Drawn by
Faucher-Gudin,
from Petrie.
They reaped thus the double advantage of the glory, which they greatly prized, and of the higher pay attached to the title of body-guard, but the troops who had hitherto enjoyed these advantages were naturally indignant at losing them, and began to murmur. One particularly galling circumstance at last caused their discontent to break out. The eastern and southern frontiers of Egypt were conterminous with those of two conquering empires, Assyria and Ethiopia, and on the west the Libyan tribes along the shores of the Mediterranean were powerful enough to demand constant vigilance on the part of the border garrisons. Psammetichus, among other reforms, had reorganised the ancient system of defence. While placing outposts at the entrance to the passes leading from the desert into the Nile valley, he had concentrated considerable masses of troops at the three most vulnerable points—the outlets of the road to Syria, the country surrounding Lake Mareotis, and the first cataract; he had fortified Daphnse, near the old town of Zalu, as a defence against the Assyrians, Marea against the Libyan Bedâwin, and Elephantine against the Ethiopians. These advanced posts had been garrisoned with native troops who were quartered there for a year at a time. To be condemned to such an exile for so long a period raised in them a sense of profound indignation, but when the king apparently forgot them and left them there three years without sending other troops to relieve them, their anger knew no bounds. They resolved to put an end to such treatment, and as the hope of a successful rebellion seemed but small, they decided to leave the country. Two hundred and forty thousand of them assembled on a given day with their arms and baggage, and marched in good order towards Ethiopia. Psammetichus, warned of their intentions when ifc was too late, hastened after them with a handful of followers, and coming up with them, besought them not to desert their national gods, their wives, and their children. He had nearly prevailed on them to return, when one soldier, with a significant gesture, intimated that while manhood lasted they had power to create new families wherever they might chance to dwell. The details of this story betray the popular legend, but nevertheless have a basis of truth. The inscriptions from the time of Psammetichus onwards never mention the Mashauasha, while their name and their exploits constantly recur in the history of the preceding dynasties: henceforth they and their chiefs vanish from sight, and discord and brigandage simultaneously cease in the Egyptian nomes. It was very probably the most turbulent among these auxiliaries who left the country in the circumstances above narrated: since they could not contest the superiority of their Greek rivals, they concluded that their own part was played out, and rather than be relegated to the second rank, they preferred to quit the land in a body. Psammetichus, thus deprived of their support at the moment when Egypt had more than ever need of all her forces to regain her rightful position in the world, reorganised the military system as best he could. He does not seem to have relied much upon the contingents from Upper Egypt, to whom was doubtless entrusted the defence of the Nubian frontier, and who could not be withdrawn from their posts without danger of invasion or revolt. But the source of imminent peril did not lie in this direction, where Ethiopia, exhausted by the wars of Taharqa and Tanuatamanu, perhaps needed repose even more than Egypt itself, but rather on the Asiatic side, where Assur-bani-pal, in spite of the complications constantly arising in Karduniash and Elam, had by no means renounced his claims to the suzerainty of Egypt. The Pharaoh divided the feudatory militia of the Delta into two classes, which resided apart in different sets of nomes. The first group, who were popularly called Hermotybies, were stationed at Busiris, Sais, and Khemmis, in the island of Prosopitis, and in one half of Natho—in fact, in the district which for the last century had formed the centre of the principality of the Saite dynasty: perhaps they were mostly of Libyan origin, and represented the bands of Mashauasha who, from father to son, had served under Tafnakhti and his descendants. Popular report numbered them at 160,000 men, all told, and the total number of the other class, known as the Calasiries, at 250,000; these latter belonged, in my opinion, to the pure Egyptian race, and were met with at Thebes, while the troops of the north, who were more generally called out, were scattered over the territory which formerly supported the Tanite and Bubastite kings, and latterly Pakruru, and which comprised the towns of Bubastis, Aphthis, Tanis, Mendes, Sebennytos, Athribis, Pharbaathos, Thmuis, Onuphis, Anysis, and Myecphoris. Each year one thousand Hermotybies and one thousand Calasiries were chosen to form the royal body-guard, and these received daily five minae of bread apiece, two minas of beef, and four bowls of wine; the jealousy which had been excited by the Greek troops was thus lessened, as well as the discontent provoked by the emigration.*
* Calasiris, the exact transcription of Khala-shiri,
Khala-shere, signifying young man. The meaning and
original of the word transcribed Hermotybies by Herodotus,
and Hermotymbies according to a variant given by Stephen of
Byzantium, is as yet unknown, but it seems to me to conceal
a title analogous to that of Hir-mazaîu, and to designate
what remained of Libyan soldiers in Egypt. This organisation
of the army is described by Herodotus as existing in his own
days, and there were Calasiries and Hermotybies in the
Egyptian contingent which accompanied the army of Mardonius
to Greece; it is nowhere stated that it was the work of
Psammetichus, but everything points to the conclusion that
it was so, at all events in the form in which it was known
to the Greeks.
The King of Napata gladly welcomed the timely reinforcements which arrived to fill up the vacancies in his army and among his people, weakened by a century of rapid changes, and generously gave them permission to conquer for themselves some territory in the possession of his enemies! Having driven out the barbarians, they established themselves in the peninsula formed by the White and Blue Niles, and their numbers increased so greatly that in course of time they became a considerable nation. They called themselves Asmakh, the men who stand on the king’s left hand, in memory of the affront put upon them, and which they had avenged by their self-exile: Greek travellers and geographers called them sometimes Automoli, sometimes Sembrites, names which clung to them till almost the beginning of our present era.
This departure of the Mashauasha was as the last blast of wind after a storm: the swell subsided by degrees, and peace reigned in the interior. Thebes accommodated itself as best it could to the new order of things under the nominal administration of the Divine Spouses, the two Shapenuapîts. Building works were recommenced at all points where it appeared necessary, and the need of restoration was indeed pressing after the disorders occasioned by the Assyrian invasion and the Ethiopian suzerainty. At Karnak, and in the great temples on both banks of the Nile, Psammetichus, respecting the fiction which assigned the chief authority to the Pallacides, effaced himself in favour of them, allowing them to claim all the merit of the work; in the cities they erected small chapels, in which they are portrayed as queens fulfilling their sacerdotal functions, humbly escorted by the viceroy who in other respects exercised the real power. The king’s zeal for restoration is manifest all along the Nile, at Coptos, Abydos,* and in the plains of the Delta, which are crowded with memorials of him. His two favourite capitals were Memphis and Sais, on both of which he impartially lavished his favours.
* The first Egyptologists attributed the prénommai cartouche
of Psammetichus I. to Psammetichus II., and vice versa:
this error must always be kept in mind in referring to their
works.
At Memphis he built the propylons on the south side of the temple of Phtah, and the court in which the living Apis took his exercise and was fed: this court was surrounded by a colonnade, against the pillars of which were erected statues twelve cubits high, probably representing Osiris as in the Eames-seum and at Medinet-Habu. Apis even when dead also received his share of attention. Since the days when Ramses II. had excavated the subterranean Serapeum as a burial-place of the sacred bulls, no subsequent Pharaoh who had reigned at Memphis had failed to embellish their common tomb, and to celebrate with magnificence their rites of sepulture.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an engraving published in
Mariette.