country offers no strong positions, that are strategically more
defensible than others. The whole Delta is one alluvial flat, with no
elevation that has not been raised by man. The valley of the Nile is so
wide as to furnish everywhere an ample plain, wherein the largest armies
may contend without having their movements cramped or hindered. An army
that takes to the hills on either side of the valley is not worth
following: it is self-destroyed, since it can find no sustenance and no
water. Thus the sole question, when a foreign host invades Egypt, is
this: Can it, or can it not, defeat the full force of Egypt in an open
battle? If it gains one battle, there is no reason why it should not
gain fifty; and this is so evident, and so well known, that on Egyptian
soil one defeat has almost always been accepted as decisive of the
military supremacy. A beaten army may, of course, protract its
resistance behind walls, and honour, fame, patriotism, may seem
sometimes to require such a line of conduct; but, unless there is a
reasonable expectation of relief arriving from without, protracted
resistance is useless, and, from a military point of view, indefensible.
Defeated commanders have not, however, always seen this, or, seeing it,
they have allowed prudence to be overpowered by other considerations.
Psamatik, like many another ruler of Egypt, though defeated in the
field, determined to defend his capital to the best of his power. He
threw himself, with the remnant of his beaten army, into Memphis, and
there stood at bay, awaiting the further attack of his adversary.
It was not long before the Persian army drew up under the walls, and
invested the city by land, while the fleet blockaded the river. A single
Greek vessel, having received orders to summon the defenders of the
place to surrender it, had the boldness to enter the town, whereupon it
was set upon by the Egyptians, captured, and destroyed. Contrarily to
the law of nations, which protects ambassadors and their escort, the
crew was torn limb from limb, and an outrage thus committed which
Cambyses was justified in punishing with extreme severity. Upon the fall
of the city, which followed soon after its investment, the offended
monarch avenged the crime which had been committed by publicly executing
two thousand of the principal citizens, including (it is said) a son of
the fallen king. The king himself was at first spared, and might perhaps
have been allowed to rule Egypt as a tributary monarch, had he not been
detected in a design to rebel and renew the war. For this offence he,
too, was condemned to death, and executed by Cambyses' order.
The defeat had been foretold by the prophet Ezekiel, who had said:--
"Woe worth the day! For the day is near,
Even the day of the Lord is near, a day of clouds;
It shall be the time of the heathen.
And a sword shall come upon Egypt, and anguish shall be in Ethiopia;
When the slain shall fall in Egypt;
and they shall take away her multitude,
And her foundations shall be broken down.
Ethiopia and Phut and Lud, and all the mingled people, and Chub,
And the children of the land that is in league,
shall fall with them by the sword....
I will put a fear in the land of Egypt.
And I will make Pathros desolate,
And will set a fire in Zoan, and will execute judgments in No....
Sin [Pelusium] shall be in great anguish,
And No shall be broken up,
and Noph shall have adversaries in the daytime.
The young men of Aven and of Pi-beseth shall fall by the sword:
And these cities shall go into captivity.
At Tehaphnehes also the day shall withdraw itself,
When I shall break there the yokes of Egypt;
And the pride of her power shall cease."[31]
According to Herodotus, Cambyses was not content with the
above-mentioned severities, which were perhaps justifiable under the
circumstances, but proceeded further to exercise his rights as conqueror
in a most violent and tyrannical way. He tore from its tomb the mummy of
the late king, Amasis, and subjected it to the grossest indignities. He
stabbed in the thigh an Apis-Bull, recently inaugurated at the capital
with joyful ceremonies, suspecting that the occasion was feigned, and
that the rejoicings were really over the ill-success of expeditions
carried out by his orders against the oasis of Ammon, and against
Ethiopia. He exhumed numerous mummies for the mere purpose of examining
them. He entered the grand temple of Phthah at Memphis, and made sport
of the image. He burnt the statues of the Cabeiri, which he found in
another temple. He scourged the priests of Apis, and massacred in the
streets those Egyptians who were keeping the festival. Altogether, his
object was, if the informants of Herodotus are to be believed, to pour
contempt and contumely on the Egyptian religion, and to insult the
religious feelings of the entire people.
