ARTAXERXES, rightly named LONGIMANUS, whose outstretched arm made the nations tremble from the Hellespont and Nile to the Indus. The Persian king, with more lib. iii. 15. humanity than we should have

Herodotus,

Lib. iii. 2.

looked for from the conqueror, employed Thannyras and Pausiris, the sons, to govern as satraps those provinces which their fathers had lately held as rebels; Thannyras, the son of Inarus, governed that part to the west of the Nile called Libya (see Fig. 197); and Pausiris, the son of Amyrtæus, governed the rest of Egypt; Fig. 197. while the Egyptians consoled their wounded vanity in living under a race of foreign kings by inventing a story that Cyrus had married a daughter of their king Hophra, and that Cambyses and his successors had therefore gained the kingdom not by conquest but by inheritance. These two native satraps were appointed to the government of Egypt, a few years after Judæa had in the same way been placed by the Persians under the rule of Ezra as high priest; and Mered, the son of Ezra, would 1 Chron. iv. seem to have mar- 17, 18. ried a sister of one or other of these Egyptian satraps. (33) The Persian sunworship was at this time not unknown in Egypt.

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On a wall in the Burton's Excerpt. vi. city of Alabastron we see carved what we must understand to be Thannyras, the governor of the province, worshipping the sun, not the Egyptian statue of Ra, but the sun itself, which is there called Adon-Ra, from the Hebrew title Adonai (see Every ray of sunshine cnds with a hand, to denote its active power over the world, and thus explains to

Fig. 198.

Fig. 198).

us why the King Artaxerxes was himself called Longimanus. His trembling subjects thought that his power was felt in almost every land on which the sun shone. The worshipper is styled within the ovals of his name (Fig. 197) Pharaoh Thaomra, his name, successor of Adonra; a name which seems meant for Thannyras, the son of Inarus. The bad style of the sculpture agrees with the fallen state of the nation. The false anatomy and want of simplicity in the human figure are what we look for when the people have lost their dignity of character. The shape of the head given to Thaomra, when in the form of a sphinx, is not that of the Theban kings, but that of the labouring class, with low forehead and forward mouth (see Fig. 199). Like the kings of Sais, he has no beard.

Fig. 199.

The artist at the same time lost his good taste and love of simplicity. In one case we see that the figure of the sun, under which the Theban king Oimenepthah I. is worshipping Amun-Ra, has had added to it a number of rays of sunshine, each ending in a hand; and this addition we may suppose was made in the reign of Artaxerxes (see Fig. 200). That the Egyptians did not refuse to copy the Persians is also seen in another name of their great god AmunHartwell Ra. Many eastern nations are unable to sound the letter M; in its place they use a B. On a mummy British from Memphis and on the sarcophagus of Amyrtæus we find the name of the god written Oben-Ra. This is moreover the very spelling used on a plate of ivory found among the ruins of Nineveh to which distant city

Museum.

Museum.

the Egyptian style of art had made its way two centuries earlier.

(34) On the death of Artaxerxes Longimanus, his son, XERXES II., governed Persia and its provinces for two months;

Fig. 200.

Chronogr.

and then SOGDIANUS reigned for seven months. Sogdianus was put to death by his brother DARIUS NOTHUS, Ctesias, ap. in whose favour Arxanes, satrap of Egypt, rebelled; Photium. not, however, to make the Egyptians independent, B.C. 423, but only to make use of them in choosing a master for the Persian empire. The meddling tyranny of the satraps under Darius was very galling to the Egyptians, and kept alive the feelings of hatred which separated the Syncelli conquered from the conquerors. Ostanes the Mede undertook to regulate the Egyptian worship and instruction in the chief temple of Memphis; and thus the god Pthah, who was their god of fire, was to be worshipped after the fashion of the Persian fire-worshippers. The foreigners whom Ostanes employed in this attack upon the religion of Egypt were Pammenes, and Maria, a learned Jewess who had written on chemistry, and Democritus of Abdera, the physician and philosopher, who had been educated by Laertius. Persians and had embraced the Persian religion. Democritus, with his love of Eastern philosophy, had a great

VOL. I.

