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The Ethiopians, though owners of the Nubian goll mines, bought off all foreign tyranny by sending to Persia every third year the trifling gift of four pints of gold dust, two hundred logs of ebony, five negro slaves, and twenty large tusks of ivory.

Burton's

pl. 3, 5. B.C. 492.

Herodotus,

10.

(16) The melek Nephra was succeeded in his government by MANDOTHPH (see Fig. 187); and Excerpta, thus in this long reign Egypt had a third generation of native meleks. But goodness of government will not easily reconcile a great nation to the loss of its independence; and in proportion as the foreign chain is less felt it seems as Fig. 187. if it might be the more easily thrown off. The great defeat of the Persians by the Greeks, which had lib. vii. 1. lately taken place at Marathon, had done much B.C. 490. to shake their power in Egypt, both by withdrawing all the Greek mercenaries from their service, and by teaching the world that even the Great King might be conquered by courage. During three years Persia and all its provinces were kept in a bustle by the levies of men, and by the supplies of ships, horses, and grain, which were being got together for a new attack upon Greece; and in the fourth year, as these forces were gradually drawn towards the Hellespont, the Egyptians raised the standard of revolt. The young Mandothph, who had already as satrap governed the country for five years, declared himself king of Upper and Lower Egypt, with all the usual titles, and succeeded in making himself master of the kingdom.

B.C. 487.

(17) We see upon the statues and monuments of King Amunothph III. many cases in which the first half of his name, and also the first half of his god's name, Amun-Ra, have been cut out to leave room for other letters to be carved in their place. It seems probable that this was done at this time in order to make the one name into Mandothph and the other into Mando-Ra. It is true, indeed, that the removal of the word Amun out of the god's name is to be seen on some monuments of an earlier date, and on none of a later date than Amunothph, and this has led to a belief that it was done by one of his immediate successors. But we know of no change, but that here conjectured, which could have required the

removal of the three letters, A M N, neither more nor less, out of the two names, and of no earlier king that could have wished for it. Moreover the British Museum furnishes us with one monument in which both the name and figure of the hawk-headed Mando-Ra (see Fig. 188) have been clearly made to take the place of Amun-Ra, while the bad style of workmanship proves the late date of the usurpation.

(18) Egypt was now again independent, and its sacred soil no longer trod by the enemy; but its independence did not last long. The difference between being governed by Mandothph the Persian satrap and Mandothph the sovereign of Egypt did not rouse the Egyptians in his support. He was saved for one year by the death of Darius, and for another, perhaps, by XERXES hardly feeling himself safe on the Persian throne; but in the second year of the reign of Xerxes (see Fig. 189), Mandothph was easily conquered, and the country again reduced to a Persian province. We know little of the three years of Mandothph's reign; the Burton's historians who speak of the rebellion do not Excerpta, pl. 3, 5. even mention his name, and it is only

Fig. 188.

known to us on two or three hieroglyphical inscriptions. One tells us that he was Persian satrap of Fig. 189. the country in the thirtieth year of the reign of Darius. Another is dated in the second year of his own reign. A third inscription is near the island H. Horeau, of Philæ, and is a dedication to Mandoo, the sun, the god of Mendes, in Lower Egypt, of which city Mandothph was probably a native, and from whose god he took his

name.

Panorama.

B.C. 484.

(19) On this second conquest the Egyptians no longer found themselves under the mild government of a native melek; Xerxes appointed his brother Achæ- Herodotus, menes to the office of satrap, and he ruled them with all the severity that the late rebellion seemed to call for.

VOL. I.

lib. vii. 7.

Р

To make the country more helpless, the Egyptian troops were drafted into the Per

Herodotus,

lib. viii. 17. sian armies, and even made Lib. ix. 32. to fight on board the fleet. Xenophon, In the naval battle of Anab. i. 8, 9. Artemisium the Egyptian Hermotybies and Calasiries distinguished themselves by their courage, and in the great battle of Platea they held a post of honour. One heavy-armed body of Egyptians in the Persian service was remarkable for their large shields, which reached down to the feet (see Fig. 190).

B.C. 460.

Photium.

lib. i.

Fig. 190.

