[85] This would be meant to apply only to all the rival claimants to sovereignty in the north, not to his own successors.
[86] The priests were prohibited from eating fish, which was considered as unclean food—at any rate sea fish, of which the more devout and scrupulous Egyptians would not partake.
[87] Compare Isa. xi. 11, xxvii. 13; Hosea ix. 6.
[88] Isa. xxx. 4-7.
[89] He was an Egyptian, and son of Tafnekht, who headed the league of northern chiefs against Piankhi ([p. 246]).
[90] In this and in other quotations from the Old Testament the renderings of Ewald and Stanley have sometimes been adopted.
[91] And thus a descendant of Tafnekht, the ambitious prince of Sais, defeated by Piankhi ([p. 246]).
[92] The story told by Herodotus is that an oracle had declared that that prince who should make libation out of a brazen goblet should reign over all Egypt. One day all the princes appeared to offer sacrifice, but the high priest by mistake brought only eleven golden vessels, whereupon Psammetichus took off his helmet and used it for the libation. When it was observed that the oracle had thus, though inadvertently, been fulfilled, it was thought a prudent measure to depose and banish Psammetichus. He consulted the oracle, which announced that vengeance would come by brazen men, showing themselves from seaward. When he heard of pirates clad in brazen armour who had showed themselves in the Delta, he perceived the meaning of the oracle. By enlisting the Greek mercenaries in their panoplies of brass, he accordingly triumphed over his rivals, expelled the Assyrians, and became king of all Egypt.
[93] Sais, in the Delta, was a magnificent city, and the temple of the goddess Neith, who was worshipped there, was celebrated for its splendour. The worship of Neith goes back to the earliest times, but under the dynasty which had its seat at Sais it attained very great prominence. Neith was a nature-goddess, and was called the ‘mother of the sun.’ She represents the hidden and mysterious ground of all things, and hence was naturally regarded as the goddess of wisdom. Like Athena, to whom the Greeks compared her, she was at the same time goddess of war. Over her temple was the inscription: ‘I am what is, what shall be, and what has been, and no man hath lifted my veil; I am the great mother of Ra.’
[94] Nahum iii. 7, 19; ‘No spark of pity mingles with the prophet’s delight.’—Stanley, Jewish Church.