Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from Lepsius.
The monuments of his reign which have come down to us tell us nothing of his deeds; we can only conjecture that after the defeat sustained by his generals at Raphia, the discords which had ruined the preceding dynasties again broke out with renewed violence. Indeed, if he succeeded in preserving his crown for several years longer, he owed the fact more to the feebleness of the Ethiopians than to his own vigour: no sooner did an enterprising prince appear at Barkal and demand that he should render an account of his usurpation, than his power came to an end. Kashto having died about 716,* his son Shabaku, the Sabaco of the Greeks, inherited the throne, and his daughter Amenertas the priesthood and principality of Thebes, in right of her mother Shapenuapît.
* The date of the accession of Sabaco is here fixed at 716-
715, because I follow the version of the lists of Manetho,
which gives twelve years as the reign of that prince; an
inscription from Hammamât mentions his twelfth year.
Sabaco was an able and energetic prince, who could by no means tolerate the presence of a rival Pharaoh in the provinces which Piônkhi had conquered. He declared war, and, being doubtless supported in his undertaking by all the petty kings and great feudal nobles whose jealousy was aroused by the unlooked-for prosperity of the Saite monarch, he defeated Bocchoris and took him prisoner. Tafnakhti had formerly recognised the Ethiopian supremacy, and Bocchoris, when he succeeded to his father’s dominions, had himself probably sought investiture at the hands of the King of Napata. Sabaco treated him as a rebel, and either burnt or flayed him alive (715).*
* According to Manetho, he was burnt alive; the tradition
which mentions that he was flayed alive is found in John of
Antioch.
The struggle was hardly over, when the news of Sargon’s victories reached Egypt. It was natural that the new king, not yet securely seated on his throne, should desire to conciliate the friendship of a neighbour who was so successful in war, and that he should seize the first available pretext to congratulate him. The Assyrian on his part received these advances with satisfaction and pride: he perceived in them a guarantee that Egyptian intrigues with Tyre and Jerusalem would cease, and that he could henceforth devote himself to his projects against Busas without being distracted by the fear of an Ethiopian attack and the subversion of Syria in his rear.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from the drawing by Botta.
Sargon took advantage of these circumstances to strike a final blow at Urartu. He began in the spring of 714 by collecting among the Mannai the tribute due from Ullusuna, Daltâ, and the Median chiefs; then pushing forward into the country of the Zikartu, he destroyed three forts and twenty-four villages, and burnt their capital, Parda. Mitatti escaped servitude, but it was at the price of his power: a proscribed fugitive, deserted by his followers, he took refuge in the woods, and never submitted to his conqueror; but he troubled him no further, and disappeared from the pages of history. Having achieved this result, Sargon turned towards the north-west, and coming at length into close conflict with Eusas, did not leave his enemy till he had crushed him. He drove him into the gorges of Uaush, slaughtered a large number of his troops, and swept away the whole of his body-guard—a body of cavalry of two hundred men, all of whom were connected by blood with the reigning family. Eusas quitted his chariot, and, like his father Sharduris on the night of the disaster at Kishtân, leaped upon a mare, and fled, overwhelmed with shame, into the mountains. His towns, terror-stricken, opened their gates at the first summons to the victor; Sargon burnt those which he knew he could not retain, granted the district of Uaush to his vassal Ullusunu as a recompense for his loyalty, and then marched up to rest awhile in Naîri, where he revictualled his troops at the expense of Ianzu of Khubushkia. He had, no doubt, hoped that Urzana of Muzazîr, the last of the friends of Eusas to hold out against Assyria, would make good use of the respite thus, to all appearances unintentionally, afforded him, and would come to terms; but as the appeal to his clemency was delayed, Sargon suddenly determined to assume the aggressive. Muzazîr, entrenched within its mountain ranges, was accessible only by one or two dangerous passes; Urzana had barricaded these, and believed himself in a position to defy every effort of the Assyrians. Sargon, equally convinced of the futility of a front attack, had recourse to a surprise.