Thebes, and equally ornamented with paintings and sculpture, though not in equally good taste. But unfortunately we are very much left in doubt as to the age of these works of art; because the priests and nobles of Memphis never dated their inscriptions by means of a king's name. They had too little love for the Theban kings to count the years by their reigns, and the names of their own chief priests or little kings were not important enough to answer the purpose. Herodotus and Diodorus mention some of these kings of Memphis, whose names they learnt during their inquiries in Lower Egypt; and the scanty ruins in the neighbourhood add few Egypt. or none to the list. The chief names there found are Chofo (see Fig. 19), and Nef-chofo (see Fig. 20), the builders of the pyramids; Chemi (see Fig. 149), called by Diodorus, Chemmis; Chemren (see Fig. 150), called Chephren; Mesaphra (see Fig. 151), perhaps Thothmosis II., called Moris; Mycera (see Fig. 44), perhaps Thothmosis III., called Mycerinus; Rameses, called Rampsinitus; Shishank, called Sesostris; his son Osorchon; Uchora (see Fig. 152), or Uchureus; Bokora (see Fig. 141), or Bocchoris; and Asisa (see Fig. 153), or Asychis. After Inscript. 2nd Ser. pl. 38, 39, 41, 43. Fig. 151. Fig. 152. Fig. 153. Fig. 149. Fig. 150. the time of Sethon the sovereignty of Egypt rested with Sais; and then the high priests of Memphis would of course have less power than when the more distant Thebes was capital of the kingdom. Herodotus did not find that any priest of Memphis after the time of Sethon was counted among the kings. (2) During these years of confusion after the death of Tirhakah, the chief authority rested in a line of Manetho. kings which may be traced as unbroken, though BC. 697. removing from Napata at the fourth cataract in Ethiopia, to Sais in the Delta. AMMERES, the successor of Tirhakah, was probably the same person as Amun Aseru Fig. 154. an (see Fig. 154), whose name we find cut upon two noble lions now in the British Museum. They are of red granite from the quarries of Tombos at the third cataract, carved by the skill of Theban workmen for Amunothph III., perhaps for the temple at Soleb, but carried off by an Ethiopian king to ornament his temple at Napata. Ammeres, though an Ethiopian, reigned at Sais, where the chief strength of the nation was now to be found. There the Greeks had settled in large numbers, and had enriched the people of that district with their trade, and taught them higher skill in arms. Hence Sais quietly rose over its rival cities to be the capital of Egypt. (3) STEPHINATHIS, the successor of Ammeres, was Egyptian, as were his successors, and they all continued to reside at Sais. NECHEPSUS, the next king, has left Ep. 409, 20. a name known for his priestly learning; and Plin. lib. ii. astronomical writings bearing his name, though probably much more modern, are quoted by Pliny. They were in the Greek language, which was common in the western half of the Delta, where Greek arts and sciences were becoming known and copied, and were giving that half of the kingdom its superiority over Thebes; for in Upper Egypt the Coptic religion and prejudices so far forbad change as to stop improvement. Nechepsus Manetho. was followed on the throne of Sais by NECHO I. and then by PSAMMETICHUS I., whose first name was Vaphra (see Fig. 155), and by this time the king of Sais was king of all Egypt. Ausonius, Fig. 155. (4) We do not know by what troops Shishank and the kings of Tanis had formerly overthrown the family of Rameses; but the kings of Sais upheld their power by means of Greek mercenaries who made fighting the trade by which they earned their livelihood. The Nubian gold Herodotus, mines made wages higher in Egypt than in other lib. ii. 152. countries; and Psammetichus had in his pay a large body of Carians and Ionians from the Greek settlements on the coast of Asia Minor. With these he carried on a long war in Syria, and, after a blockade of twenty-nine years, he took the city of Azotus or Ashdod, which had lately been lib. ii. 30. taken by Tartan the Assyrian general. To these Greek soldiers Psammetichus gave lands near Pelusium; and their settlement bore the name of the Camps. This was a space intrenched on that branch of the river, and within it were not only dwelling-places for themselves, but docks for their ships. It guarded the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile. He also had a standing army of Egyptians en- Herodotus, camped on the three frontiers; at Elephantine, against the Ethiopians on the south, at Daphnæ near Pelusium, against the Arabs and Syrians on the east, and at Maræa on the Lake Maræotis, against the Libyans on the west. By his favours to the Greek mercenaries Psammetichus gave great offence to the Egyptian troops; and on his not complying with some of their demands, and refusing to relieve them when their three years' term of service was ended, the whole of the Elephantine guard deserted. They marched through Ethiopia, and settled at Ezar, seventeen days' journey beyond Meroë, in the country now called Abyssinia, where a people calling themselves their descendants were to be found three hundred years afterwards. Psammetichus marched in pursuit of the deserters. He did not himself go beyond Elephantine; but his Greek troops went much further, and they turned back after having passed through places wholly unknown, where the river was called by another name. Some of the