Diogenes

Diod. Sic.

respect for Egyptian studies; and though his chief pursuit in Egypt was natural science, yet he gained some knowledge of hieroglyphics, and wrote a work on the sacred lib. i. 98. writings of Meroë, as Upper Egypt was then named. Democritus lived in intimacy with the Egyptian priests during his five years' residence among them, and they considered him one of their best pupils in their favourite study of astrology. The priests never willingly wrote the names of these Persian kings on their monuments; and they

pl. 13.

thus lost the power of dating by means of the reign. Egypt. Inscrip. On an inscription dated only "in the year ten," the want of a king's name, as well as the style of art, will almost prove that it was made under one of the Persian conquerors.

B.C. 404.

Anabasis.

(35) During these years Egypt remained quiet under the weight of its heavy chains, but at the end of Darius's reign of nineteen years ARTAXERXES MNEMON came to the throne of Persia, when, fortunately for the Egyptians, his title was not undisputed. His Xenophon, brother Cyrus, who dwelt at Sardis, as satrap of Lydia, and held chief sway in Asia Minor, also claimed the kingdom; and hiring a large body of Greek mercenaries, he marched towards Babylon to assert his rights. Cyrus was defeated, and the ten thousand Greeks commanded by Xenophon made good the retreat which is immortalised by that historian. But though Artaxerxes thus kept his throne, the civil war had weakened his power; and the Egyptians, taking advantage of his trouble,

B.C. 401.

B.C. 400.

threw off the yoke which they had groaned under Diod. Sic. for fifty-five years since the deaths of Inarus and lib. xiv. 35. Amyrtæus. An Egyptian, a native of Mendes, descended from the ancient race of kings, and bearing the names of Psammetichus and Nepherites, headed the rebellion, and seated himself on the throne of his ancestors. That all Egypt obeyed him we learn by finding near the cataracts at the southern frontier, a dedicaH. Horeau, tion in his name to Mandoo, the god of the city belonging to his family. He was saved from the power of Persia by the wars which arose among the satraps of the great king. Tissaphernes, who was the most powerful, and now satrap of Lydia, as successor to Cyrus, was loyal to

Panorama.

www

Tamos, the

lib. xiv. 79.

Artaxerxes, and therefore hostile to Egypt. governor of Ionia, another of these satraps, who was in danger of punishment because he had joined the cause of Cyrus, put his younger children and his wealth on board the Persian flect, and rashly sailed to the Egyptian king as to a friend, from the forces of Tissaphernes. But the avarice and ambition of the Egyptian were greater than his sense of friendship or justice; he thought Tamos could be of no further use to him, so he strangled his friend and the children, and seized the money and ships for his own use. (36) NEPHERITES (see Fig. 201) is known to us only by the share which he bore in the war between the Spartans and the Persians. He sent, as his Diod. Sic. supplies, to help the former against the common enemy, one hundred triremes and five hundred thousand measures of wheat. This wheat, however, was lost; for the Egyptian transports carried it Fig. 201. into the harbour of Rhodes, without knowing that the Rhodians had surrendered to Artaxerxes; and it Manetho. was seized by Conon, the admiral of the Persian fleet. Nepherites of Mendes reigned six years, and though none then within the military age could remember their country's former freedom, though none but the aged could recollect the days of Inarus and Amyrtæus, yet he established his power on so firm a base, that Egypt remained independent under his successors for fifty-four years longer.

(37) ACHORIS (see Fig. 202), who succeeded Nepherites, found his kingdom sheltered from B.C. 394. the Persians by a new ally, who

Fig. 202.

stood between him and the threatened danger. Evagoras of Salamis, copying the example of the Egyptians, had risen against the Persians, and driven them out of Cyprus and made himself king of that island. The forces of Artaxerxes had therefore to be first turned against Cyprus. To the support of the brave Evagoras the Tyrians sent their fleet, the neigh-b bouring Arabs sent soldiers, and Achoris, in the tenth year of his reign, sent a large supply of corn and money, together with fifty ships of war. Evagoras, however, was beaten by the larger forces of the Persians, under tho

Diod. Sic.