command of Gaius, the son of Tamos, and lost several cities; and, leaving his son in command of the rest, he sailed for Egypt to consult with Achoris about the means of carrying on the war, and to beg for further help. Evagoras spent several months in Egypt, but was not able to obtain from Achoris such large supplies as he wished for. The next year, however, Gaius, the commander of the Persian fleet, deserted from Artaxerxes; and though his father Tamos had been basely murdered by Nepherites on a former desertion, yet his fear and hatred of Artaxerxes made him take the same steps, and seek the alliance of Achoris. Thus during a reign of thirteen years Achoris was able to keep the war at a distance, and in some measure to cultivate the arts of peace Wilkinson, at home. Some additions were then made to the temple of Medinet Abou, on which his name is met with in the hieroglyphical inscriptions. His name is also found on the temple at Karnak.

Thebes.

Manetho.

B.C. 382.

Fig. 203.

(38) After his death PSAMMUTHIS (see Fig. 203) reigned one year, NEPHERITES II. four months, and MUTHIS one year; all called of the dynasty of Mendes, on the east side of the Delta, either from making Mendes their capital, or from being descended from the race of priests of that city. (39) After these short reigns NECTANEBO I. R.C. 380. (see Fig. 204) of the city of Sebennytus gained Diod. Sic. the sovereign power; and in his reign the Persians lib. xv. 41. again moved their forces to reduce the rebellious Egyptians to obedience. Artaxerxes Mnemon gave the command of the Persians to Pharnabazus, and that of the twenty thousand Greek mercenaries to Iphicrates of Athens; and when the troops were assembled at Acca they amounted to upwards of two hundred thousand men, and five hundred ships of war of all sizes, beside the transports. But the slow movements of the Persians left their enemies full time to prepare for defence. Nectanebo strengthened the fortresses by which the mouths of the Nile were guarded; he stopped up some channels by banks of earth and others by his ships, and drew trenches from the Lake of Menzaleh towards the Bitter Lakes,

Fig. 204.

across the roads near Pelusium, by which Egypt could be entered by land. In short, he made the river impassable by mounds and the land by ditches, and when the Persian fleet arrived at Pelusium they found the place too strong for an attack; they could neither enter the river nor land the troops. Pharnabazus therefore withdrew his ships into deep water and sailed for the Mendesian mouth, in hopes of finding it less guarded.

(40) When the Persians again entered the Nile near Mendes, they found the coast, as they had expected, badly guarded; for Nectanebo had taken the greater part of his forces to Pelusium. Pharnabazus and Iphicrates landed a body of three thousand men, who routed an equal number of Egyptians, and then gained the fortress that guarded that mouth of the river. By this victory the Nile was opened to the fleet, and Egypt might have been again conquered; but it was saved by the quarrels between the Persian and Greek commanders. Iphicrates proposed that they should at once sail up the river, and boldly seize Memphis, which they heard was left with only half a garrison; but Pharnabazus would not move because the rest of the Persian forces had not arrived. Iphicrates then offered to sail up the Nile to Memphis with only the small body of well-disciplined Greeks which were with them at Mendes. But this proposal was still less agreeable to Pharnabazus; he feared that when Iphicrates and the Greeks had gained Memphis they might hold it on their own account, instead of giving it up to himself or another satrap of Artaxerxes. In this way was much valuable time wasted. In the meanwhile Nectanebo at Pelusium learned where the Persians had made good their landing; and accordingly he sent one body of troops to guard Memphis, while he gathered the rest of his army round Mendes. He there harassed the Persians in numerous skirmishes, and after a time routed them with great slaughter in the open field. In this way the spring was spent, the midsummer winds arose, the Nile began to overflow its banks, and the Persians had no choice but to leave a country where the husbandman was sailing over his fields in a boat.

(41) After this defeat of the Persians, Nectanebo was left in peace during the rest of his reign of eighteen years.

Under his government some few buildings were carried on in Egypt; his name is carved on the repairs or Wilkinson, additions to the temples of Thebes; and we find Thebes. him effacing in one place the name of the Ethiopian Tirhakah to make way for his own. He also dedicated a small temple to the goddess Athor, at Philæ, on the borders of Ethiopia. Nectanebo also added to the sculptures on the small temple of polished basalt, which was brought to Sais by Amasis, partly sculptured by Amyrtæus, and which remained unfinished when Herodotus saw it.

Laertius,

Strabo,

Plutarch.

