READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE. TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER XIII

THE ETHIOPIANS AND ASSYRIANS IN EGYPT

I.

THE INSCRIPTION OF PIANKHI

THE Nubian chief Kashta had died about 742 BC and had been succeeded by a prince Piankhi, a man of great energy and decision. Having held the Thebaid in peace for twenty years, he was emboldened by the death of Sheshonk IV and the resulting state of affairs in the north to make a bid for monarchic universal power in the Nile valley, and the restoration, in his person, of the unified kingship of Egypt from Napata to the Mediterranean. His pretext was supplied by the power of Tefnakhte of Sais, who seemed to be about to threaten the Thebaid, and was certainly generally recognized as over-king in the north in succession to Sheshonk IV, so that he and his successor Bokenranef were included by Manetho in his list of Pharaohs as the Tnephachthos and Bocchoris of the XXIVth Dynasty. Tefnakhte’s chief abettor seems to have been Namilt of Hermopolis: the shadow-king Osorkon was evidently a mere puppet, and was probably relegated to Bubastis. Other chiefs allied with him were the barons of Khriaha (the Egyptian Babylon), of Athribis, Busiris, Pasepdu, Mendes, and Sebennytos.

The last, Akanesha by name, is obviously a Libyan, and is called a ‘Great Chief of Ma,’ as is also Zedamonefonkh of Mendes, though his name is Egyptian. Pefnefdidibast of Heracleopolis, the ancient seat of the Ma, did not follow with the stream, and refused to acknowledge the overlordship of Tefnakhte, so that he was besieged in Heracleopolis by the Saite king and his confederates, and probably appealed to Thebes for aid. Purema and Lamersekni, the Ethiopian commanders in southern Egypt, sought leave from Piankhi to move, ‘sending to His Majesty daily, saying “Wilt thou be silent, even to forgetting the names of the Southern Court, while Tefnakhte advances his conquest and finds none to repel his arm?”.’ Piankhi accordingly sent an army, which after great lustrations and propitiatory ceremonies at Thebes, advanced northwards, defeated Tefnakhte at Perpega, near Heracleopolis, and relieved the city.

We know of these events from the extremely interesting triumphal inscription of Piankhi recording this war, set up by him at Napata, and now in the Cairo Museum. It gives a very clear notion of events, and is phrased in a particularly terse and picturesque style without the bombastic, and often meaningless, phraseology of many royal records. After the relief of Heracleopolis, Tefnakhte retreated to the north, while Namilt of Hermopolis doubled southward to his own city, where he was soon besieged in his turn. The Nubian commanders evidently did not consider it safe to pursue Tefnakhte with so redoubtable an enemy as Namilt in their rear. Piankhi was not pleased to hear of the course of events:

“Then His Majesty was enraged thereat like a panther (saying) ‘Have they allowed a remnant of the army of the North-land to remain? allowing him that fled from them to escape to tell of his campaign? not causing their death in order to destroy them? As Re‘ loveth me, as my father Amon praiseth me, I will myself go down stream that I may reverse what he (Tefnakhte) hath done, that I may make him abandon fighting for ever!’... And when the army which was there in Egypt heard of the wrath which His Majesty felt towards them, they fought against Pemje in the Oxyrhynchite nome, they took it like a flood of water, and told His Majesty. His heart was not satisfied therewith. Then they fought against Tatehne, great in might. They found it filled with soldiers, with every valiant man of the North-land. Then the battering-ram was employed against it to overturn its walls: a great slaughter was made of them, one knows not the number, but among them was the son of the prince of Ma, Tefnakhte. And they sent to His Majesty about this; but his heart was not satisfied therewith. And then they fought against Hebennu: its inwards were opened, the soldiers of His Majesty entered into it. And then they sent to His Majesty, but his heart was not satisfied therewith. On the ninth day of the month of Thoth His Majesty arrived on his journey downstream to Thebes. He accomplished the feast of Amon at the feast of Opet. His Majesty went on in his journey downstream to the city of the Hare nome (Hermopolis). His Majesty comes forth from the cabin of the boat, bridles the horses and mounts on his chariot: the terror of His Majesty reaches to the uttermost parts of Asia: every heart is in fear of him. His Majesty came forth rushing to hate his soldiers, he raged against them like a panther (saying) ‘The length of your fighting is delaying my commands: let the year accomplish its end in giving my fear to the North-land and in inflicting on them a high defeat, evil in striking!’ He had made for him a camp to the west of Hermopolis and besieged it daily. A mound was made to dominate the wall: a wooden tower was built to lift up the archers to shoot and the slingers to hurl stones to kill men among them each day. Days passed and Hermopolis was foul to the nose, deprived of her sweetness. Then Hermopolis threw herself on her belly, doing obeisance in presence of the king”.

The above passage gives a good idea of the style of this interesting inscription, and only the stock phrase about the fear of the king reaching the Asiatics interrupts the flow of the narrative, whose verisimilitude is its great charm. Gifts of all kinds, enumerated fully, were brought out to appease the king, and finally Namilt’s queen appeared to plead with Piankhi for the safety of her lord and his city, which were granted her. Namilt then came out, leading a horse with one hand and holding a sistrum in the other, as he is depicted on the stela. Piankhi entered the city and rebuked Namilt for his bad care of his horses —a curious personal touch; but as Hermopolis was besieged for months, it is no wonder that the horses were starved, which does not appear to have occurred to Piankhi or his historiographer.

