Saïtic kings was upheld by Greek swords; and a Greek inscription at Aboo Simbal, in Ethiopia, proves that the Ionian and Carian mercenaries guarded the southern border of the kingdom of Psammetichus II., who then came to the throne. Apries, or Hophra, succeeded; and to him Zedekiah sent for help when Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem. Apries led his army against Sidon, and sent his fleet against Tyre, and the Chaldees raised the siege. But in the twenty-fifth year of his reign, when his army was beaten in an attack upon Cyrene, the Egyptians set up Amasis as king; and though the Carians and Ionians stood faithful to Apries, he was overthrown and put to death by Amasis and the native troops. Amasis built a temple to Isis at Memphis, and added to the temple of Neith at Sais. He cultivated the friendship of the Greeks, and gave the city of Naucratis, on the Canobic mouth of the Nile, to those who chose to settle there, and gave them great commercial privileges. At Naucratis the several cities of Greece built temples to Jupiter, Juno, and Apollo; and one, called the Grecian temple, was built at the joint cost of many cities. Amasis conquered the island of Cyprus, which continued for so many years afterwards a part of Egypt. He is said to have married a daughter of Battus king of Cyrene; but we have in the British Museum the sarcophagus of one of his wives, a daughter of Psam- Egypt.Inscrip. metichus. plate 58. Plutarch. in Solone. Herodotus, lib. i. 30. Under the favour now shown to the Greeks, Solon the Athenian lawgiver visited Egypt, and, while carrying on his trade of an oilmerchant, studied the manners and customs of the country; and from the Egyptians he copied the law, that every man should be called upon by the magistrate to give an account of how he earned his livelihood. Pythagoras also studied in Egypt, and may have there learnt his doctrine of the transmigration of the soul after death into a new body. He may also have gained in Egypt his mathematical knowledge, by which he afterwards found out his famous proposition of the square of the hypothenuse being equal to the squares of the other sides in a right-angled triangle. Psammenitus succeeded his father Amasis, but his reign was short Herodotus, and unfortunate. Cambyses king of Persia marched against Egypt at the head of a large army; on his approach, Phanes, with a body of Greek mercenaries, went over to him, and he overthrew the Egyptian army, with the rest of the Greeks, near Pelusium; he then took Memphis and Sais, and put Psammenitus to death within six months of his coming to the throne. Thus ended the dynasties of Lower Egypt, which had lasted, though not without a break, for four hundred years, beginning with the reign of Shishank. They had long stood by the help of Greek mercenaries, and they fell when the Greeks under Phanes went over to the Persians. Cambyses governed the Egyptians with the harshness and cruelty of a conqueror; he ill-treated the nobles, scourged the priests, laughed at their religion, killed the sacred bull Apis with his own hand, and carried away with him all the gold and silver that he lib. ii. B. C. 525. lib. iii. Herodotus, lib. vii. 1-7. B. C. 517. lib. vii. 7. B.C. 485. Thucydides, could find in the temples. He made Egypt a Persian province, and put it under a satrap, whose duty it was to squeeze the country of its wealth for the benefit of Persia. Darius Hystaspes was so far taken up with his wars with Greece that, in the fourth year of his reign, the Egyptians were able to throw off the Persian yoke. They do not however seem to have set up a king of their own, but for thirty-four years continued in name under the sceptre of Persia. A temple built in the great oasis during this reign bears the name of Darius, and the ship-canal, from the Red Sea to the Nile near Pelusium, was at last finished; but we know not whether the well-being of Egypt, at this time, arose from its successful rebellion or from the mild treatment of its foreign king. Xerxes, in the second year of his reign, again made Egypt bend under the Persian yoke, and sent his brother Achæmenes as satrap of the province. In the beginning of the reign of Artaxerxes, Inarus king of Libya was successful in raising Egypt against Persia, and called in the Athenians to his help. They sailed from Cyprus in two hundred ships, and blockaded the Persians in a part of Memphis called the White Wall. Artaxerxes then sent to Sparta, to try to get the Athenians called home by an attack of the Lacedemonians on Athens. The Lacedemonians were unsuccessful; but Megabazus, the Persian general, reconquered Egypt, and put Inarus to death. Some of the Egyptians however still held out, in the marshes of the Delta, against the Persian forces, and neither Artaxerxes, nor Darius Nothus after him, were able to conquer them. It was in the reign of Artaxerxes that Herodotus, the father of history, visited Egypt, and was as much struck by the high state |