soldiers cut an inscription, mentioning this distant march, on the shin of one of the colossal statues in front of the temple of Abou Simbel, at the second cataract; and if we do right in following Herodotus, and giving this event to the reign of Psammetichus I., when it seems rather to belong to Psammetichus II., this is one of the earliest pieces of Greek writing now remaining. The writer made use of the Greek double letters, Ps, Ph, Ch, and Th, and also of the long E, but not of the long O. Pliny, lib. vi. 35. Egyptian 2nd Ser. 23. lib. i. 103. (5) In this reign the Medes, the Assyrians, the Jews, indeed all the west of Asia, were startled at hearing that a large army of Scythians was pouring down Herodotus, from Tartary over the cultivated plains of the south. The army of Medes, sent against them by Cyaxares, was wholly routed. No force could check their march. They spread in every direction over the whole country. One body marched straight towards Egypt. They crossed Mesopotamia. They met with no resistance from Josiah, who then reigned in Judæa. They had passed the fortified cities. But they grew weaker as they moved further; and, when they reached the Egyptian frontier, Psammetichus was able, by gifts and prayers and threats, to turn them towards the coast of Palestine, and they plundered the city of Askalon as they marched northwards. Egypt escaped frightened but unhurt by this band of roving Tartars. They were routed and cut to pieces in their passage through the land of the Philistines, and many of them perished on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. "It shall come to pass," says Ezekiel, writing a few years later about them, "in that day Ch. xxxix. 11.I will give to Gog," or the Scythians, 66 a burialplace in Israel, the valley of the passengers on the east of the sea. And it shall stop the noses of them that pass by; and there shall they bury Gog and all his multitude." We might have thought that distance would have made this people unknown in the Egyptian wars, but we seem to find them sculptured in the battle-scenes of the great Rameses. (6) Psammetichus made treaties of peace with the Athenians Diod. Sic. Thus and other Greek states; he gave to his children a Greek education, and he encouraged the Greeks lib. i. 6, 7. to settle in Egypt for the purposes of trade. Egypt was no longer the same kingdom that we have seen it at the beginning of this history. It was no longer a kingdom of Coptic warriors, who from their fortresses in the Thebaid held the wealthy traders and husbandmen of the Delta in subjection as vassals. But it was now a kingdom of these very vassals; the valour of Thebes had sunk, the wealth of the Delta had increased, and Greek mercenaries had very much taken the place of the native landholders. Hence arose a jealousy between the Greek and Coptic inhabitants of Egypt. The sovereigns found it dangerous to employ Greeks, and still more dangerous to be without them. They were the cause of frequent rebellions, and more than once of the king's overthrow. But there was evidently no choice. The Egyptian laws and religion forbad change and improvement, while everything around them was changing as the centuries rolled on. Hence, if Egypt was to remain an independent kingdom, it could be so only by the help of the settlers in the Delta. A granite obelisk, ornamented with sculpture by Psammetichus, now stands in the Campus Martius at Rome, where it was set up by the Emperor Augustus. On the pyramidal top, as usual, the king is represented in the form of a sphinx, and worshipping a god; but here, for the first time, we find the sphinx without a beard. The figures of the earlier kings, whether as men or sphinxes, all have beards; but the kings of this newer race in Sais followed the Greek fashion of shaving. There is also a broken statue of this king in the public library at Cambridge. It is in black basalt; and it was probably about this time that the quarries of basalt in the neighbourhood of Syene were first worked, at least, to any great extent. During the reigns of these kings of Sais, most of the statues were made of this very hard stone. It would seem as if the sculptors and their employers valued stones according to their hardness. The great kings of Thebes began with red granite, and then chose the harder dark syenite for their statues; and now the sculptors were ordered to cut their monuments out of this yet harder basalt. (8) NECHO II. (see Fig. 156) succeeded his father Psam metichus, and made another great Herodotus, change in the military tactics of the lib. ii. 158. Egyptians. Their habits and re- B.C. 614. ligion agreed in unfitting them for sailors, or for venturing on any waters but their own Nile; they thought all seafaring persons imFig. 156. pious, as breaking through a divine law; and he was the first Egyptian who turned his attention to naval affairs. He got together two large fleets, built and manned by Phenicians, one on the Mediterranean, and one on the Red Sea. He also began to dig a ship canal which was to join these two seas, or rather to join the Nile to the Red Sea. It was to be led from the Nile near Bubastis, by the city of Patumos or Thoum, along a natural valley to Heroopolis, and then into the Lower Bitter Lake, which by this time had been cut off from the head of the Red Sea by a slowly increasing sand-bank. This change in the coast is spoken of by Isaiah. "The Lord," says the prophet, Ch. xỉ. 16. |