Pefnefdidibast now sent the usual presents of gold, silver, and horses, and Piankhi set his army on the march northward. A town near Lahun, at the entrance to the Fayyum, which had been fortified against him, surrendered at his summons with another son of Tefnakhte, followed by Medum: ‘Behold! His Majesty sent to them saying: “There are two ways before you: choose as ye desire: open, and ye live: close, and ye die. My Majesty does not pass by a closed town.” Whereat they opened upon the instant, and His Majesty entered into the inwards of that town’. The ancient fortress of Itht-Toui surrendered with equal promptness. And then the king reached Memphis and came up against it. Tefnakhte had hastily introduced into the city by night a garrison of 8000 men, but, intending to avoid being besieged himself, did not await the assault of Piankhi, but at once escaped northwards under pretext of marshalling the forces of the Delta. ‘He sat himself upon a horse, he asked not for his chariot: he went downstream in fear of His Majesty.’ The garrison of Memphis refused to surrender, but Piankhi took it by means of a stratagem. As the river was high, the shipping of the city, moored along the river-wall, rode high. So Piankhi embarked his troops on his own ships which he laid alongside those of his enemy; the troops then boarded the enemy vessels and passed over them on to the wall. ‘So Memphis was taken as by a flood of water; the number of men slain therein is unknown ... now afterwards, at dawn of the next day, His Majesty sent troops into the city, to protect the temples of the god.’ Piankhi then landed, a solemn service of purification was held, and he made his reverence to Ptah.

The Delta princes submitted and Piankhi proceeded by way of Khriaha to Heliopolis, where as king he entered the sacred benben-chamber of Re, and so asserted his right as Pharaoh. And here king Osorkon came from Bubastis ‘to see the beauty of His Majesty’. Pediesi of Athribis now invited the king to his city: ‘my treasury is open to thee, I will give thee gold as much as thou desirest; malachite shall be heaped upon thee, many horses of the best of the stable and the first of the stall.’ Piankhi’s special love of horses, as evinced at the taking of Hermopolis, was evidently appreciated: and no better gift for him could be devised. Then Pediesi gives this order:

“Every one of the chiefs if he conceals his horses and hides his obligation shall die the death… say, have I concealed ought from His Majesty of all the possessions of my father’s house... bracelets of gold, necklaces and collars wrought with precious stones, amulets for every limb, chaplets for the head, rings for the ears, all the adornments of a king... garments of royal linen... Go to the stable that thou mayest choose as thou desirest, of all the horses that thou wiliest.’ Then His Majesty did so. Said these kings and princes to His Majesty: ‘Dismiss us to our cities that we may open our treasuries, that we may choose as much as thy heart desires, that we may bring to thee the best of our stables, the first of our horses!’ Then His Majesty did so”.

The troops of Pediesi now marched under the banner of Piankhi, and Tefnakhte, having burnt his ships and his treasury, surrendered, after which he was admitted to the king’s peace. None, however, of the surrendered kings (‘the wearers of uraei’) and princes were admitted to the royal presence, except Namilt, as he alone among them did not eat fish, ‘and fish is an abomination unto the palace’. That is to say, Piankhi and Namilt held fast to the Egyptian prohibition of fish as food for priests; the Ethiopian, no doubt like most of the Pharaohs, had been admitted to priest’s orders, and probably regarded himself as in some sort high-priest of Amon at Thebes, if, as is probable, he was the husband of Kashta’s daughter Amonirdis, the adopted daughter of the high-priest Shepenopet. The inscription concludes:

“Then His Majesty sailed upstream with a glad heart, the shores on either side of him rejoicing. West and East, they seized the sistrum, jubilating in the presence of His Majesty, psalming and jubilating as they raised the song ‘O twice mighty ruler, Piankhi, mighty ruler: thou comest, having gained the dominion of the Northland. Thou makest bulls into women. Happy the heart of the mother who loves thee and the man who begat thee. Those who are in the valley give praise to her, the cow that has borne a bull. Thou art unto eternity, thy might endureth, O Ruler beloved of Thebes!”

So the inscription ends. It has been treated fully, since it is one of the most interesting ancient historical inscriptions that exist in any country, and is invaluable as a source of information as to the conditions of the time.

