CHAPTER XVI.
EGYPT UNDER THE LAST PHARAOHS.
Necho's views for subjugating Syria to his dominion, and renewing the campaigns of the ancient Pharaohs to the Euphrates, were wrecked after some successes. The day of Karchemish, which he lost to the Babylonians, carried with it the loss of the conquests in Syria, with perhaps the exception of Gaza and one or two other places of the Philistines. Necho might count himself fortunate that Nebuchadnezzar remained within Syria. His attempt to support the rebellion of Judah against Babylon, which king Jehoiakim ventured upon in the year 597 B.C., miscarried, as we saw above (p. 331). Nebuchadnezzar now took all as far as the brook of Egypt. Necho's son, Psammetichus II., who succeeded his father in the year 595 B.C., took no steps to hinder the fall of the Phenician cities, which were subjugated by Nebuchadnezzar in the year 593 B.C. Of Psammetichus' short reign—it lasted only six years—Herodotus merely tells us that he undertook a campaign against the Ethiopians, and died immediately after it. From this statement we must conclude that since the time of Psammetichus I. and the emigration of a part of the warrior caste, Egypt had been in strained relations with the kingdom of Napata, and the successors of Urdamane. From the words of Herodotus it would seem that Psammetichus made an unprovoked attack on Ethiopia; but of the success of the undertaking we know nothing. From some words which Greek mercenaries of Pharaoh have left behind them, and the place where they were written, it would seem to have been the intention of Psammetichus to win back for Egypt lower Nubia, which, as we have seen, had for centuries been a province of Egypt.
We know the colossi which Ramses II. caused to be hewn out of the rocks before the entrance of the temple which he excavated at Abu Simbel.[745] On the left thigh of the second colossus from the south some Greeks, Ionians, and Dorians, have cut the following words in Ionic letters: "When Psammetichus came to Elephantine, those who came by vessel with Psammetichus, the son of Theocles, wrote this inscription. They came up above Kerkis, as far as the river permitted. The foreigner Dechepotasimto, the Egyptian Amasis. But Archon, the son of Amœbichus, and Pelecus, the son of Udames, wrote me." Others of the mercenaries, who were acquainted with the art of writing, have also inscribed their names there; we find a Helesibius of Teos, a Telephus of Ialysus, a brother of Archon, Python the son of Amœbichus, and three others. The Phenician mercenaries were not either now or later behind the Greeks: Phenician inscriptions are inscribed beside the Greek.[746] Those of the Greeks prove that Psammetichus had encamped with his army at Elephantine, that he had sent a part of it up the Nile with a Greek, the son of Theocles, who had already got an Egyptian name, Psammetichus—(which he must, therefore, have obtained under the reign of Psammetichus I.). His object was certainly not to obtain information about the land and the river, which was well enough known to the Egyptians as far as Napata and above it. But it might very well be necessary to ascertain the views and powers of the opponent in Napata. Among the names in the inscription first mentioned the name of the "foreigner Dechepotasimto"—a name which no doubt belonged to an Ethiopian—and the name of the Egyptian Amasis prove that Egyptians and Ethiopians acquainted with the land and the river were in the division of the son of Theocles. How far to the south this division penetrated, we cannot determine, for the place Kerkis, beyond which it passed, is not mentioned elsewhere. On the return the detachment encamped to the north of the falls of Wadi Halfa at Abu Simbel, and those among the Greeks who knew how to write and wished to do so made use of their stay to perpetuate in this manner their journey and their presence in this distant region. Nothing is said of their collision with the Ethiopians; it appears that the ruler of Napata had then abandoned lower Nubia to the Egyptians. If this reconnoitering of the enemy by the detachment of Theocles took place on the campaign of Psammetichus against Ethiopia, of which Herodotus speaks, we must place it in the year 590 B.C., for Psammetichus II. died "immediately after," in the next year.[747] Nothing is left of the monuments of Psammetichus II.; we merely find his name-shield on the rocks of the islands of Elephantine and Konosso; they may arise from the time when the king was staying there, and had his head-quarters at Elephantine, as the Greeks showed us. We are also told by the sarcophagus of an Apis, buried under the successor of Psammetichus, that this bull was brought into the temple of Ptah in the first year of the reign of Psammetichus II.[748]
In spite of the double subjugation (600 and 597 B.C.), Judah remained in ferment and bitterness against the dominion of Babylon. The accession of Hophrah, the son of Psammetichus II. (Apries of the Greeks, Uahabra of the inscriptions), aroused in Jerusalem, as we saw, the hope of shaking off the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar with the aid of Egypt. According to the statements in the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel, which are confirmed by the course of events in Syria, Hophrah must have promised assistance to Zedekiah, king of Judah. The Jews rebelled; but before the Egyptians were ready, Nebuchadnezzar had already invested the fortified cities of Judah, together with the metropolis (588 B.C.). In the next year Hophrah's army marched to the relief of Jerusalem, which held out stubbornly. Nebuchadnezzar raised the siege, in order to meet the Egyptians with the united force of his army. He compelled the Egyptians to retire. After a renewed investment and furious attack, Jerusalem fell (p. 343).
