Chapter XX: Egyptians (2)

It was probably with his Ionian and Karian troops that Psammetichus carried on those warlike operations in Syria which filled so large a proportion of his long and prosperous reign of fifty-four years.[620] He besieged the city of Azôtus in Syria for twenty-nine years, until he took it,—the longest blockade which the historian had ever heard of: moreover, he was in that country when the destroying Scythian nomads, who had defeated the Median king Kyaxarês and possessed themselves of Upper Asia, advanced to invade Egypt,—an undertaking which Psammetichus, by large presents, induced them to abandon.[621]

[620] Ἀπρίης—ὃς μετὰ Ψαμμήτιχον τὸν ἑωϋτοῦ προπάτορα ἐγένετο
εὐδαιμονέστατος τῶν πρότερον βασιλέων (Herodot. ii, 161).

[621] Herodot. i, 105; ii, 157.

There were, however, more powerful enemies than the Scythians, against whom he and his son Nekôs—who succeeded him, seemingly about 604 B. C.[622]—had to contend in Syria and the lands adjoining. It is just at this period, during the reigns of Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar (B. C. 625-561) that the Chaldæans or Assyrians of Babylon appear at the maximum of their power and aggressive disposition, while the Assyrians of Ninus or Nineveh lose their substantive position through the taking of that town by Kyaxarês (about B. C. 600),—the greatest height which the Median power ever reached. Between the Egyptian Nekôs and his grandson Apriês—Pharaoh Necho and Pharaoh Hophra of the Old Testament—on the one side, and the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar on the other, Judæa and Phenicia form the intermediate subject of quarrel: and the political independence of the Phenician towns is extinguished never again to be recovered. At the commencement of his reign, it appears, Nekôs was chiefly anxious to extend the Egyptian commerce, for which purpose he undertook two measures, both of astonishing boldness for that age,—a canal between the lower part of the eastern or Pelusiac Nile, and the inmost corner of the Red sea,—and the circumnavigation of Africa; his great object being to procure a water-communication between the Mediterranean and the Red sea. He began the canal—much about the same time as Nebuchadnezzar executed his canal from Babylon to Terêdon—with such reckless determination, that one hundred and twenty thousand Egyptians are said to have perished in the work; but either from this disastrous proof of the difficulty, or, as Herodotus represents, from the terrors of a menacing prophecy which reached him, he was compelled to desist. Next, he accomplished the circumnavigation of Africa, already above alluded to; but in this way too he found it impracticable to procure any available communication such as he wished.[623] It is plain that in both these enterprises he was acting under Phenician and Greek instigation; and we may remark that the point of the Nile from whence the canal took its departure, was close upon the mercenary camps or stratopeda. Being unable to connect the two seas together, he built and equipped an armed naval force both upon the one and the other, and entered upon aggressive enterprises, naval as well as military. His army, on marching into Syria, was met at Megiddo—Herodotus says Magdolum—by Josiah king of Judah, who was himself slain and so completely worsted, that Jerusalem fell into the power of the conqueror, and became tributary to Egypt. It deserves to be noted that Nekôs sent the raiment which he had worn on the day of his victory, as an offering to the holy temple of Apollo at Branchidæ near Milêtus,[624]—the first recorded instance of a donation from an Egyptian king to a Grecian temple, and a proof that Hellenic affinities were beginning to take effect upon him: probably we may conclude that a large proportion of his troops were Milesians.

[622] The chronology of the Egyptian kings from Psammetichus to
Amasis is given in some points differently by Herodotus and by
Manetho:—

According to Herodotus, | According to Manetho ap. African.
|
Psammetichus reigned 54 years. | Psammetichus reigned 54 years.
Nekôs „ 16 „ | Nechao II „ 6 „
Psammis „ 6 „ | Psammathis „ 6 „
Apriês „ 25 „ | Uaphris „ 19 „
Amasis „ 44 „ | Amosis „ 44 „

Diodorus gives 22 years for Apriês and 55 years for Amasis (i,
68).

