(see Fig. 162). The sculptures on the sarcophagus taken from the above-mentioned tomb of this reign contain a list of eighteen gods, which may be usefully compared with the gods of Thebes. They are, Selk, the scorpion-goddess, Mo, the god of Truth, a female Typhon, Thoth, lord of the city of Oshmoonayn, Seb, the father of the gods, Chem with the double crown, Osiris with the crown of Upper Egypt, Isis, the great mother, a second Isis named Sate, Anubis with a dog's head, a second Anubis with the same head, Nephthys, Horus with a hawk's head, Horus-Ra, or a second Horus, Thora, or a third Horus, distinguished by a scarabæus, Neith, the mother of the gods, a second Neith, and a goddess named Soneb. These were the gods chiefly worshipped in Sais. But in this long list we miss Amun-Ra, Athor, and Chonso, the gods of Upper Egypt, and even Pthah, the chief god of Memphis, and Knef, the spirit, and in their place find Selk, the scorpion, and Typhon, the accusing hippopotamus.

(22) The old Egyptian army was a body of landholders, who were each of them allowed about six acres of

Herodotus,

lib. ii. 165. land, free of all rent and taxes, as their pay for doing military service when called out by the king. They were divided into two bodies, the Calasiries of Thebes and the eastern half of the Delta, amounting to two hundred and fifty thousand tenants of the crown, registered as of an age to carry arms, and the Hermotybies of Panopolis and the western half of the Delta, registered to the number of a hundred and sixty thousand men; thus, as the population was about four or five millions, these registered soldiers were about one in ten souls. But, as they were only called into service for three years at a time, and that most likely only once in a life, the number of men under arms was probably not more than a tenth of the soldiers, or a standing army of forty thousand men. This proportion of one unproductive soldier to each hundred of the population, is about the largest army that one of the European monarchies could now support without exhausting itself; but to this we must add an equal number for the Greek and Libyan mercenaries and the Phenician mariners, to measure the weight with which the Egyptian monarchy pressed on its subjects, and to show what a store of industry the trade and manufactures

had brought into being for the state to make use of. It was usual for the Calasiries and Hermotybies, each in their turn, to furnish a body of a thousand picked men to do duty as the king's body-guard, for which service they received a large daily allowance of bread, meat, and wine. The chief strength of an Egyptian army lay in its bowmen and chariots, and no difficulties arose as long as the mercenaries were only Arabs and Ethiopians, men worse armed and worse disciplined than themselves. Nor were the difficulties much, felt when the kings of Lower Egypt engaged a large body of Greeks, the best soldiers in the world, as long as they were employed in active warfare. As long as the Egyptians enjoyed their privileges and the post of honour, they did not mind the Greeks being hired to fight their battles. But Hophra changed the established order of things, and employed the Carians and Ionians as his favoured body-guard in his palace at Sais; and the jealousy which thence sprung up between the native soldiers and the Greek mercenaries formed the chief difficulty of his reign. His conduct showed a wish to weaken the power of the military class; and this at last caused a rebellion and his own overthrow. Adicran, king of the Libyans, near Cyrene, had sent an embassy to Egypt to beg for help against libro 159. Battus II., under whom the Dorian colony of Cyrene had latterly been growing more powerful. Adicran made an offer of his country to Hophra; and the king of Egypt, perhaps thinking it unsafe to employ his Greeks in this service, sent an army of Egyptians to check the power of his Greek neighbours. But the Egyptian troops were beaten in battle, many were put to the sword by the Dorians, and very few reached home after the rout. Upon the news of this disaster the Egyptian army declared that their brethren had been betrayed by their own king, and they raised the standard of revolt. Hophra sent Amasis, a popular general, to recall them to their duty; Hous but while he was addressing the assembled rebels they placed a helmet on his head, and proclaimed him king, and his fears and his ambition joined in making him yield to their wishes. Hophra next sent Patarbemis, a man of rank, with orders to seize Amasis, and bring him before him alive. Patarbemis found Amasis on horseback at the head

Herodotus,

Herodotus,

of his troops, and, on delivering the message, was told that Hophra need not send, as Amasis would soon be with him. On the messenger's return, Hophra cruelly ordered his nose and ears to be cut off as a punishment for his want of

success.

(23) Hophra, now seeing that the fate of his crown was to be determined by a struggle, got ready his forces Herodotus, for battle. He had about thirty thousand Greek lib. ii. 169. mercenaries, chiefly Carians and Ionians; and Sais, his capital, was a well-fortified city. But he chose to march out, and cross the river, and give battle to Amasis near Momemphis, a few miles to the east of Sais; and though the Greeks as usual fought bravely, they were beaten by the larger number of the Egyptians, and by the difficulties which attend an army in an enemy's country. Hophra's pride is spoken of by Ezekiel. He had boasted that not even a god could shake his throne; but he was taken alive by Amasis; and, though kindly treated, was carried prisoner to Sais, deprived of his crown, and confined by his successful rival in what had once been his own palace.