II

EGYPT, PALESTINE AND ASSYRIA

Piankhi now returned to Nubia. But the regent, or chief commander, whom he presumably left in charge in Egypt, soon found that he had taken over a foreign complication of a formidable kind. The generals of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V had finally conquered Israel a year before Piankhi’s expedition. Hoshea of Israel, who had foolishly defied his Assyrian over-lord, was besieged for two years in Samaria, which finally fell shortly after the murder of Shalmaneser and accession of Sargon to the Assyrian throne in 722. Hoshea was blinded, and his whole land and people annexed. Assyria was now almost at the gates of Egypt. In the O.T. we read that Hoshea had sent messengers to So or Seve, king of Egypt, and that the king of Assyria found conspiracy in him (2 Kings XVII, 4). No such king is known to us from Egyptian sources, but it has been supposed that he was one of the many dynasts of the Delta. Although he is not mentioned among those who submitted to Piankhi in 721, he is evidently the Sibe, turtan (chief general) of Musri (Egypt), whom Sargon defeated in the battle of Raphia in 720, when Egypt assisted those Syrians and Philistines who, in spite of the lesson of the destruction of Samaria, had revolted again almost imme­diately in concert with the remnant of Israel. Unfor­tunately we have no Assyrian accounts of the earlier events in 725. If, then, the reference in the Book of Kings is placed correctly we should have expected to find this Seve or Sibe mentioned among the dynasts who submitted to Piankhi. But the contemporary Assyrian record very explicitly does not call him king in 720, but merely the turtan or commander-in-chief of the Egyptian king. In spite of the fact that he is not mentioned by Piankhi, he might of course have been a Delta chief (not ‘king’: we know from Piankhi’s inscription who the ‘kings’ were who wore the uraeus) whom Piankhi made his commander in Egypt. But it is probable that Piankhi would leave in command in Egypt one of his own Nubians, such as Lamersekni or Purema, rather than a Delta chief of doubtful loyalty, and it is at least possible, in spite of objections, that this Sib’e was none other than the Ethiopian prince Shabaka who succeeded Piankhi as king five years later. He will then have been left by Piankhi in control of Egypt.

We may suppose that it was the Egyptian revolution which occurred after the fall of Samaria, apparently betokening the accession of an energetic warrior-king who would be able to afford valuable, perhaps decisive, assistance, that emboldened the Syrians to fly to arms again in 720. And Piankhi’s turtan Sibe —whether Sibe was Shabaka or no, Piankhi, not Tefnakhte or Osorkon IV, must have been the Pharaoh whose turtan Sibe was —confident in the success of the expedition into Egypt, and totally ignorant of the Assyrian power as he would be, was no wise loth to give them encouragement. The result was the total defeat of the Egyptians under their presumably Ethiopian commander at Raphia: Sibe fled ‘like a shepherd whose sheep have been taken’, and the wrath of the provoked victor was only appeased by lavish gifts from ‘Piru’ or Pharaoh. Of this naturally we hear nothing from Piankhi, but the result was evident. Shabaka, if it was he, must have retired precipitately to the south, and the Delta was abandoned to Tefnakhte, who emerged from his obscurity and was again king. He, it may be (rather than the puppet Osorkon IV, who now probably disappeared), was the Piru who placated Sargon with what the Assyrian deemed tribute. Thebes of course remained subject to Piankhi: there is no trace of Tefnakhte in the south.

Now, if Sibe was Shabaka, it is certain that the reference in 2 Kings XVII, 4 is misplaced, and must belong to the year 720 and the campaign of Raphia rather than to 727 and the campaign of Samaria. And even if he were not, but still was (as is most probable) an Ethiopian, we must come to the same conclusion. The fact that when he was king the Assyrians rendered his name correctly as ‘Shabaku’ has been regarded as a cogent argument against the identification with Sibe or Seve, but this is not really decisive, as on his first appearance neither Syrians nor Assyrians may have heard his name correctly, and in the Book of Kings the original erroneous or rather truncated form has survived. It must be remembered that we do not know the meaning of the Libyan or Nubian (not Egyptian) name, Shabaka (or Shabiku, Greek Sabakon or Sebichos), or of that of his successor Shabataka (or Shabitoku); a shortened form ‘Shaba’ may well have been in use. It is also remarkable that in the Septuagint (the Lucianic recension) for ‘So, king of Egypt’ is substituted ‘Adrammelech the Ethiopian, living in Egypt.’ By some confusion an Assyrian name has been substituted for that of So, but he is definitely described as an Ethiopian. All authorities are agreed that So (or Seve) and Sibe are the same person; and, if he was an Ethiopian, as is on all grounds most probable, the biblical description of him as ‘king’ is at all events an error. And the present writer is still inclined to regard him as none other than Shabaka, who had not yet become king, and who had been left behind by Piankhi in command in Egypt.

Tefnakhte thus is now again king, and about 718 he was succeeded by Bokenranef, who took the throne-name Uahkere, pronounced something like ‘Vohkere’, the Greek Bocchoris. As the eighth year of Tefnakhte is recorded, he must have dated his accession at latest from 726—725, the last year of Sheshonk IV. Tnephachthos and Bocchoris are the first Egyptian kings of their own time of whom the Greeks of the new age preserved the memory. Greek civilization was now arising out of the dark age that succeeded the crash of the Bronze Age Minoan or Keftian culture that had been so well-known to the Egyptians of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The new age of expansion, trade and colonization was under way, and Milesian traders were already frequenting the Nile-mouths. The western mouth at Canopus was that most frequented by them, as affording either a clear run and landfall from the Aegean, or a route along the Libyan coast less liable to Phoenician interference than the east-wise coasting route. Owing to increasing Greek trading-ventures the Canopic branch of the Nile was now becoming of greater importance than the Pelusiac, which in Ramessid and Bubastite days had given access to the trade of Phoenicians. Now, however, the ‘grave Tyrian trader, from the sea descried at sunrise an emerging prow’: the Ionians had successfully invaded his ancient trade domain; and the Egyptian, not less than the Tyrian, now

Saw the merry Grecian coaster come

Freighted with amber grapes and Chian wine,

Green bursting figs and tunnies steeped in brine,

And knew the intruders on his ancient home,

The young, light-hearted masters of the waves.

