In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.—Isaiah xix. 22, 23.
So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.—Isaiah xx. 4.
After the summit, the inevitable decline. The first of world powers under the Ramessides, Egypt again becomes degenerate, and, after some five hundred years of reanimation, passes into the power of the priests, who in turn are supplanted by invading hosts, this time from Ethiopia. Then the Assyrian conquerors, taking their turn at world-domination, invade Egypt along the route which Tehutimes and Ramses had followed of old in invading Assyria. Dismembered Egypt falls an easy prey to Esarhaddon. It revolts under Asshurbanapal again and again, and is as often reconquered. But a mixed population of Ethiopians and Assyrians again gives a certain measure of new vitality to the old body, and, the destruction of the Assyrian empire having rid the Egyptians of one of their enemies, they were presently able, under Psamthek I (Psammetichus), to overthrow the Ethiopian “usurpers,” and establish once more a “native” dynasty.
For about three-quarters of a century Egypt retained autonomy, and even struggled back to a shadow of its old-time power, illustrating once again the vitality that resides in an old stock. Then the final coup was given by Cambyses the Persian; and the last contest was over. Taken by themselves, these long-drawn-out struggles of a dying nation—extending over half a thousand years—are full of interest; but in the comparative scale they are unimportant. We have seen the great nation at its flood-tide of power, and we need not dwell at very great length upon the time of its ebbing fortunes; for other nations, off to the east, have now taken the place of Egypt as the world-centres, and are beckoning attention.[a]
MENEPTAH
[ca. 1285-1250 B.C.]
The disappearance of the old hero, Ramses II, did not produce many changes in the condition of affairs in Egypt. Meneptah from this time forth possessed as Pharaoh the power which he had previously wielded as regent. He was now no longer young. Born somewhere about the beginning of the reign of Ramses II, he was now sixty, possibly seventy, years old; thus an old man succeeded another old man at a moment when Egypt must have needed more than ever an active and vigorous ruler. The danger to the country did not on this occasion rise from the side of Asia, for the relations of the Pharaoh with his Kharu [Phœnician] subjects continued friendly, and, during a famine which desolated Syria, he sent wheat to his Hittite allies.
The nations, however, to the north and east, in Libya and in the Mediterranean islands, had for some time past been in a restless condition, which boded little good to the empires of the Old World. The Tamahu, some of them tributaries from the XIIth, and others from the first years of the XVIIIth Dynasty, had always been troublesome, but never really dangerous neighbours. From time to time it was necessary to send light troops against them, who, sailing along the coast or following the caravan routes, would enter their territory, force them from their retreats, destroy their palm groves, carry off their cattle, and place garrisons in the principal oases—even in Siwa itself. For more than a century, however, it would seem that more active and numerically stronger populations had entered upon the stage. A current of invasion, having its origin in the region of the Atlas, or possibly even in Europe, was setting toward the Nile, forcing before it the scattered tribes of the Sudan.
Temple on the Island of Philæ