On the other hand, we learn from a contemporary inscription, that
Cambyses so far conformed to Egyptian usages as to take a "throne-name,"
after the pattern of the ancient Pharaohs; that he cleared the temple of
Neith at Saïs of the foreigners who had taken possession of it; that he
entrusted the care of the temple to an Egyptian officer of high
standing; and that he was actually himself initiated into the mysteries
of the goddess. Perhaps we ought not to be greatly surprised at these
contradictions. Cambyses had the iconoclastic spirit strong in him, and,
under excitement, took a pleasure in showing his abhorrence of Egyptian
superstitions. But he was not always under excitement--he enjoyed lucid
intervals, during which he was actuated by the spirit of an
administrator and a statesman. Having in many ways greatly exasperated
the Egyptians against his rule, he thought it prudent, ere he quitted
the country, to soothe the feelings which he had so deeply wounded, and
conciliate the priest-class, to which he had given such dire offence.
Hence his politic concessions to public feeling at Saïs, his Initiation
into the mysteries of Neith, his assumption of a throne-name, and his
restoration of the temple of Saïs to religious uses. And the policy of
conciliation, which he thus inaugurated, was continued by his successor,
Darius. Darius built, or repaired, the temple of Ammon, in the oasis of
El Khargeh, and made many acknowledgments of the deities of Egypt; when
an Apis-Bull died early in his reign, he offered a reward of a hundred
talents for the discovery of a new Apis; and he proposed to adorn the
temple of Ammon at Thebes with a new obelisk. At the same time, in his
administration he carefully considered the interests of Egypt, which he
entrusted to a certain Aryandes as satrap; he re-opened the canal
between the Nile and the Red Sea, for the encouragement of Egyptian
commerce; he kept up the numbers of the Egyptian fleet; in his
arrangement of the satrapies, he placed no greater burthen on Egypt than
it was well able to bear; and he seems to have honoured Egypt by his
occasional presence. He failed, however, to allay the discontent, and
even hatred, which the outrages of Cambyses had aroused; they still
remained indelibly impressed on the Egyptian mind; the Persian rule was
detested; and in sullen dissatisfaction the entire nation awaited an
opportunity of reclaiming its independence and flinging off the accursed
yoke.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] Ezekiel xxx. 3-18.
XXV.
THREE DESPERATE REVOLTS.
The first revolt of the Egyptians against their conquerors, appears to
have been provoked by the news of the battle of Marathon. Egypt heard,
in B.C. 490, that the arms of the oppressor, as she ever determined to
consider Darius, had met with a reverse in European Greece, where
200,000 Medes and Persians had been completely defeated by 20,000
Athenians and Platæns. Darius, it was understood, had taken greatly to
heart this reverse, and was bent on avenging it. The strength of the
Persian Empire was about to be employed towards the West, and an
excellent opportunity seemed to have arisen for a defection on the
South. Accordingly Egypt, after making secret preparations for three
years, in B.C. 487 broke out in open revolt. She probably overpowered
and massacred the Persian garrison in Memphis, which is said to have
numbered 120,000 men, and, proclaiming herself independent, set up a
native sovereign.
The Egyptian monuments suggest that this monarch bore the
foreign-sounding name of Khabash. He fortified the coast of Egypt
against attempts which might be made upon it by the Persian fleet, and
doubtless prepared himself also to resist an invasion by land. But he
was quite unable to do anything effectual. Though Darius died in the
year after the revolt, B.C. 486, yet its suppression was immediately
undertaken by his son and successor, Xerxes, who invaded Egypt in the
next year, easily crushed all resistance, and placed the province under
a severer rule than any that it had previously experienced. Achæmenes,
his brother, was made satrap.
Twenty-five years of tranquillity followed, during which the Egyptians
were submissive subjects of the Persian crown, and even showed
remarkable courage and skill in the Persian military expeditions. Egypt
furnished as many as two hundred triremes to the fleet which was brought
against Greece by Xerxes, and the squadron particularly distinguished
itself in the sea-fights off Artemisium, where they actually captured
five Grecian vessels with their crews. Mardonius, moreover, set so high
a value on the marines who fought on board the Egyptian ships, that he
retained them as land-troops when the Persian fleet returned to Asia
after Salamis.