After the fall of Jerusalem, as remarked above, the prophets of the Jews expected that Egypt would be attacked by Nebuchadnezzar and subjugated. From the Chaboras Ezekiel announced to the dwellers on the Nile the bloody vengeance and punishment awaiting them because they had been a staff of reed for Israel; and Jeremiah, who had been carried to Egypt a few months after the fall of Jerusalem by the Jews who took to flight in consequence of the assassination of the viceroy of Nebuchadnezzar, and had there found a welcome and protection together with the rest, announced at Daphne, on Egyptian soil, to Hophrah and the Egyptians, their destruction by the sword of Nebuchadnezzar; he saw the king of Babylon already enthroned on his carpet at Daphne. But Nebuchadnezzar contented himself with maintaining and fortifying still further his dominion over Syria. He followed up the capture of Jerusalem with the long investment and siege of Tyre. When Tyre finally submitted (573 B.C.), Ezekiel again saw Nebuchadnezzar's army invading Egypt. In reference to the long siege of Tyre, and the fact that it ended not in the storming and plundering of the city, but in coming to terms, Ezekiel says: "Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, caused his army to serve a great service against Tyre: every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled; yet he had no wages, nor his army, from Tyre. Now will I give to Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, the land of Egypt, and he shall take her multitude and take her spoil and take her prey, and it shall be the wages for his army. I will give him the land of Egypt for his reward, saith Jehovah. The king and his people, and with him the mightiest of the nations, shall be led forth for the desolation of Egypt. They shall draw their sword against Egypt and fill the land with slain. The pride of Egypt shall come down; from Migdol to Syene they shall fall by the sword; and in the same day messengers shall go forth in ships to make the careless Ethiopia afraid. I will make the canals dry. I will destroy the idols, and cause the images to cease out of Noph (Memphis). I will make Patrus (upper Egypt) desolate, and will set fire to Zoan (Tanis), and will execute judgments in No (Thebes). I will pour my fury upon Sin (Pelusium), the strength of Egypt, and will cut off the multitude of No. I will set fire in Egypt; Sin shall have great pain, and No shall be rent asunder. The young men of On (Heliopolis) and Bubastis shall fall by the sword, and at Tachpanhes (Daphne) the day shall be darkened."[749] But even after the subjugation of Tyre, Nebuchadnezzar did not pass beyond Syria.
Herodotus tells us that Hophrah marched out against Sidon, and fought a battle by sea with the king of Tyre. Of the results of this battle Herodotus says nothing: he only remarks that after his great-grandfather Psammetichus, Hophrah was the most successful of this family. Diodorus narrates: Hophrah attacked Cyprus and Phœnicia with a well-appointed army by land and sea; took the city of Sidon by storm, and the rest of Phenician cities by the terror of his name; conquered the Phenicians and Cyprians in a great battle by sea, and then returned to Egypt with great spoil.[750] These accounts are very extraordinary. In the year 593 B.C., Tyre and Sidon had striven with the Ammonites and Moabites against Nebuchadnezzar; they were defeated. Then, as has been already shown, Nebuchadnezzar blockaded Tyre from 586 B.C. to 573 B.C. We saw that Hophrah opposed Nebuchadnezzar in the years of the Jewish war, i. e. from his accession till the fall of Jerusalem (589-586 B.C.). If during this period, or subsequently, when Nebuchadnezzar was blockading Tyre, he had made war upon Sidon and Tyre, and the other cities of the Phenicians, he would have worked for Nebuchadnezzar; whereas, on the contrary, he must have regarded it as of the first importance that the last independent city of Syria, Tyre, should not be reduced. He must do for Tyre what he had done for Jerusalem, and for that city also he must venture on war with Nebuchadnezzar. Hence Hophrah can only have carried on war against the Phenician cities in the three last years of his reign (between 573 and 570 B.C.), and this again is only conceivable under the hypothesis that Hophrah set out with the Egyptian fleet against Cyprus, which Diodorus regards as the object of the campaign, in order to prevent this island as well as Tyre from becoming subject to Nebuchadnezzar—in order to obtain in this island a counterpoise to the incorporation of Syria and the Phenician cities in the Babylonian kingdom. The war with Tyre and Sidon would then have broken out because Sidon wished to prevent the island from passing under