(Tahrak, Taracos). Tirhaka was energetic in opposing the Assyrian advance, but in 670 B.C. Esarhaddon defeated his army on the border of Egypt, captured Memphis with the royal harem and took great spoil. The Egyptian resistance to the Assyrians was probably only half-hearted; in the north especially there must have been a strong party against the Ethiopian rule. Tirhaka laboured to propitiate the north country, and probably rendered the Ethiopian rule acceptable throughout Egypt. Notwithstanding, the Assyrian king entrusted the government and collection of tribute to the native chiefs; twenty princes in all are enumerated in the records, including one Assyrian to hold the key of Egypt at Pelusium. Scarcely had Esarhaddon withdrawn before Tirhaka returned from his refuge in the south and the Assyrian garrisons were massacred. Esarhaddon promptly prepared a second expedition, but died on the way to Egypt in 668 B.C.; his son Assur-bani-pal sent it forward, routed Tirhaka and reinstated the governors. At the head of these was Necho (Niku), king of Sais and Memphis, father of Psammetichus, the founder of the XXVIth Dynasty. We next hear that correspondence with Tirhaka was intercepted, and that Necho, together with Pekrûr of Psapt (at the entrance to the Wadi Tumilat) and the Assyrian governor of Pelusium, was taken to Nineveh in chains to answer the charge of treason. Whatever may have occurred, it was deemed politic to send Necho back loaded with honours and surrounded by a retinue of Assyrian officials. Upper Egypt, however, was loyal to Tirhaka, and even at Memphis the burial of an Apis bull was dated by the priests as in his reign. Immediately afterwards he died. His nephew Tandamane, received by the Upper country with acclamations, besieged and captured Memphis, Necho being probably slain in the encounter. But in 661 (?) Assur-bani-pal drove the Ethiopian out of Lower Egypt, pursued him up the Nile and sacked Thebes. This was the last and most tremendous visitation of the Assyrian scourge.
Psammetichus (Psammêtk), 664-610 B.C., the son of Necho, succeeded his father as a vassal of Assyria in his possessions of Memphis and Sais, allied himself with Gyges, king of Lydia, and aided by Ionian and Carian mercenaries, XXVIth Dynasty. extended and consolidated his power.[1] By the ninth year of his reign he was in full possession of Thebes. Assur-bani-pal’s energies throughout this crisis were entirely occupied with revolts nearer home, in Babylon, Elam and Arabia. The Assyrian arms again triumphed everywhere, but at the cost of complete exhaustion. Under the firm and wise rule of Psammetichus, Egypt recovered its prosperity after the terrible losses inflicted by internal wars and the decade of Assyrian invasions. The revenue went up by leaps and bounds. Psammetichus guarded the frontiers of Egypt with three strong garrisons, placing the Ionian and Carian mercenaries especially at the Pelusiac Daphnae in the N.E., from which quarter the most formidable enemy was likely to appear. The Assyrians did not move against him, but a great Scythian horde, destroying all before it in its southward advance, is said by Herodotus to have been turned back by presents and entreaties. Diplomacy backed up by vigorous preparations may have deterred the Scythians from the dangerous enterprise of crossing the desert to Egypt. Before his death Psammetichus had advanced into southern Palestine and captured Azotus.
When Psammetichus began to reign the situation of Egypt was very different from what it had been under the Empire. The development of trade in the Mediterranean and contact with new peoples and new civilizations in peace and war had given birth to new ideas among the Egyptians and at the same time to a loss of confidence in their own powers. The Theban supremacy was gone and the Delta was now the wealthy and progressive part of Egypt; piety increased amongst the masses, unenterprising and unwarlike, but proud of their illustrious antiquity. Thebes and Ammon and the traditions of the Empire savoured too much now of the Ethiopian; the priests of the Memphite and Deltaic dynasty thereupon turned deliberately for their models to the times of the ancient supremacy of Memphis, and the sculptures and texts on tomb and temple had to conform as closely as possible to those of the Old Kingdom. In other than religious matters, however, the Egyptians were inventing and perhaps borrowing. To enumerate a few examples of this which are already definitely known: we find that the forms of legal and business documents became more precise; the mechanical arts of casting in bronze on a core and of moulding figures and pottery were brought to the highest pitch of excellence; and portraiture in the round on its highest plane was better than ever before and admirably lifelike, revealing careful study of the external anatomy of the individual.
