"The daughter of Egypt is put to shame; she is delivered into the hand of the northern people."
Her gods share her fate; Apis had succumbed at Memphis, but Egypt had countless other stately shrines whose denizens must own the overmastering might of Jehovah:—
"Thus saith Jehovah Sabaoth, the God of Israel:
Behold, I will visit Amon of No,
And Pharaoh, and Egypt, and all her gods and kings,
Even Pharaoh and all who trust in him."
Amon of No, or Thebes, known to the Greeks as Ammon and called by his own worshippers Amen, or "the hidden one," is apparently mentioned with Apis as sharing the primacy of the Egyptian divine hierarchy. On the fall of the twentieth dynasty, the high priest of the Theban Amen became king of Egypt, and centuries afterwards Alexander the Great made a special pilgrimage to the temple in the oasis of Ammon and was much gratified at being there hailed son of the deity.
Probably the prophecy originally ended with this general threat of "visitation" of Egypt and its human and divine rulers. An editor, however, has added,[205] from parallel passages, the more definite but sufficiently obvious statement that Nebuchadnezzar and his servants were to be the instruments of the Divine visitation.
A further addition is in striking contrast to the sweeping statements of Jeremiah:—
"Afterward it shall be inhabited, as in the days of old."
Similarly, Ezekiel foretold a restoration for Egypt:—
"At the end of forty years, I will gather the Egyptians, and will cause them to return ... to their native land; and they shall be there a base kingdom: it shall be the basest of the kingdoms."[206]
And elsewhere we read yet more gracious promises to Egypt:—