No further defection took place during the reign of Xerxes; but in B.C.
460, after the throne had been occupied for about five years by Xerxes'
son, Artaxerxes, a second rebellion broke out, which led to a long and
terrible struggle. A certain Inarus, who bore rule over some of the
African tribes on the western border of Egypt, and who may have been a
descendant of the Psamatiks, headed the insurrection, and in conjunction
with an Egyptian, named Amyrtæus, suddenly attacked the Persian garrison
stationed in Egypt, the ordinary strength of which was 120,000 men. A
great battle was fought at Papremis, in the Delta, wherein the Persians
were completely defeated, and their leader, Achæmenes, perished by the
hand of Inarus himself. Memphis, however, the capital, still resisted,
and the struggle thus remained doubtful. Inarus and Amyrtæus implored
the assistance of Athens, which had the most powerful navy of the time,
and could lend most important aid by taking possession of the river.
Athens, which was under the influence of the farsighted Pericles,
cheerfully responded to the call, and sent two hundred triremes, manned
by at least forty thousand men, to assist the rebels, and to do as much
injury as possible to the Persians. On sailing up the Nile, the Athenian
fleet found a Persian squadron already moored in the Nile waters, but it
swept this obstacle from its path without any difficulty. Memphis was
then blockaded both by land and water; the city was taken, and only the
citadel. Leucon-Teichos, or "the White Fortress," held out. A formal
siege of the citadel was commenced, and the allies lay before it for
months, but without result. Meanwhile, Artaxerxes was not idle. Having
collected an army of 300,000 men, he gave the command of it to
Megabyzus, one of his best generals, and sent him to Egypt against the
rebels. Megabyzus marched upon Memphis, defeated the Egyptians and their
allies in a great battle under the walls of the town, relieved the
Persian garrison which held the citadel, and recovered possession of the
place. The Athenians retreated to the tract called Prosopitis, a sort of
island in the Delta, surrounded by two of the branch streams of the
Nile, which they held with their ships. Here Megabyzus besieged them
without success for eighteen months; but at last he bethought himself of
a stratagem like that whereby Cyrus is said to have captured Babylon,
and adapted it to his purpose. Having blocked the course of one of the
branch streams, and diverted its waters into a new channel, he laid bare
the river-bed, captured the triremes that were stuck fast in the soft
ooze, marched his men into the island, and overwhelmed the unhappy
Greeks by sheer force of numbers. A few only escaped, and made their way
to Cyrene. The entire fleet of two hundred vessels fell into the hands
of the conqueror; and fifty others, sent as a reinforcement, having soon
afterwards entered the river, were attacked unawares and defeated, with
the loss of more than half their number. Inarus, the Libyan monarch,
became a fugitive, but was betrayed by some of his followers,
surrendered, and crucified. Amyrtæus, who had been recognized as king of
Egypt during the six years that the struggle lasted, took refuge in the
Nile marshes, where he dragged out a miserable existence for another
term of six years. The Egyptians offered no further resistance; and
Egypt became once more a Persian satrapy (B.C. 455).
It was at about this time that Herodotus, the earliest Greek historian,
the Father of History, as he has been called, visited Egypt in pursuance
of his plan of gathering information for his great work. He was a young
man, probably not far from thirty years of age (for he was born between
the dates of the battles of Marathon and Thermopylæ). He travelled
through the land as far as Elephantine, viewing with his observant eyes
the wonders with which the "Story of Egypt" has been so much occupied;
and he described them with the enthusiasm that we have occasionally
noted. He saw the battle-field on which Inarus had just been
defeated--the ground strewn with the skulls and other bones of the
slain; he made his longest stay at Memphis, then at the acme of its
greatness; he visited the quarries on the east of the Nile whence the
stone had been dug for the pyramids, and he gazed upon the great
monuments themselves, on the opposite side of the stream. We have seen
that he visited Lake Mœris, and examined the famous Labyrinth, which he
thought even more wonderful than the pyramids themselves. Finally, he
sailed away for Tyre, and Egypt was again closed to travellers from
Greece.