On the Canopic Nile lay Sais, and she commanded the further passage to Memphis. The whole country, too, was the domain of the lords of Sais. The wealth that enabled a prince of Sais to rank as the first of the dynasts of the Delta and to seize Memphis came from the dues and profits on the new trade with Greece, from the import of oil and wine from Greece, and from the export to Greece of wheat and barley, as well as from the Libyan sheep whose fleeces were so useless to the linen-wearing Egyptian but most valuable to the Greek. Close to Sais the Milesians established their emporium, which afterwards became Naucratis. Memphis and Sais were no doubt already known to them as the chief cities of Egypt, and Bocchoris was reputed in tradition, preserved later by Diodorus, to have been a fabulously rich and wise prince whose father (Tnephachthos) had been a great warrior. It was reported of him that he brought more precision into the law of contract; thus by his amendments ‘those who have contracted a debt without a written agreement, and deny that they owe it, after taking an oath are freed from the debt’. Bocchoris was in fact a business king. Nemesis pursued him, as she does all favourites of fortune, and he was captured by Sebichos (Shabaka), Manetho tells us, and burnt alive. In his reign, according to a native tradition preserved in demotic screed, a lamb spoke and prophesied the Assyrian conquest and enslavement of Egypt, and the removal of her gods to Ninua (Nineveh). There is no doubt that he was the Piru who, when Ashdod revolted under a Greek adventurer (the ‘Yawani’), from Cyprus (?), in order to remove all suspicions of his intentions in that matter, sent the Assyrian Sargon tribute in 715, and that he was deposed and no doubt killed by Shabaka, about 712. Consequently the tradition may be correct. With him the XXIVth Dynasty, of two kings only, came to an end.

Shabaka was probably associated with Piankhi about 715 (?), and three years later invaded Egypt and recovered the whole of his kingdom. For fifteen years he remained quiescent, without challenging (once more?) the arms of Assyria, but at length he openly defied the king Sennacherib in support of the revolt of Lull of Sidon and Hezekiah of Judah. The sequel in the battle of Eltekeh, near Ekron, a repetition of the defeat at Raphia, is well known. The Assyrian record tells us that the army of the kings of Musur, the soldiers, the archers, the chariots and horsemen of Melukhkha (Nubia) were overthrown, the ‘sons of the kings of Musur’ were taken, and the army retired in disorder to Egypt. Shabaka, now an older and a wiser man, had apparently remained at home. The siege and capture of Lachish, commemorated in the reliefs now in the British Museum, followed. Hezekiah was shut in Jerusalem ‘like a caged bird,’ bitterly ruing the trust that he had placed in that ‘staff of bruised reed, even Egypt, on which, if a man lean, it will pierce his hand: so is Pharaoh, king of Egypt, unto all that trust in him!’ as the rab-shake had told him in the hearing of the people on the wall. And of a truth the kings of Assyria had destroyed the nations and their lands and cast their gods into the fire.

Before the surrender of Hezekiah to his generals Sennacherib had returned to Assyria. It is generally assumed that the famous disaster to his army at Pelusium, which is chronicled in 2 Kings XIX, 35, and by Herodotus and Berosus, and usually considered to have been a decimation by plague (the rats and mice of the Herodotean story are plague-bearers, the beasts of Apollo Smintheus), now occurred, in 700, and that it was the motive for Sennacherib’s return and the mild treatment of Hezekiah. The mention of Tirhakah as the Egyptian king in the biblical story cannot, however, be referred to 700, unless this is another mistake of the same kind as before, and Tirhakah was the turtan. This is not impossible, of course, but another explanation is that this event happened some fifteen years later, when Tirhakah was king, and that Sennacherib then went down to Palestine upon an expedition not mentioned (for obvious reasons) in his Annals, and that the famous disaster happened then. We have no hint that Sennacherib ever besieged Pelusium or made the slightest attempt to invade Egypt, whereas he may have fought her in South Palestine later. Moreover, Hezekiah would hardly have sent rich gifts and tribute to Sennacherib at Nineveh, as he did, if the Assyrian had first lost his whole army and had had to fly. According to yet another view, the disaster really happened, not to Sennacherib, but to Esarhaddon, who in 675 attacked Egypt, when, as the Babylonian chronicle tells us, ‘the troops of Assyria went to Egypt: they fled before a great storm.’ The substitution of the name of Sennacherib (Sanacharibos) for that of Esarhaddon may be a case of the common replacement of a less-known name by a well-known. This view has much to commend it, though the reference in 2 Kings XIX, 7 (‘I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land’) applies to Sennacherib, not to Esarhaddon; at all events it tallies with the theory of an unsuccessful expedition about 687 or 686 rather than with that of 700.

It has also been suggested that the name of the Egyptian king in the Herodotean version of the story, Sethos, is derived from the title of a priest of Ptah (Hephaistos) at Memphis, and that the real Egyptian king was one who also held such a Memphite priestly office. But it is simpler to suppose that it is merely a traditional confusion of the old name Seti in a wrong setting.

Shabataka (Shabitoku) succeeded his father Shabaka as king of Egypt not long after the defeat of Eltekeh in 700, and possibly in consequence of it: an Ethiopian king who suffered defeat may well have received short shrift as a means of diverting the wrath of the gods from his people. We know little of his reign, which was totally undistinguished; and it is not certain whether his predecessor and he ruled from Napata or from Thebes.