Psammetichus died in the fifty-fourth year of his reign and was succeeded by his son Necho, 610-594 B.C. Taking advantage of the helpless state of the Assyrians, whose capital was assailed by the Medes and the Babylonians, the new Pharaoh prepared an expedition to recover the ancient possessions of the Empire in Syria. Josiah alone, faithful to the king of Assyria, opposed him with his feeble force at Megiddo and was easily overcome and slain. Necho went forward to the Euphrates, put the land to tribute, and, in the case of Judah at any rate, filled the throne with his own nominee (see Jehoiakim). The fall of Nineveh and the division of the spoil gave to Nabopolasser, king of Babylon, the inheritance of the Assyrians in the west, and he at once despatched his son Nebuchadrezzar to fight Necho. The Babylonian and Egyptian forces met at Carchemish (605), and the rout of the latter was so complete that Necho relinquished Syria and might have lost Egypt as well had not the death of Nabopolasser recalled the victor to Babylon. Herodotus relates that in Necho’s reign a Phoenician ship despatched from Egypt actually circumnavigated Africa, and the attempt was made to complete a canal through the Wadi Tumilat, which connected the Mediterranean and Red Seas by way of the Lower Egyptian Nile. (See Suez.) The next king, Psammetichus II., 594-589 B.C., according to one account made an expedition to Syria or Phoenicia, and apparently sent a mercenary force into Ethiopia as far as Abu Simbel. Pharaoh Hophra (Apries), 589-570 B.C., fomented rebellion against the Babylonian suzerainty in Judah, but accomplished little there. Herodotus, however, describes his reign as exceedingly prosperous. The mercenary troops at Elephantine mutinied and attempted to desert to Ethiopia, but were brought back and punished. Later, however, a disastrous expedition sent to aid the Libyans against the Greek colony of Cyrene roused the suspicion and anger of the native soldiery at favours shown to the mercenaries, who of course had taken no part in it. Amasis (Aḥmosi) II. was chosen king by the former (570-525 B.C.), and his swarm of adherents overcame the Greek troops in Apries’ pay (see Amasis). None the less Amasis employed Greeks in numbers, and cultivated the friendship of their tyrants. His rule was confined to Egypt (and perhaps Cyprus), but Egypt itself was very prosperous. At the beginning of his long reign of forty-four years he was threatened by Nebuchadrezzar; later he joined the league against Cyrus and saw with alarm the fall of his old enemy. A few months after his death, 525 B.C., the invading host of the Persians led by Cambyses reached Egypt and dethroned his son Psammetichus III.
Cambyses at first conciliated the Egyptians and respected their religion; but, perhaps after the failure of his expedition into Ethiopia, he entirely changed his policy, and his memory was generally execrated. He left Egypt so The Persian period, XXVIIth Dynasty. completely crushed that the subsequent usurpation of the Persian throne was marked by no revolt in that quarter. Darius, 521-486 B.C., proved himself a beneficent ruler, and in a visit to Egypt displayed his consideration for the religion of the country. In the Great Oasis he built a temple to Ammon. The annual tribute imposed on the satrapy of Egypt and Cyrene was heavy, but it was probably raised with ease. The canal from the Nile to the Red Sea was completed or repaired, and commerce flourished. Documents dated in the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth years of Darius are not uncommon, but apparently at the very end of his reign,
- ↑ This, it may be remarked, is the time vaguely represented by the Dodecarchy of Herodotus.