A second period of tranquillity followed, which covered the space of
about half a century. Nothing is known of Egypt during this interval;
and it might have been thought that she had grown contented with her
lot, and that her aspirations after independence were over. For fifty
years she had made no sign. Even the troubled time between the death of
Artaxerxes I. and the accession of Darius II. had not tempted her to
strike a blow for freedom. But still she was, in reality,
irreconcilable. She was biding her time, and preparing herself for a
last desperate effort.
In B.C. 406 or 405, towards the close of the reign of Darius Nothus, the
third rebellion of Egypt against Persia broke out. A native of Mendes,
by name Nepheritis, or more properly Nefaa-rut, raised the banner of
independence, and commenced a war, which must have lasted for some
years, but which terminated in the expulsion of the Persian garrison,
and the reestablishment of the throne of the Pharaohs. It is unfortunate
that no ancient authority gives any account of the struggle. We only
know that, after a time, the power of Nefaa-rut was established; that
Persia left him in undisturbed possession of Egypt, and that he reigned
quietly for the space of six years, employing himself in the repair and
restoration of the temple of Ammon at Karnak. Nothing that can be called
a revival, or _renaissance_, distinguished his reign; and we must view
his success rather as the result of Persian weakness, than of his own
energy. His revolt, however, inaugurated a period of independence, which
lasted about sixty years, and which threw over the last years of the
doomed monarchy a gleam of sunshine, that for a brief space recalled the
glories of earlier and happier ages.
XXVI.
A LAST GLEAM OF SUNSHINE--NECTANEBO I.
A troubled time followed the reign of Nefaa-rut. The Greek mercenary
soldiery, on whom the monarchs depended, were fickle in their
temperament, and easily took offence, if their inclinations were in any
way thwarted. Their displeasure commonly led to the dethronement of the
king who had provoked it; and we have thus, at this period of the
history, five reigns in twenty-five years. No monarch had time to
distinguish himself by a re-organization of the kingdom, or even by
undertaking buildings on a large scale--each was forced to live from
hand to mouth, meeting as he best might the immediate difficulties of
his position, without providing for a future, which he might never live
to see. Fear of re-conquest was also perpetual; and the monarchs had
therefore constantly to be courting alliances with foreign states, and
subjecting themselves thereby to risks which it might have been more
prudent to have avoided.
With the accession of Nectanebo I. (Nekht-Horheb), about B.C. 385, an
improvement in the state of affairs set in. Nekht-hor-heb was a vigorous
prince, who held the mercenaries well under control, and, having raised
a considerable Egyptian army, set himself to place Egypt in such a
state of defence, that she might confidently rely on her own strength,
and be under no need of entangling herself with foreign alliances. He
strongly fortified all the seven mouths of the Nile, guarding each by
two forts, one on either side of each stream, and establishing a
connection between each pair of forts by a bridge. At Pelusium, where
the danger of hostile attack was always the greatest, he multiplied his
precautions, guarding it on the side of the east by a deep ditch, and
carefully obstructing all the approaches to the town, whether by land or
sea, by forts and dykes and embankments, and contrivances for laying the
neighbouring territory under water. No doubt these precautions were
taken with special reference to an expected attack on the part of
Persia, which was preparing, about B.C. 376, to make a great effort to
bring Egypt once more into subjection.
The expected attack came in the next year. Having obtained the services
of the Athenian general, Iphicrates, and hired Greek mercenaries to the
number of twenty thousand, Artaxerxes Mnemon, in B.C. 375, sent a huge
armament against Egypt, consisting of 220,000 men, 500 ships of war, and
a countless number of other vessels carrying stores and provisions.
Pharnabazus commanded the Persian soldiery, Iphicrates the mercenaries.
Having rendezvoused at Acre in the spring of the year, they set out
early in the summer, and proceeded in a leisurely manner through
Philistia and the desert, the fleet accompanying them along the coast.
This route brought them to Pelusium, which they found so strongly
fortified that they despaired of being able to force the defences and
felt it necessary to make a complete change in their plan of attack.