His successor, Taharka (689—664), the Tirhakah of the Bible, Tarku of the Assyrians, and Etearchos or Tarakos of the Greeks, no doubt reigned at Tanis and Thebes, with (for a time at least) a shadowy co-regent Piankhi at Napata. Taharka was the nephew of Shabaka, and, therefore, the cousin of Shabataka, whom he murdered, possibly when the king was in Egypt (Eusebius says that he killed ‘Sebichos’ who here must be Shabataka). As a young man of twenty, he tells us in an inscription at Tanis, he accompanied a king (apparently Shabaka) when he occupied the northland (in 712). This would make him forty-three years of age at his accession. He had remained in Egypt during the whole of the reigns of Shabaka and Shabataka; and this fact makes it not impossible that he may have been in command of the Egyptians at Eltekeh, though we have no confirmation of the biblical statement which, as we have seen, may have been a scribe’s error. To his court at Tanis he summoned his old mother, whom he had not seen for twenty years, and he tells us how magnificently he caused her to be received like Isis, the mother of Horus. His residence at Tanis was no doubt determined by the necessity of constant watch on the frontier now that the Assyrian was so near, and the advisability of keeping touch with any rebel who could be encouraged to be a thorn in the side of Assyria, now so powerful that the possibility of an actual invasion and attempt at conquest of Egypt could not be disregarded. Some have supposed, as we have seen, that such an attempt did perhaps take place not long after his accession.

III.

THE ASSYRIANS IN EGYPT

Sennacherib’s son and successor, Esarhaddon (681 BC), was a man of very different temper from his father. He was more civilized, but at the same time more impetuous. He saw the necessity of peace at home in Mesopotamia if Syria and Palestine were to be held against the opposition of an Egypt which never ceased to claim the west-lands as an ancient dominion which had been unrightfully usurped, once by the Hittites, and now by Assyria. Reversing his father’s policy of repression in Babylonia, he freed his hands and prepared to invade and conquer Egypt. The advisability of such a policy must always be a moot point. His initial efforts were unsuccessful. An attempt at invasion in force in 675 was broken up by a great storm, which drove away the Assyrians in panic flight. We have seen that there is reason to suppose that this may have been the real occasion of the disaster traditionally ascribed to Sennacherib, in which case the army of Esarhaddon will have been besieging Pelusium, when some fierce Mediterranean tempest overwhelmed their camp and rendered their bowstrings useless with rain and sea-water, so that they had to break up and retreat in disorder. Whether pestilence followed or not we do not know; but it is possible that a great storm sufficiently explains the disaster which was so celebrated in ancient legend.

In the next year Esarhaddon made another attempt. His generals were more successful, getting into the Delta (no doubt farther south), and besieging the city Sha-Amelie, ‘The City of Men’, presumably Andropolis near Sais in the western Delta, if it is not simply a name for Pelusium. In any event, it would seem that in 674 Esarhaddon was successful in forcing an entrance into the Delta, and the speed of the campaign of 671 would indicate that during the intervening three years the Assyrian foot was kept in the door, and Tirhakah was prevented from recovering the eastern Delta, or at least Pelusium. In 671 the final blow fell. Taharka had incited Baal king of Tyre to revolt. ‘In the tenth year,’ says the Babylonian Chronicle, ‘in the month Nisan, the army of Assyria went to Egypt. On the 3rd, 16th and 18th of Tammuz, three times, a battle was fought in Egypt. On the 22nd, Mimpi (Memphis), its royal city, was captured. Its king saved himself (by flight). His brother was taken alive. Its booty was carried off, its people were plundered, its goods they carried away.’ A swift record of a swift campaign. The old-fashioned dilatory methods of the Egyptians were no match for prompt and decided generalship. Taharka fled to Napata. The whole country as far south as Thebes submitted. Esarhaddon claims to have conquered Upper Egypt and Nubia as well as the Delta: ‘Baalu, king of Tyre, who relied on Tarku, king of Kusi: all his cities and his property I took from him. I conquered the land of Musri, the land of Paturi(si), and the land of Kusi. Tarku, its king, five times with the spear I fought, and all his lands I ruled.’ Musri is the Egyptian Delta only, Paturisi is the Egyptian Patoris, ‘the Southland’ (the biblical Pathros, Pathrusim), and Kusi is Ethiopia or Cush.

