ably on the accession of Shishak. They do not appear in history until the reign of Piankhee Mee-Amen, the king of the famous stele of Napata, about B.C. 750. Everything shows, however, that at this date the Ethiopian monarchy was firmly established, and had maintained by policy if not by war a hereditary claim to the rule of Egypt, while the Thebaid was actually its most northern province. Ethiopian civilization as we see it at this age is Egyptian, with some curious variations, to receive in later times a fuller development. The priest-king is more distinctly sacerdotal in his kingly character than his Theban ancestors. He is first priest, then king, whereas the Pharaoh was priest because he was king. Hence a growth of superstition and a sacerdotal exclusiveness. Hence war made in the name of Amen-Ra to conquer Egypt, his territory. In the importance the stele gives to the royal hareem there is a first indication of the place ultimately taken by the queen in Ethiopia, where we find heiresses ruling as queens regnant, not as queens consort, unlike the Egyptian usage. Here at least the influence of the subject race is apparent.

At this very time Cush first undoubtedly appears in Scripture as a great independent power. in earlier ages we read only of Cushite populations. In the tenth chapter of Genesis their settlements are given, and we see that the race extended from Chaldæa along the eastern and southern coasts of Arabia into Africa above Egypt. In later books the name Cush seems restricted to that branch of the Cushites which inhabited Ethiopia, the other Cushite settlements appearing under the names of the races or territories specified in the table of Genesis 10 as descendants of Cush. As a nation the Cushites appear in the armies of Shishak and Zerah. If Zerah were a king of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian state is mentioned during its earliest period, but the first certain notice is that of Isaiah.

The Burden of Egypt, that striking picture of the age we had reached, is preceded by a prophecy as to Ethiopia. The subjects are like, each nation is portrayed, its coming judgment is predicted, and its future turning to the true religion. But the view is strikingly

different. The lofty lines in which the Ethiopians are depicted show respect for a nation beautiful and warlike, whose piety would readily draw them on Zion, as the suppliant Ethiopia of the lxviiith Psalm, and of the later Isaiah (45: 14). Ezekiel adds another touch in describing the Ethiopians as free from care. In the two prophecies first noticed in the Psalm and in the later Isaiah, Egypt takes a lower place as an inferior people. Indeed, the Burden of Egypt speaks with contempt of the weakness, vacillation, and base superstition of the Egyptians.

Compare this with Homer. The Ethiopians stand in the extreme limits of the poet's view to the eastward, in a border-land of truth and fable beyond his knowledge of geography. They are divided two-fold. Memnon, their leader, son of the Dawn, was the most beautiful of all who came to the War of Troy. So pious are they that the gods are their constant guests, when hecatombs are sacrificed. Such are the gentle Ethiopians (duúpovas Aitorñas) with the general traits of beauty, courage in war, and piety.

To return to the state of Napata. Egypt under Shishak was an empire. Under his successors it wears the semblance of an undivided kingdom. The descendants of Shishak appear as beautifiers of the temple of Amen-Ra at Thebes, and as the heads of the state at the burial of each successive sacred bull Apis at Memphis. But the Ethiopian king's narrative shows how all this became a mere titular supremacy which at his time had fallen to pieces. It may have come about in this wise. The division of Egypt into forty-two provinces or nomes had its origin in local worship. So intensely local was that worship that it even led to little religious wars like those which Juvenal ridicules. Consequently each nome had a marked individuality of its own, and the aggregate of the nomes could only be held together by a stronghanded central government. Thus, whenever ancient Egypt fell under foreign rule, either the natural instinct of the people or the policy of the stranger, or both, tended to resolve the monarchy first into the two kingdoms of the Upper and Lower country, then into the nome principalities. Egypt was thus

reduced to petty kingdoms at the close of the Shepherd-rule, and to the nomes. both at the troubled end of the Nineteenth Dynasty and in the latter days of Shishak's foreign line.