(42) The peace with Persia left the country again open to Greek travellers. It was in this reign visited by Eudoxus, the astronomer, Chrysippus, the physician, and Plato, the still more famous Athenian philosopher. During the former war between Persia and Egypt, the Spartans had fought on the side of Artaxerxes, and the Athenians helped Inarus; but in this last invasion the Greek states had Diogenes changed sides; and so, when these travellers from lib. viii. 90. Athens came into Egypt, they found it necessary to lib. xvii. bring with them friendly letters from Agesilaus king of Sparta to Nectanebo and the priests. Plato in Solone. brought with him a cargo of olive oil, instead of money, to pay the expense of his journey. We can have no greater proof of the esteem in which the Egyptian schools were held than that these men, each at the head of his own branch of science, should have come to Egypt to finish their studies. Here Eudoxus, the earliest systematic astronomer among the Greeks, spent sixteen months, studying under the priests, and like them shaving his chin and Diogenes eyebrows; and he may have learned from his tutor Laertius, Ichonuphys, who was then lecturing at Heliopolis, viii. 90. the true length of the year and month, upon which he formed his octaëterid, a period of eight years or ninetynine months. At Memphis, Eudoxus consulted the bull Apis as to his fortune; and the god in reply licked his cloak. This the priests in waiting told him meant that he would soon die. In Egypt Chrysippus may have learnt anatomy by the dissection of the human body, which the prejudices of the Greeks forbade him to study at home. Plato had been attending as a pupil on Socrates, and listening to his conversation on the immortality of the soul; but from tho

priests of Heliopolis, which was as much a Jewish as an Egyptian city, where Moses planned the liberation of his countrymen, and near to where Jeremiah wrote his Lamentations for their downfall, we must believe that the Athenian philosopher gained new views of a future state of rewards and punishment. In Plato's writings we see Greek philosophy in its best form, united with some of the truths of the Old Testament, but not without many traces of Egyptian mysticism, and also with an Egyptian disregard for the marriage tie, which is very unworthy of a pupil of Socrates. Had Plato's philosophy died with himself, it would claim but little notice here; it is the writings of his successors that make us note its rise as important in the history of Egypt. Each future century we find Platonism becoming more mystical, or, if we may say so, more Egyptian and less Greek; we trace its changes through the writings of Jesus the son of Sirach, of Philo-Judæus, of the author of the book of Wisdom, and through the Christian writings of Athenagoras and Clemens, all of whom wrote in Egypt; and again when paganism made its last stand against Christianity it was in the schools of the Alexandrian Platonists. Plato praises the Egyptian manufacturing industry De Republ. as a chief peculiarity in their character; and while describing the Athenians as lovers of learning, he classes the Egyptians with the Phenicians as skilful in trade. But he speaks of them as curiously afraid of all novelty. The music never varied, and the priests when De Legibus, joining in the lamentations with the goddess Isis every year sang the same poem. Either by law, or by custom which is stronger than law, the painters and sculptors were forbidden to make any change in their figures; the works of art which were then being made he thought neither more beautiful, nor, as he adds, more ugly, than those which were called ten thousand years old. And by these works of the sculptors we may judge of the mind and habits of the rest of the people. They were imprisoned within the scheme of education by which they had been trained. There was a perfect union between the civil and the priestly powers, which as soon as the country was united under one sceptre made the government doubly despotic. The ruling class guided the thoughts and educated the minds of the nation;

ii.

Diogenes

and thus the very learning which had so early raised the Egyptians above their neighbours was now chiefly employed to repress novelty and check improvement. The Laertius, poet Euripides is supposed to have accompanied lib. iii. 6. Plato on this journey. this journey. He fell ill while in Egypt, but was cured by the priests, chiefly by the help of sea-water.

(43) Changes, however, were slowly creeping into the Egyptian opinions from the foreigners in the Delta; and one of the most interesting related to the important doctrine of life hereafter. The Egyptians had considered the resurrection of the body as the means necessary to life after death. Accordingly they embalmed it with care; and their paintings show us the spirit or soul, in form of a bird, again returning to the mummy and putting life and breath into its mouth, while the god. Anubis is preparing to unwrap the bandages (see Fig. 205). Without the body no future life could be

Fig. 205.

enjoyed. But we may suppose that in Heliopolis, as afterwards in Alexandria, a more spiritual opinion was held, and the immortality of the soul and a future life were believed in even without a resurrection of the body. Some were of opinion that when the earthly body fell to the ground, an angelic or spiritual body at once rose up to heaven without waiting for a day of resurrection. The painter, distinguishing