It is, however, very doubtful whether Esarhaddon actually passed Syene into Cush in person. North of Syene, at any rate, all the local chiefs sent gifts to Esarhaddon, who either graciously confirmed them in their posts or substituted enemies of the Ethiopians for their friends. No attempt was made to occupy the country south of Heracleopolis, and the Upper Egyptian princes were not interfered with. These were Ziha (Zedhor; Teos or Tachos) of Siyautu (Siut), Lamintu (Namilt) of Khimuni (Khe- mennu; Hermopolis), Ispimatu (Psimut) of Taini (Thinis), and Mantimankhi (Mentumehet) of Ni’ (No-Amon, Thebes). Among the Delta chiefs the Assyrian scribe reckons the prince of Hera­cleopolis, Niku (Nechao) of Mimpi (Memphis; the Hebrew Noph) and Sai (Sais), Pishankhuru (Pshenhor) of Natkhu (Natho), Pakruru of Pishaptu (Per-Sopdu), Bukkunanni’pi (Baknenefi) of Khatkhiribi (Hat-to-her-ibet, Athribis), Nakhke of Khininshi (Hininsu or Hnes, Heracleopolis, the modern Ehnasya or Ahnas, the biblical Hanes); Putubishti (Pedubastet) of Sanu (Zoan, Tanis); Unamunu (Unamun or ‘Wenamon’) of Natkhu; Kharsi-yeshu (Harsiesis) of Sabnuti (Thebnuter, Sebennytos); Puaima (Purema) of Pindidi (Mendes); Susinku (Sheshonk) of Pushiru (Busiris); Tabnakhti (Tefnakhte) of Punubu (Per-neb); Buku- nanni’pi (Beknenefi) of Akhni; Iptikhardeshu (Ptah-erdi-su) of Pikhattikhurunpiki (Per-Hathor-nebt-tep-ehe, Aphroditopolis), and Nakhtikhuruansini (Nakhte-Hor-en-shenu) of Pishabtia (Per-Sopdo), with two who bore Assyrian names, Sharruludari of Sinu (Pelusium) and Bukur-Ninurta of Pakhnuti. The Assyrian transliterations of the Egyptian names are very interesting and important as supplying the contemporary vocalization of their pronunciation. The two Assyrians were possibly Egyptians who were honoured with Assyrian names: for the former we may compare the name of the prince of Askalon set up by Sennacherib. All the princes are called Shar, ‘king’, though none of them, with the possible exception of Niku of Sais, could lay claim to Pharaonic dignity. Since the days of Shabaka there had been no more real Pharaohs, ‘who wore the uraeus’, in the Delta. The leaders of the Delta chiefs would seem to have been Niku of Sais and Pakruru of Per-Sopdu in the Wadi Tumllat.

Esarhaddon had made an easy conquest, and seems to have thought that it would easily be held. It was probably now that he sent ambassadors to Taharka in Nubia (Kusi), no doubt to negotiate a treaty, but they returned without an answer. In the next year (670), there were already symptoms of conspiracy against Assyria, probably more in the interests of individual Delta chieftains than in those of their rightful lord, Taharka. Esarhaddon determined to secure his conquest more firmly, but on the way to Egypt with his army he died (669). The new king, Ashurbanipal, was too busy with other matters to pursue his father’s plans at once, and, as soon as he heard of the death of Esarhaddon, Taharka emerged from the south like a whirlwind, occupied Thebes, retook Memphis and put the garrisons left by Esarhaddon in the Delta-cities to the sword. He then reigned in the north for a year and a half till, in 667, Ashurbanipal was at last able to proceed to Egypt. The country was easily invaded, and Ashurbanipal defeated Taharka at Karbaniti (an Assyrian name meaning ‘Town of the Freewoman’, and no doubt a translation of the Egyptian name), and took Memphis without further fighting. Taharka again saved himself by flight to Napata, but this time the Upper Country was not spared the sight of Assyrian soldiery: a Phoenician fleet, brought up the Nile to Memphis for the purpose, transported the Assyrian king and army southward to Thebes in forty days, and the city was occupied without opposition. No harm was done to it: the prince Mentumiehet no doubt had made a politic submission. He and the other nominees of Esarhaddon were confirmed in their appointments by Ashurbanipal, who then left Egypt in their charge: ‘Musur and Kusi, which my father, my begetter, had defeated, I set again in order.’

Mentumehet is well known from his monuments at Thebes as a faithful servant of Taharka, and his temporary submission to Ashurbanipal was no doubt well known to be due to no thought of treason but to a desire to save his city from destruction. His portrait-statue, now at Cairo, makes a favourable impression: it is one of the finest of Egyptian portraits. At this time the archaistic feeling was taking strong hold of Egyptian artists, and with it the old appreciation of true rather than conventional portraiture was being revived, so that the portrait-statues of this age are among the finest that the Egyptians ever produced.

Mentumehet and his fellow-dynasts of Upper Egypt were not in such daily fear of the Assyrians as their colleagues in the Delta, and with them it was of greater importance to keep on good terms with their rightful king in Nubia, which the Theban chief certainly succeeded in doing. Taharka probably soon returned to Thebes from Napata after Ashurbanipal had departed, and immediately the Delta-dynasts started to intrigue with him with a view to ‘a division of the land with him,’ in other words another restoration of his supremacy. The Assyrians discovered the correspondence, and Niku of Sai's and Sharruludari of Pelusium were sent in chains to Nineveh, while Pakruru of Pisopdu (on the Wadi Tumllat) possibly succeeded in escaping to Thebes. The people of Sai’s, Mendes, Pelusium and other towns were treated with great severity by the Assyrian generals; great and little they were killed, their bodies hung upon gallows and their flayed skins exhibited on their city-walls.

Ashurbanipal himself, however, now adopted a conciliatory policy towards the Delta chiefs and tried to make them feel loyalty to Assyria. Niku was honoured at Nineveh and sent back to Sais in state, while his son Psamatik (later the king Psammetichus I) was given the Assyrian name Nabushezibanni, and made prince of Athribis. Taharka was now quiet for the rest of his life, which was apparently passed at Napata: ‘the terror of the sword of Ashur, my lord,’ says the Assyrian king, ‘cast Tarku down in the place whither he had fled (i.e. Napata), and his dark fate came to him.’ On his death (at the end of 664 b.c.) he was succeeded by his nephew and brother-in-law, Tanutamon, the son of Shabaka, who had been associated with him less than a year before, and was apparently ruling in northern Nubia, perhaps even at Syene, though hardly at Thebes as has been supposed.