When the Ethiopian king, Piankhee Mee-Amen, resolved on his Egyptian war, the Lower country and Middle Egypt were broken up into a number of small principalities, while the Thebaïd was a province of the Ethiopian monarchy. Of the petty rulers, four, of whom three bear names of the family of Shishak, are allowed the Egyptian royal ring, and were thus kings; the rest were independent governors. The whole number of these little principalities appears to have been twenty-one, or little less than that of the nomes of Lower and Middle Egypt. How this condition had been brought about has been already suggested. It must have been sudden, for neither the monuments of Thebes nor of Memphis show any trace of a breaking up of the state. Probably in the later days of the house of Shishak the priest-kings reconquered the Thebaïd, and the policy of the defeated dynasty, which had set up princes in various cities of Egypt at the head of mercenary troops, led to its natural result, the independence of every prince and governor strong enough to maintain himself. It is noticeable that five chief princes who are selected with the four kings for portrayal on the stele as doing homage to Piankhee are each called great chief of the Mashuasha," and other princes mentioned in the inscription are similarly qualified. This shows at once the prevalence of the system of military chieftains with mercenary garrisons, and the importance of the Libyan settlers of the tribe called Mashuasha, the fatal bequest of the wars of Ramses 111. Dr. Brugsch, indeed, believes an Assyrian supremacy to be the true explanation of the problem, but this is not proved, and the Ethiopian invasion falls either during the temporary decline of the Assyrian Empire, when the king doms of Syria and Israel presented effectual barriers to its westward extension, or in the next period occupied in overthrowing those barriers.

The immediate cause of the Ethiopian king's expedition against Egypt was the news that Tafnekht, now Prince of Saïs,

had conquered Lower and Middle Egypt. This chief, the founder of the house of the Psammetichi, which for the last time restored the Egyptian kingdom, was a national leader. All his rivals were drawn into his party by force or policy. That common action of which they had been incapable was at once theirs when Tafnekht directed their movements. The King of Ethiopia, seeing the Thebaïd in danger, dispatched an expedition which achieved a partial success; following in person he reconquered the whole of Middle and Lower Egypt, Tafnekht, when all hope of resistance failed, sending his submission from Saïs.

The long document which narrates these events is full of picturesque detail. The priestly character of Piankhee is shown in his exclusiveness and his attachment to the worship of Amen, for he admits King Nimrod alone, whom he by no means favored, into his palace, as he was clean and eat no fish, and it is as sent by Amen that he dispatches his soldiers, enjoining them to lay aside their arms and worship at Thebes. There is a touch of savagery in the king's story of the slaughter of war, as in the siege of Hermopolis Magna, yet it is relieved by his care for non-combatants and children. But the reader's sympathies are with brave Tafnekht, whose touching appeal to the conqueror tells how he had fled to the islands of the sea and been forced by an enemy to return and hide himself in sanctuary at Saïs. Sick and in rags, he satisfies his hunger and thirst with bread and water alone, he goes not to the feasting-house, and the harp is no longer played before him. All hope of his project of an independent Egypt had vanished, the last effort had been made in some voyage to secure such aid as that of the Ionians and Carians who supported Psammetichus, his successor, in the next century, and the patriotic leader swears fealty to the half-foreign Theban. He disappears from the scene, but the inheritance of his project was left to the succession of brave and politic Saïte princes, who finally achieved it, after many years of the greatest calamities Egypt ever endured.

The Ethiopian conquest_was not wholly repugnant to the Egyptians.

Piankhee was a Theban and a priest, and already the ruler of the Thebaïd. He was only heartily opposed by the patriotic Saïtes, and perhaps by those princes who thought that an Assyrian protectorate would be the best guarantee of the continued existence of their petty power. Through a space of some sixty years the Ethiopians continued to hold the Thebaïd, and from time to time to subdue the princes of the Delta. Their succession is doubtful, and it is probable that the greatest of their line, Tirhakah, under whom their power over Egypt virtually ended, was, in his earlier years, contemporary with one or more Ethiopian kings of Egypt, the Empire of Piankhee having for a time broken up. By the date of Tirhakah, the long wars had estranged the two nations, and the Ethiopian records the conquest of Egypt in the inscriptions of temples at Napata, and even at Thebes.

This was the age when Assyria and Ethiopia came into conflict, and the petty wars against small princes were changed for a mighty struggle of two races, which ended only with the political extinction of the Ethiopians, soon followed by that of the Assyrians, worn out by the ceaseless activity of their military rulers.

At this time Isaiah foretold the downfall of the Ethiopians, and, in more precise terms, the calamities coming upon Egypt. Already divided into cities and kingdoms, the Egyptians would engage in civil wars. The princes of Zoan, Tanis, the leading royal house of Shishak's line, and the princes of Noph, Napata, the Ethiopian over-kings, would equally be deceived, and the country would fall into the hands of a cruel lord, a fierce king.

In the constant growth of the Assyrian power, which had overthrown kingdom after kingdom, the sovereigns of Syria and Palestine turned a longing eye to the ambitious Ethiopians. The fall of Hoshea, the last king of Israel, in B.C. 721, was the result of an alliance with Ethiopia, but it was some years before the two rival armies met. In B.C. 714, at Raphia, on the Egyptian frontier, the Assyrian Sargon defeated Shebek, the Ethiopian, who fled away across the desert, guided by a Philistine shepherd.