(24) AMASIS (see Fig. 163), by this bold act of usurpation Hellanicus, now king of Upper and Lower

næum,

ap. Athe- Egypt, was a man of high rank, cod. xv. 7. though not of the royal family. He B.C. 566. had originally gained the notice of King Hophra by a fortunate present of a crown made of spring flowers on the celebration of his birthday, entwined in the manner in Fig. 163. which such garlands were usually placed on the statues of the gods. The king thereupon invited him to dinner, and was further pleased with his address, and admitted him into the number of his friends. Amasis rose rapidly in favour; he married the daughter of the late monarch Psammetichus; he won the love of the soldiers as of the king, and, as we have seen, ungratefully repaid the kindness of Hophra by dethroning him. But though he thus gained the crown by the overflow of the mercenaries, Amasis by no means withdrew his favour from the Greeks, who formed an important part of the population of the Delta. He even removed the Greek military colony from the frontier settlements, the Camps near Pelusium, to the very

Diod. Sic.

lib. i. 67.

heart of the kingdom, and gave them dwellings near Memphis. He showed an unnecessary jealousy or forgetfulness of Tanis, Mendes, and Bubastis, the old rivals of Sais, his capital. He wholly stopped their trade on the Mediterranean, which had already fallen off on the overthrow of Tyre and Sidon, whose merchants had been the carriers from the eastern mouths of the Nile to the neighbouring and opposite ports. He thus hastened the ruin of the eastern half of the Delta. He made Naucratis, the city in which the Greek merchants chiefly dwelt, the sole port for the Mediterranean Herodotus, trade. It was situated about thirty miles from the sea and ten miles below Sais, on the Canobic branch of the Nile, which was then the deepest of the several channels into which the river was divided. No foreign vessel might enter any other than the Canobic mouth; and, if driven by accident or stress of weather into any other mouth of the river, it was either sent round to Naucratis, or the goods were carried there by barges.

lib. ii. 178.

(25) Besides these advantages for their trade, Amasis gave the Greeks of Naucratis many civil and religious privileges. He allowed them to appoint their own magistrates and officers for the regulation of their commerce, and to build temples for the exercise of their own religion; and as these remarkable privileges were granted to this Greek city only ten miles distant from Sais, where were situated the seat of government and the king's own palace, instead of looking upon these foreigners with jealousy, he must have thought them the best support to his throne. And we are able to measure the naval power at this time of the several Greek states, and their activity in foreign commerce, by their buildings in this Egyptian city. The Greeks of the mainland, who had put forth their strength so successfully four centuries earlier, at the time of the Trojan war, were now no longer masters of their own seas. That high rank had for some time past been held by the seafaring inhabitants of the little islands of Ægina and Samos. Athens had not yet risen to be a naval power. The Greek merchants of Naucratis chiefly came from the islands and the west coast of Asia Minor, and few or none from the mainland of Greece. Those of three Greek states were numerous enough to have each a temple for themselves; while the other Greek merchants

had one temple in common. These temples of Naucratis were, that of Jupiter, built by the Æginetæ, that of Juno by the Samians, that of Apollo by the Milesians, and the large temple called the Hellenium, which last was built at the joint expense of the lonians of Chios, Teos, Phocæa, and Clazomenæ, of the Dorians of Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicarnassus, and Phaselis, and of the Eolians of Mytelene. Thus Naucratis, in the appearance of its buildings, was a Greek city; and from the large temples on the islands of Ægina and Samos we may judge of the form of the smaller temples of Naucratis, which were copied from them. Amasis also joined the Greek colonists in making gifts to their temples at home; and when the temple of Delphi was destroyed by fire, and the several Greek cities sent their presents towards the cost of rebuilding it, one of the largest presents was from the king of Egypt. To the Herodotus, temple of Minerva at Cyrene he sent a golden lib. ii. 182. statue of the goddess; to the temple of Minerva at

B.C. 548.

Lindus in Rhodes he sent two marble statues; while to the temple of Juno at Samos he sent two statues of himself, carved in wood. These kings of Sais acted as if they were as much Greek as Egyptian; and their liberality to the Greek temples is the more remarkable, because the Egyptians, unlike the Greeks, never admitted into their mythology the gods of their neighbours. The Greeks, on the Herodotus, other hand, were eager to copy the rites of the lib. ii. 61. Egyptian religion; and after the sacrifice to Isis at Busiris, when thousands of votaries every year scourged themselves in token of the sufferings of Osiris, the Carian mercenaries were foremost in self-torture. They gashed their faces with their swords, and surpassed the Egyptians in fearlessness when using their weapons against themselves, as much as when using them against the enemy.

Diogenes

(26) Under the favour now shown by the kings of Sais to the Greeks, Thales, the first who had the title of Laertius, Wise Man, travelled in Egypt in about the fiftieth lib. i. Olympiad, perhaps in the last reign. He seems to have been chiefly in search of scientific knowledge, and did not forget to inquire into the cause of the Nile's overflow. He measured the height of the great pyramid by the length of its shadow. He is said to have been the first Greek that