the dominion of Egypt. But if Hophrah, as Diodorus states, had taken the cities of the Phenicians, he must have taken them from Nebuchadnezzar, which seems highly improbable. If Hophrah wished to take them from Nebuchadnezzar, he could not be guilty of greater folly than to wait thirteen years, till the submission of Tyre, in order to attack the city when it had fallen, and Nebuchadnezzar had established a firm foot on the coasts of Syria. If he wished to liberate the cities from Babylon, they would have been eager, so far as lay in their power, to receive the Egyptian garrisons; we must then suppose that in their anxiety not to lose their trade with the lands of the Euphrates, they had now vigorously repelled the Egyptians. But if this be so, how are we to explain their earlier resistance, and the thirteen years' struggle of Tyre against Babylon? As already remarked, Herodotus tells us nothing of any successes which Hophrah gained against Tyre and Sidon; in Diodorus the campaign of Hophrah is primarily directed against Cyprus, then against Sidon and the other cities. Hophrah returns home laden with booty; but of permanent successes even Diodorus says nothing. Herodotus, on the contrary, remarks that the successor of Hophrah was the first conqueror of Cyprus; and in Diodorus it is the successor of Hophrah who conquers Cyprus. Besides, after Hophrah's time we find Babylonia still in possession of the supremacy over Tyre (p. 394). It is obviously statements of the Egyptians about the achievements of Hophrah on the coast of Syria, which Herodotus and Diodorus hand down to us: we know the style of the Egyptian accounts of victory; but even according to these, as repeated in Diodorus, there was nothing more than a plundering raid.[751]
The power of Babylon over Syria could not now be shaken. Egypt must be content to be free from attacks. But in the West, in Libya, there was a better prospect of success than against Babylon. Some 60 years previously Greek settlers had built the city of Cyrene, to the east of the great Syrtis, and the flourishing condition of this city was hardly contemplated with satisfaction in Egypt. Its importance was increased by a great number of new settlers, whom Battus III. had summoned to Cyrene; and to maintain these a considerable portion of land had been taken from the neighbouring Libyans. Adikran, the prince of these tribes, summoned Hophrah to his assistance against the Cyrenæans; for this protection he was prepared to recognise the supremacy of Egypt. Hophrah sent a strong army against Cyrene. But the Cyrenæans succeeded in defeating it at the fountain of Theste, and in inflicting a severe blow on the Egyptians (571 B.C.). This disaster caused a new outbreak of ill-feeling on the part of the Egyptian military caste against the Ionian mercenaries. As these, on whom devolved the protection of the eastern border against the Babylonians, had been left behind, the Egyptian warriors thought that the Pharaoh had purposely sent them to their destruction. On their return the remnant of the army rebelled against the Pharaoh; Hophrah sent Amasis to bring back the troops to obedience.[752]
Amasis of Siuph in the canton of Sais was of humble origin, a man of loose morals, who loved wine, and the pleasures of the table, merriment and riotous living, but still possessed intelligence and ambition. Instead of bringing back the rebellious troops to obedience, he allowed himself when he arrived in the camp to be saluted by them as king. Hearing of this, Pharaoh Hophrah put himself at the head of the Ionians and Carians—they were 30,000 in number—and went to meet the rebels, who had already reached the borders of Egypt. In spite of the bravest efforts the Ionians and Carians were defeated by the Egyptians at Momemphis, as Herodotus states, or as Diodorus tells us, at Marea, on the south-western shore of Lake Mareotis. Hophrah himself was taken prisoner. Amasis intended to spare him. He brought him to Sais, and there put him in prison in the citadel which his forefather Psammetichus had built. But afterwards Amasis yielded to the request of the people, and gave up Hophrah to the mob who put him to death (570 B.C.).[753]
Thus ended the race of Psammetichus in Egypt; in the same region where his great-grandfather is said to have obtained the liberation of Egypt and the throne, Hophrah had lost it. Since the times of the Ramessids, the Pharaohs of Tanis and Bubastis had no longer sought their sepulchres at Thebes: the family of Psammetichus had prepared a sepulchre at Sais where his citadel stood. It was situated at the temple of Neith the goddess of Sais, at the tomb of Osiris, where the Saites kept the funeral festival of the god: here also was Hophrah's body buried.[754]