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXX., No. 5

It was an unequal contest. The Assyrians were close to their basis of operations. Palestine was not many days' march from the Euphrates, and scarcely ever were they without the aid of subject-princes, terrified into this policy by the frightful punishments of those who dared to assert their independence. The Ethiopians, if defeated, had to regain Upper Egypt through the territory of the princes of Lower Egypt, desirous of freedom, and not always disposed to risk the enmity of Assyria by supporting their southern over-king. Once in the Thebaïd the Ethiopians were safe for the time, but their resources lay beyond the barren tract of Lower Ethiopia, to which their Egyptian province was a mere outpost. It is a marvel that they had the courage over and over again to renew the contest, which always ended in their failure.

When Sargon had defeated Shebek the princes of the Delta at once threw off his yoke and put themselves under the protection of Assyria. The tremendous calamity which overtook Sennacherib at the moment when Tirhakah was advancing too late to aid a vanquished confederacy, closes for a time the Assyrian expeditions to the west. Tirhakah firmly established himself in Egypt, and remained undisturbed until the reign of Esarhaddon, by whom the whole country was subdued, and the city of Thebes sacked. Twenty small tributary princes were then established, and garrisons placed in the chief fortresses (B.C. 672). Tirhakah twice reconquered Egypt; and the Assyrians, under Assur-banhabal, as often recovered the country Thebes being twice taken. On the last occasion Tirhakah, wearied by the calamities of his long reign, had retired to Ethiopia, and his successor had to meet the attack. The punishment of Thebes was final. The whole population was led away into slavery, the temples pillaged, obelisks carried as trophies to Nineveh. It is to this last and most cruel sack of Thebes, No-Amon, that the prophet Nahum probably refers when he warns Nineveh of her approaching fall, by the example of her ancient rival. Thebes fell in B.C. 666 or 665, Nineveh in B.C. 625. "Art thou better than NoAmon, who was enthroned among the Nile-streams, the waters round about

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her, whose rampart [was] the river, her wall of the river? Cush and Mizraim [were] her strength, and [it was] infinite; Put and Lubim were thy helpers. Yet [was] she carried away; she went into captivity" (Nahum 3: 8-10). NoAmon lay on either side of the Nile, here separated by two islands. With the prophet, as with the Arabs, the sea is the great river. Ethiopia, Egypt, Libyans (Mashuasha), and other mercenaries, supplied the armies of the Ethiopian king of Thebes. The final destruction of the imperial city, which never afterwards attained more than provincial power, was as complete as that which afterwards overtook her conqueror and rival. Throughout the earlier period of these wars, while Egypt was not yet invaded, and Ethiopia had only once received a check, the prophet Isaiah ceaselessly warns Judah against the Egyptian alliance. It was rather Egypt than Ethiopia to which Judah looked, desiring to form a confederacy, weak in itself, and which could not stand against the great king of the East without calling in the unwelcome support of Ethiopia.

The yoke of Assyria, now declining in power, was soon thrown off, and it is not certain that the Ethiopians ever after gained a momentary influence in the affairs of Egypt. The Saïte house, true to its leadership, overthrew the other lines, and on the ruins of what Herodotus terms the Dodecarchy arise the last great Egyptian kingdom. The activity of the Saïtes marvellously restored the prosperity of Egypt, but they were in advance of their times. The long reign of Psammetichus, the true founder of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, witnessed a great disaster. His success was due to his Greek mercenaries, and the favor he showed these strangers caused the desertion of a great part of the native army, who established themselves in furthest Ethiopia, where they were heartily welcomed by the king of the country.

Necho, the active successor of Psammetichus, for a moment restored the ancient Empire. Nineveh had fallen, and it did not appear that Babylon would fill her place in the world. The king of Egypt overran Palestine and Syria, and posted a strong force at Carchemish. Here they were disastrously routed by