Immediately after the death of Taharka Tanutamon repaired to Napata, where he took over the government and at once marched to recover Egypt in accordance with the indications of a dream, which was interpreted by the soothsayers as promising him the dominion of the north as well as the south. On a stele which he erected at Napata he tells us how he invaded Egypt with his army, and was received with pomp at Elephantine and Thebes, where no doubt the prince Mentumehet must have submitted to him. At Memphis

“there came forth the children of rebellion to fight with His Majesty. His Majesty made a great slaughter among them; their number being unknown. His Majesty took Memphis and entered into the temple of Ptah Risanbuf.... Now after these things His Majesty sailed north to fight with the chiefs of the North. Then they entered their strongholds as beasts crawl into their holes. Then His Majesty spent many days before them, but there came forth none of them to fight with His Majesty. Then His Majesty sailed southwards to Memphis”.

Eventually, however, the recalcitrant chiefs came in and submitted, headed by the pro-Ethiopian Pakruru of Pisopdu. No mention is made of Niku, Ashurbanipal’s nominee, prince of Memphis, who no doubt had been slain at the capture of the city. His death at the hands of the Ethiopians is definitely stated by Herodotus, who, however, confuses Tanutamon with Shabaka. His son Psamatik fled to the Assyrians. Tanutamon does not tell us the issue of his adventure: Ashurbanipal does. Afterwards (i.e. after the death of Taharka) Tandamane, son of his sister, sat on his royal throne. Ni (Thebes) and Unu (On, Heliopolis) he made the places of his strength and he gathered his forces to fight my army of Assyria, which was collected in Memphis. He shut them in there and cut off their escape. A messenger came to Nineveh and told me thereof.’ And Ashurbanipal moved at once (663 BC).

“On my second campaign I directed my way to Musur (Egypt) and Kusi. Tandamane heard of my campaign, and that I trod the soil of Egypt. He abandoned Memphis and fled to Ni (Thebes) to save his life. The kings, viceroys, and burggraves, whom I had set in Memphis, came to me and kissed my feet. After Tandamane I pursued my way and came to Ni, the place of his strength. He fled to Kipkip (in Nubia). That city (Thebes) in its entirety I conquered with the help of Ashur and Ishtar. Silver, gold, precious stones, all the possessions of his palace, many-coloured clothing, linen, great horses, men and women attendants, two high obelisks of shining orichalcum 2500 talents in weight, the door-posts of the temple-door, I took from their bases and removed to Assyria. Heavy booty, beyond counting, I took away from Thebes. Against Musur and Kusi I let my weapons rage and showed my might. With my hands full returned I to Nineveh, my residence-city, in good health.”

What the prophet Nahum said with regard to this in his prophecy against Nineveh is well known (III, 8—10).

Such is the chief contemporary account of the taking and sacking of Thebes by the Assyrians in 663. The reality was even worse than the description. There is no doubt that the city of Amon was given up to fire, sword and rapine: a fate that probably it had never known before in its history. We probably have traces of the catastrophe in the burnt ancient houses at Karnak which were discovered some years ago, and in the Assyrian helmet which was found in the Ramesseum. And from the inscriptions of Mentumehet we can see how terribly Thebes had been smitten. The nomarch had no doubt fled before the arrival of Ashurbanipal, with Tanutamon, and returned when the coast was clear, to find his city a reeking shambles and his temples outraged and despoiled. He tells us how he laboured to restore the defiled and damaged temples. But Thebes never recovered. Henceforward it was no longer a capital city; the government of Patoris (‘the south-land’) was transferred to Hanes or Hininsu, Heracleopolis in Middle Egypt; the headquarters of the old Libyan chiefs of Ma. Thebes was not even a city at all, nothing but what it is now, a collection of temples with separate villages clustering round them. Such was the Thebes of the Saites: in spite of the high-sounding titles of the ‘Adoratrix of the God,’ its portion as a chief city was henceforward only nominal and make-believe.

Napata was too far to give laws to Egypt: when Thebes was destroyed the Ethiopian kings no longer had a ‘place of their strength,’ a point d'appui in Egypt: and the southern power could no longer counteract the heavier weight of the north under a unified northern power. Tanutamon still asserted his authority at Thebes in his third year (661), but henceforward we hear no more of him. He set up a stele at Napata to record his conquest of Egypt, but naturally did not record his speedy expulsion. His successors, Atlanersa, Senkamenseken, Aspelta, and the rest, never emerged from their safe refuge in ‘Kipkip,’ and made no claim to rule in Egypt north of the First Cataract.

IV.