Putting to sea with a portion of the fleet, and with troops to the
number of three thousand, and sailing northward till they could no
longer be seen from the shore, they then, probably at nightfall, changed
their course, and steering south-west, made for the Mendesian mouth of
the Nile, which was only guarded by the twin forts with their connecting
bridge. Here they landed without opposition, and proceeded to
reconnoitre the forts. The garrison gave them battle outside the walls,
but was defeated with great loss; and the forts themselves were taken.
The remainder of the force conveyed by the ships, was then landed
without difficulty; and the invaders, having the complete mastery of one
of the Nile mouths, had it in their power to direct their attack to any
point that might seem to them at once most important and most
vulnerable.
Under these circumstances the Athenian general, Iphicrates, strongly
recommended a dash at Memphis. The main strength of the Egyptian army
had been concentrated at Pelusium. Strong detachments held the other
mouths of the Nile. Memphis, he felt sure, must be denuded of troops,
and could probably be carried by a _coup de main_; but the advice of the
rapid Greek was little to the taste of the slow-moving and cautious
Persian. Pharnabazus declined to sanction any rash enterprise--he would
proceed according to the rules of art. He had the advantage of
numbers--why was he to throw it away? No, a thousand times no. He would
wait till his army was once more collected together, and would then
march on Memphis, without exposing himself or his troops to any danger.
The city would be sure to fall, and the object of the expedition would
be accomplished. In vain did Iphicrates offer to run the whole risk
himself--to take no troops with him besides his own mercenaries, and
attack the city with them. As the Greek grew more hot and reckless, the
Persian became more cool and wary. What might not be behind this
foolhardiness? Might it not be possible that the Greek was looking to
his own interests, and designing, if he got possession of Memphis, to
set himself up as king of Egypt? There was no knowing what his intention
might be; and at any rate it was safest to wait the arrival of the
troops. So Pharnabazus once more coolly declined his subordinate's
offer.
Nectanebo, on his side, having thrown a strong garrison into Memphis,
moved his army across the Delta from the Pelusiac to the Mendesian
branch of the Nile, and having concentrated it in the neighbourhood of
the captured forts, proceeded to operate against the invaders. His
troops harassed the enemy in a number of petty engagements, and in the
course of time inflicted on them considerable loss. In this way
midsummer was reached--the Etesian winds began to blow, and the Nile to
rise. Gradually the abounding stream spread itself over the broad Delta;
roads were overflowed, river-courses obliterated; the season for
military operations was clearly past. There was no possible course but
to return to Asia. Iphicrates and Pharnabazus took their departure amid
mutual recriminations, each accusing the other of having caused the
expedition to be a complete failure.
The repulse of this huge host was felt by the Egyptians almost as the
repulse of the host of Xerxes was felt by the Greeks. Nectanebo was
looked upon as a hero and a demigod; his throne was assured; it was felt
that he had redeemed all the failures of the past, and had restored
Egypt to the full possession of all her ancient dignity and glory.
Nectanebo continued to rule over "the Two Lands" for nine years longer
in uninterrupted peace, honour, and prosperity. During this time he
applied himself, with considerable success, to the revival of Egyptian
art and architecture. At Thebes he made additions to the great temple of
Karnak, restored the temple of Khonsu, and adorned with reliefs a shrine
originally erected by Ramesses XII. At Memphis he was extraordinarily
active: he built a small temple in the neighbourhood of the Serapeum,
set up inscriptions in the Apis repository in honour of the sacred
bulls, erected two small obelisks in black granite, and left his name
inscribed more than once in the quarries of Toora. Traces of his
activity are also found at Edfu, at Abydos, at Bubastis, at Rosetta in
the Delta, and at Tel-el-Maskoutah. The art of his time is said to have
all the elegance of that produced under the twenty-sixth (Psamatik)
dynasty, but to have been somewhat more florid. The two black obelisks
above-mentioned, which are now in the British Museum, show the admirable
finish which prevailed at this period. The sarcophagus which Nectanebo
prepared for himself, which adorns the same collection, is also of great
beauty.
We cannot be surprised to find that Nectanebo was worshipped after his
death as a divine being. A priesthood was constituted in his honour,
which handed down his cult to later times, and bore witness to the
impression made on the Egyptian mind by his character and his successes.
XXVII.
THE LIGHT GOES OUT IN DARKNESS.