(20) The latter years of the reign of Xerxes, and the beginning of that of Artaxerxes, his successor (see Fig. 191), are wholly without events in Egyptian Ctesias, ap. history, till, in the fifth of the latter, after six-and-twenty years of slavery, on the rebellion of Bactria against the Persians, when their forces were called in another direction, the Egyptians made a second struggle for freedom. Thucydides, INARUS, the son of Psammetichus, who had Fig. 191. been reigning in the city of Maræa, not far from where Alexandria was afterwards built, raised the Libyans in rebellion against the Persians; and in a short time the greater part of Egypt joined him. His name is written in the hieroglyphics Adon-ra-bakan, meaning, The servant of AdonRa (see Fig. 192). The Persians had few troops in the province except their garrisons, and the whole of the open country declared for Inarus. The prefect Achæmenes lib iii. 12. got together what forces he could;

Herodotus,

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Fig. 192.

and the two little armies met in battle near the city of Papremis, in the nome of Prosopites, near the head of the Delta. Here the Egyptians were conquerors; the righteousness of the cause Thucydides, added strength to their charge, and their tyrants were routed and put to flight. But while the two fortresses Memphis and Pelusium were held by the

lib. i.

Scholiast.

Vesp. 716.

Persians, the Egyptians had by no means gained their freedom; and such was the low state of warlike skill in the country, that no number of Egyptians could dislodge the Persian garrisons. Inarus therefore sought an alliance with the Athenians, who, after a long struggle with the naval forces of the island of Ægina, were at length masters of the sea, and had at that time at Cyprus a force of two hundred ships. The payment sent to Athens by in Aristoph. Inarus, or Psammetichus, as the Athenians called him, was about seventy-two thousand bushels of wheat. The price of the Athenian friendship was five bushels for each citizen, but the payment hoped for by the Athenian fleet was the wealth of Egypt and the spoil of the Persians. Of course the force on its arrival was to be maintained by the Egyptians. The Athenians accordingly ordered part of their fleet to sail from Cyprus in order to help Inarus; to leave the more valuable conquest of Cyprus for the hope of present gain; and these allies entering the Nile with forty galleys, Photium, where the Persians had fifty, took twenty and destroyed the remainder, and made themselves masters of the river. They then sailed up the Nile towards Memphis, and again beat the Persians, and gained Thucydides, possession of two-thirds of that city. The Medes and Persians, with those of the Egyptians who had not revolted, withdrew into the other third of the city, called the White Wall, where the Greeks attacked them and kept them closely blockaded; and such was the unhappy state of Egyptian weakness that, while the whole of the Delta remained in the power of Inarus and the Athenian adventurers, the Persians were able to hold part of Memphis. Upper Egypt is not mentioned by the historian; it could add little strength to either party, but no doubt it sided with Inarus.

Ctesias, ap.

lib. i.

(21) While the Athenians thus held Egypt for Inarus, Artaxerxes sent to Lacedæmon to try to bribe the Peloponnesians to attack Attica, and thereby get the Athenian fleet recalled. But not succeeding in this, he sent a large army by land, under the command of Megabazus, who had no difficulty in defeating the Egyptians. Megabazus drove the Athenians out of Memphis; and, on their retreating, he blockaded them in the island of Prosopites, between two streams of the Nile. The nomes or districts within the Delta

are all islands. That of Prosopites, which is about twenty miles below Memphis, is twenty-seven miles long by fifteen broad. On three sides it is bounded by the deepest channels of the river; on one only is the river so shallow as to be easily forded. There the Athenians, after having lost their ships, held out for a year and a half more, till the Persians turned the river into another channel, and carried the place by storm. Inarus was betrayed and put to death by crucifixion; most of the Athenians perished; and the remaining few, crossing the desert, escaped to Cyrene, after having been masters of a large part of Egypt for six years. Fifty Athenian triremes, that shortly afterwards entered the Mendesian mouth of the Nile in ignorance of what had happened, were attacked by land and blockaded B.C. 454. by the Phenician vessels in the service of the Persians, and most of them were taken or destroyed. (22) But even then all Egypt did not submit to the Persians. AMYRTEUS (see Fig. 193), who had been fighting on the side of Inarus, still held out in some of the islands of the Delta, protected by the extent of the marsh land and by the more warlike character of the people. He sent to Athens for help, as Inarus had before done; and Cimon, who was at the head of the Athenian forces in Cyprus, sent him sixty ships; but they returned without being of much use to him, on hearing of the death of Cimon. But here unfortunately our history fails us. Amyrtæus reigned for six years. But whether he afterwards came out of the marshes and defeated the Persians, or whether, as is more probable, he had already been reigning in Egypt for the six years in which Inarus governed the Libyans to the west of the Delta, is doubtful. We now find, however, numerous hieroglyphical inscriptions all over Egypt bearing his name, from which it seems that he made additions to the great temple at Karnak, and repaired some of the ruin wrought by Cambyses, and also added to the temple of Amun in the Great Oasis. For Amyrtæus, Egypt. Inscript. also, was carved a beautiful sarcophagus, now in the pl. 28. British Museum, covered inside and out with hieroglyphics, from which it seems probable that he reigned many

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Fig. 193.

Manetho.

Wilkinson,
Thebes.

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