Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/767

EGYPT 743 had left Egypt (B.C. 6G6). Urdamcn, Tahraka s son-in-law and successor, held Upper Egypt, and at once attacked the Assyrians, captured Memphis from them, and took Neku, whom he put to death, while Psametik fled into Syria. Asshur-bani-pal now invaded Egypt, defeated Urdamen, and sacked Thebes, carrying the whole population captive. The twenty principalities were again set up, but Psametik was not the chief. After a time the Egyptian princes became independent of Assyria, but they had once more to submit to an Ethiopian invader, Nouat-Meiamen, who reconquered the country without much difficulty, but does not seem to have long held it. The Saite prince Psametik, whose ambition excited the jealousy of the other dynasts, at last achieved the object for which his predecessors had pertinaciously fought. By the aid of Carian and Ionian mercenaries he put down his rivals, and by a marriage with the niece of Shabak rendered his line legitimate. This alliance with a princess only a generation younger than the first Ethiopian king brings into striking relief tlte vicissitudes which Egypt underwent during the Assyrian wars. Calamities were crowded into those years which usually occupy centuries. Yet under the new king, who was the real founder of Dynasty XXVL, Egypt rapidly recovered, and during the rule of his successors it was for the first time since the Empire strong and united, enjoying a true national existence. Public works of all kinds were carried on with energy. Art, which had fallen under the Bubastites and their followers, now suddenly revived, and with its recovery the ideas of the primitive dynasties came into fashion. The style of the age may be best compared with that of Dynasties IV. and V. It is, however, wanting in vigour, using elongated forms and abundant details. Still it has an elegance and a mastery of material which show that Egypt had not lost the true feeling of its art, in spite of the disastrous wars which had threatened the overthrow of all the institutions of the country. Psametik I., or Psammetichus, employed his long reign in strengthening Egypt and in restoring the temples and making additional monuments. He recovered from Ethiopia a part of Lower Nubia, and made a successful ex pedition into Philistia. His designs of conquest were, how ever, frustrated by a wholesale desertion of Egyptian troops, caused by jealousy of the Ionian and Carian mercenaries to whom Psametik owed his throne. The mutineers, whose number Herodotus puts at 240,000 men, were too strong to be resisted, and deaf to the king s intreaties marched to Ethiopia and received lands from the king of that country. All that the Egyptian sovereign could do was to form a new army and build a fleet. He thus missed the opportunity afforded by the decline of Nineveh of winning back the influence Egypt had long lost in the East. An interesting memorial of his reign is the Greek inscription on one of the colossi of Aboosimbel, in Nubia, recording the visit of mer cenary and Egyptian troops. Neku II., B.C. 6 11, son and successor of Psametik, inherited hi 5 father s energy but not his prudence. He attempted to complete an enterprise of the Empire and connect the lied Sea with the Nile, and so with the Mediterranean, by a canal. Under his orders Phoenician seamen circumnavi gated Africa. Less fortunate was his attempt to i-ecover the eastern rule of Egypt. He marched against Megiddo, still the key to the route to the Euphrates. Here he was met by the forces of Josiah, king of Judah, with whom ho unwillingly fought. Josiah was slain, and the king of Egypt advanced to Curchemish on the Euphrates. Thus the Egyptian Empire was for a moment restored. There tvas no great eastern rival to contest its supremacy. Assyria had fallen, Babylon was not yet firmly established. After nbout three years Nabopolassar, the king of Babylon, sent his son Nebuchadnezzar against the Egyptians. At Carchemish the armies met. Neku was defeated, and the Egyptian rule in the East finally destroyed. Soon after the king of Egypt died, leaving his throne to his son Psametik II., B.C. 595, whose short reign was only marked by an expedition against the king of Ethiopia. The next king, Psametik s son, Uahabra, or A pries, the Pharaoh Hophra of Scripture, B.C. 590, inherited the energy and ambition of the Saite house. His accession was the signal for a general confederation of Palestine and Phoenicia against the king of Babylon. The war was speedily ended by the capture of Jerusalem, which Uahabra in vain endeavoured to prevent. He was, however, successful at sea. His Greek ships beat the Phoenician fleet of Nebuchadnezzar, and for a time he held the Phoenician coast, and aided Tyre in a resistance of thirteen years against the Babylonian besiegers. A great disaster lost Uahabra his throne. He engaged in a war with the Greeks of Gyrene. His Egyptian troops were defeated. The native soldiers believed that he had planned their destruction that he might put mercenaries in their place. They revolted and chose Aahmes, or Amasis, king. A.masis defeated the mercenary troops of Uahabra and de throned him, B.C, 571. It is to this time that the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar is assigned by Josephus. The silence of Herodotus and the other Greek historians, and the prosperity of Egypt under Amasis, have induced modern scholars to suppose that Josephus based his state ment on the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. If, however, we read between the lines of the story of Herodotus, we need some other cause than the disaffection of the Egyptian troops to account for the sudden success of Amasis, and especially for his easy defeat of the mercenaries with a discouraged native force. Again, the conquests of Egypt by the Assyrians, though predicted by Isaiah and noticed as past by Nahum, are unrecorded by Herodotus and the Greeks. The prosperity of the country in the reign of Amasis might as easily follow a Babylonian conquest as that under Psametik I. followed the terrible Assyrian wars. The scantiness of the native records of Nebuchadnezzar s reign leaves us without Babylonian evidence. Amasis took to wife a grand-daughter of Psametik I. and his heiress-queen Shapentap, thus legitimatizing his pretensions. He greatly embellished the temples of Egypt. It may be that, as in the time of Psametik I., they needed restoration. His foreign policy was marked by energy and caution. He transferred the Ionian and Carian mercenaries to Memphis itself as a force of guards. He granted the Greeks the free use of Naucratis as a Hellenic settlement and trading port. He conquered Cyprus, and kept up the influence of Egypt in Phoenicia. He had friendly relations with the Greek states, and instead of conducting an expedition against the Babylonians during their Empire or against the rapidly rising power of the Persians, he joined in an alliance of which Croesus, king of Lydia, was the head, and agreed to furnish him with an Egyptian con tingent in his war with Cyrus. After the fall of Croesus (<ther wars kept Cyrus from any designs on Egypt, and it was not until the accession of his son Cambyses that the Persians could attempt its reduction. Meanwhile Amasis died, leaving the crown to his son Psametik III., the Psammenitus of Herodotus, who, after a single well-fought battle near Pelusium, and the capture of Pelusium and Memphis, lost his kingdom, B.C. 525. Cambyses, as we learn from the narrative of the Egyptian priest Uta-har-sun of Sais, at first adopted the style of a Pharaoh, and was initiated into the mysteries of Neith at Sais It was not until the failure of an expedition against the Oasis of Ammon, and of another directed by himself against the Ethiopian kingdom of Napata, that Cambyses,

probably aware of the satisfactk"! the Egyptians must have