Nebuchadnezzar, and the dream of empire vanished. Many years passed, during which the Saites prospered, and strengthened their kingdom by sea and land. land. In the east they were not strong enough to do more than effect small diversions and ceaselessly intrigue, as the king of Babylon was repeating with even more thoroughness the conquests of Assyria. Jeremiah, like Isaiah, denounces the Egyptian alliance, which, however sincere on the part of the two states, Egypt and Judah, was sure to leave the more eastern exposed to the vengeance of Babylon. The defeat of Carchemish is but the prelude to the conquest of Egypt. Years pass, and Jeremiah is carried by the exiles into Egypt, where he still predicts the longdelayed invasion of Nebuchadnezzar. Ezekiel, in his distant captivity on the banks of the Chebar, sees the calamity of Egypt and Ethiopia near at hand. Pharaoh, the great crocodile lying in the midst of his rivers, is to be drawn forth to perish in the desert. As Nahum warned Nineveh by the catastrophe of Thebes, so Ezekiel warns Pharaoh by the downfall of the Assyrian king, the tallest and widest spreading of the cedars of Lebanon. Nation after nation falls before the sword of the Babylonian, and Pharaoh and his host at last sleep in the pit among the multitude of the uncovenanted slain.

In these predictions the geography of the African monarchies is clearly indicated. Pathros, Upper Egypt, is markedly distinguished from Mazor or Mizraim, properly Lower Egypt. Cush and the mercenaries are spoken of, and the three capitals prominently mentioned, Zoan, No (Thebes), and Noph (Napata). Two successors of Necho, vanquished at Carchemish, had reigned, and nearly forty years had passed before the blow fell on Egypt. The slight statement of this event in ancient history is at length verified by a fragmentary cuneiform record of Nebuchadnezzar's invasions of Egypt. It is to be hoped that fuller accounts may be found to clear up this difficult portion of history. It is probable that the fall of Apries, second successor of Necho, the Pharaoh Hophra of Scripture, and the rise of Amasis, were due to the king of Babylon; for this story, as told by Herodotus, is very

improbable without the circumstance of a foreign invasion; but a second expedition seems to have been necessary to secure the submission of Amasis. (T. G. Pinches, Proceedings Soc. Bibl. Arch. 3 Dec. 1878.)

A century passed between the Assyrian conquest and the Babylonian, and in less than half a century later the Persian Cambyses made Egypt a satrapy of his Empire. With that event our survey closes.

It

A word must be added as to the state of Egypt under the Saïte monarchs. is astonishing to see the new vitality which bloomed in the century of peace. The temples were restored, the arts revived; and as if to wipe out the memory of decline, the Egyptians returned to the manners and style of the old monarchy. There was much that was artificial in this; the visitor to the tombs of this age, while he admires the delicacy and finish of their sculptures, observes that they lack the life of the more ancient works. Yet in spite of an innate 'weakness the Saïte monuments far excel those of the age which preceded them from the fall of the Empire. The decay of religion is noteworthy. It is a time when the last remains of belief are scarcely traced under the growth of superstition. Everything portends that ruin which, though arrested by the healthy vigor of the struggle with Persia, during two centuries of misery broken by occasional glimpses of freedom, yet came with the second Persian conquest, when Egypt had so lost all life that she soon welcomed the Greek conqueror of her enemy, without the slightest effort to regain her freedom.

Here, for the present, the subject may be laid aside. It may be taken up with the story of the Persian age, when the Greek historians are corrected from the Egyptian texts, the Macedonian dynasty

and its administration of Egypt, the influence of the Greek learning of Alexandria in producing a new development of Egyptian religious thought, the contact of the Greek and the Hebrew in that centre of learned activity, and the Alexandrian school of Judaism, the policy of Cleopatra and its influence on the Roman Empire. The origin of monasticism, and the Egyptian and Alexandrian parties in the Church, the history of the separation of the Copts from the Greeks, and the overthrow of both nation and rulers by the Muslim invasion, end this second period of the history of Egypt, during which Greek influence is always the central force. There yet remains the story of how from Byzantine art of Constantinople, tempered by the influence of the Persian and the Copt, and regulated by the wants of the Arab mind, there grew up on the ruins of old Egypt that fair art, rich in fancy but not lacking imagination, which, after passing through the same order and phases as Gothic, is yet maintaining a lingering existence under the coarse discouragement of Turkish rule. For the rest, before and after those six centuries in which, under Fatimees Eiyyoobees and Memlooks, Egypt once more held imperial sway, and the splendors of Cairo recalled the ancient glories of Thebes, the history of the country is but that of the Arab world. Since the Turkish conquest, indeed, all history ceased until the rise of the ruling house, which, in spite of many crimes and its vulgar contempt for the beauties of Arab life and Arab art, has brought Egypt once more into the rank of nations, and, if well advised, may yet revive her ancient strength. These are the subjects of the Greek and the Muslim periods, with which, at some future time, the thread of our story of Egypt may be taken up again.-Contemporary Review.