EGYPT’S INDEPENDENCE UNDER PSAMMETICHUS I

Ashurbanipal had left Egypt in the charge of Psammetichus (Psamatik, or Nabu-Shezib-Anni as he called him), the son of Niku, who had returned to Egypt with him. From being sub­prince of Athribis, Nabu-shezib-Anni had succeeded to his inheritance of Memphis and Sai’s after the death of his father (663). He was now invested with the rule of all Egypt under the Assyrian overlordship, and from this year he dated his reign as Pharaoh. As Taharka had died only two or three months before, he presumably regarded his father, Niku, as having taken over the Pharaonic dignity then and as having passed it to him—though Niku’s right to it was but as the successor of Tefnakhte whose claims were of a very dubious character—and indeed, as a matter of fact, the new royalty of the Saites rested upon nothing but the will of Assyria. As Psamatik already uses his royal style in his third year (661—660), and in the ninth year (655) we find his first inscription at Thebes, it would appear that sometime between 661 and 655 his authority was finally acknowledged there and that of Tanutamon rejected. In 655 he legitimized his claims to Thebes, by imitating the precedent of Kashta, and causing his daughter Nitocris to be adopted by Shepenopet II, the ‘Adoratrix of the God’ and sister of Taharka, who herself had been adopted by Amonirdis, the daughter of Kashta. Shep­Enopet had already adopted another Amonirdis, daughter of Taharka, but she probably died or was put away in favour of the child of the new king for reasons of state.

Henceforward he was acknowledged king from the sea to Syene. Probably the Assyrian king did not object to this assumption of the full Pharaonic dignity by his vassal, since to the Assyrians this would not necessarily imply independence of them, though to an Egyptian of course it would. In any case Psamatik succeeded in staving off any renewed invasion. Ashurbanipal was henceforward too busy with the Elamite wars and with revolts in Babylonia to trouble about Egypt so long as tribute was paid by Psamatik, and it is probable this was done for a good many years, perhaps regularly until about 651, when the Assyrian garrisons in the Delta were probably withdrawn owing to the revolt of Babylonia under the prince Shamash-Shum-Ukin. From the account of Herodotus we might suppose that Psamatik expelled these garrisons by force with the help of ‘the brazen men’ sent to assist him by Gyges of Lydia. There may have been some fighting in which the Egyptians were helped by the Anatolian and Ionian mercenaries who were now well known in the Levant, and even in the Babylonian armies. And it is probable that ‘Gugu’ king of Lydia, who was not always on good terms with Ashurbanipal, may have lent Psamatik some of his subjects for this purpose, probably about 654, when it would seem that he finally quarrelled with Ashurbanipal. It should however be observed that there is no reference to his help of Egypt in the Assyrian annals. Still, as we shall see later, Psamatik never regards himself as the enemy of the Assyrians: rather the reverse. He was their friend and ally, so long as they respected his independence, which Ashurbanipal was now constrained to do. Psamatik and his ‘brazen men’ were too formidable to be attacked after the exhausting Elamite wars. The garrisons disappear from Egypt, the tribute was dropped, and Psamatik, Pharaoh from Nathu to Yebu, from the Delta to Elephantine, tacitly re­sumed the international position of the great Egyptian kings of the past, as the first king of the XXVIth or second Saite Dynasty.

In this account of the period of Assyrian invasions, a series of dates have been adopted which do not always coincide with those that will be found in former histories. The dates of the reigns of the XXVIth Dynasty kings are known with certainty from the Persian conquest in 525 backwards, so, since we know that Psamatik I was succeeded by Niku ‘II’ (Pharaoh Necho, the second Nechao of the Greeks) in 610—609, and is stated by Herodotus to have reigned fifty-four years, his first year was 663. Now another Apis-bull died at the end of the twentieth year of Psamatik (644), aged twenty-one years two months and seven days, which was born in the twenty-sixth year of Taharka, which therefore was 664. Consequently there will have elapsed but two or three months between the death of Taharka and the accession of Psamatik, a space of time which may have been filled by the remainder of the life of Niku ‘I’ the father of Psamatik (which probably ended at the capture of Memphis by Tanutamon), if he was counted as a king by his son. In any case, Taharka was recognized by Psamatik as rightful Pharaoh until his death, which so shortly preceded the succession of Psamatik to the dignities of his father and his assumption of regal dignity to the exclusion of Tanutamon. Taharka will then have ascended the throne in 689. The inscription in the Serapeum of Memphis recording the burial of an Apis in his twenty-fourth year must belong to 666 b.c., a year after his appearance in the north in 667. It is probable that the priests more or less openly dated their inscriptions by the years of his reign, as Niku of Memphis was never actually crowned as Pharaoh and used no regnal years as king, so far as we know; and the Assyrian monarchs, though calling themselves shar sharrani Musur, ‘king of the kings of Egypt,’ never regarded themselves as kings of Egypt, as Pharaohs, as the Persians did, and no Egyptian regnal years of them were used. The only way, therefore, in which a year could be described officially was by the name of Taharka. That the dates of the two invasions of Ashur- banipal are 667 and 663 b.c., is now certain. There were Egyptian campaigns in 667 and 663; of the campaigns—if any—of 662 and 661 no record is preserved; and the months immediately following the death of Taharka, which certainly took place at the end of 664, are obviously the time of the invasion of Tanutamon and the march of Ashurbanipal to Thebes, evidently the Musri-campaign of 663. The campaign of 668 was to Kirbiti: that of 669 to Musri was the one in which Esarhaddon died, on the tenth day of the tenth month. The dates 671, 674 and 675 for the preceding attacks and invasions of Esarhaddon are now equally certain from the Babylonian Chronicle. Similarly, 681 is the correct date for the death of Sennacherib, not 682, and the battle of Eltekeh took place in 700, not 701. And the last expedition of Ashurbanipal to the west, when Phoenicia was chastised, fell not in 645, as has usually been thought, but in 641 or 638.

CHAPTER XIV

THE RESTORATION OF EGYPT