Now the end of the reign of Amasis stands fixed for 526 B. C.,
and, therefore, the beginning of his reign (according to both
Herodotus and Manetho) to 570 B. C. or 569 B. C. According to
the chronology of the Old Testament, the battles of Megiddo and
Carchemisch, fought by Nekôs, fall from 609-605 B. C., and this
coincides with the reign of Nekôs as dated by Herodotus, but
not as dated by Manetho. On the other hand, it appears from the
evidence of certain Egyptian inscriptions recently discovered,
that the real interval from the beginning of Nechao to the end
of Uaphris is only forty years, and not forty-seven years, as
the dates of Herodotus would make it (Boeckh, Manetho und die
Hundsternperiode, pp. 341-348), which would place the accession
of Nekôs in 610 or 609 B. C. Boeckh discusses at some length
this discrepancy of dates, and inclines to the supposition that
Nekôs reigned nine or ten years jointly with his father, and
that Herodotus has counted these nine or ten years twice, once
in the reign of Psammetichus, once in that of Nekôs. Certainly,
Psammetichus can hardly have been very young when his reign
began, and if he reigned fifty-four years, he must have reached
an extreme old age, and may have been prominently aided by his
son. Adopting the suppositions, therefore, that the last ten
years of the reign of Psammetichus may be reckoned both for him
and for Nekôs,—that for Nekôs separately only six years are to
be reckoned,—and that the number of years from the beginning of
Nekôs’s separate reign to the end of Uaphris is forty,—Boeckh
places the beginning of Psammetichus in 654 B. C., and not in 670
B. C., as the data of Herodotus would make it (_ib._ pp. 342-350).

Mr. Clinton, Fast. Hellen. B. C. 616, follows Herodotus.

[623] Herodot. ii, 158. Respecting the canal of Nekôs, see the
explanation of Mr. Kenrick on this chapter of Herodotus. From
Bubastis to Suez the length would be about ninety miles.

[624] Herodot. ii, 159. Diodorus makes no mention of Nekôs.

The account of Herodotus coincides in the main with the history
of the Old Testament about Pharaoh Necho and Josiah. The great
city of Syria which he calls Κάδυτις seems to be Jerusalem,
though Wesseling (ad Herodot. iii, 5) and other able critics
dispute the identity. See Volney, Recherches sur l’Hist. Anc.
vol. ii, ch. 13, p. 239: “Les Arabes ont conservé l’habitude
d’appeler Jerusalem la Sainte par excellence, _el Qods_. Sans
doute les Chaldéens et les Syriens lui donnèrent le même nom,
qui dans leur dialecte est _Qadouta_, dont Hérodote rend bien
l’orthographie quand il écrit Κάδυτις.”

But the victorious career of Nekôs was completely checked by the defeat which he experienced at Carchemisch, or Circesium, on the Euphrates, from Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, who not only drove him out of Judæa and Syria, but also took Jerusalem, and carried away the king and the principal Jews into captivity.[625] Nebuchadnezzar farther attacked the Phenician cities, and the siege of Tyre alone cost him severe toil for thirteen years. After this long and gallant resistance, the Tyrians were forced to submit, and underwent the same fate as the Jews: their princes and chiefs were dragged captive into the Babylonian territory, and the Phenician cities became numbered among the tributaries of Nebuchadnezzar. So they seemed to have remained, until the overthrow of Babylon by Cyrus: for we find among those extracts, unhappily, very brief, which Josephus has preserved out of the Tyrian annals, that during this interval there were disputes and irregularities in the government of Tyre,[626]—judges being for a time substituted in the place of kings; while Merbal and Hirom, two princes of the regal Tyrian line, detained captive in Babylonia, were successively sent down on the special petition of the Tyrians, and reigned at Tyre; the former four years, the latter twenty years, until the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus. The Egyptian king Apriês, indeed, the son of Psammis, and grandson of Nekôs, attacked Sidon and Tyre both by land and sea, but seemingly without any result.[627] To the Persian empire, as soon as Cyrus had conquered Babylon, they cheerfully and spontaneously submitted,[628] whereby the restoration of the captive Tyrians to their home was probably conceded to them, like that of the captive Jews.

[625] Jeremiah, xlvi, 2; 2d book of Kings, xxiii and xxiv;
Josephus, Ant. J. x, 5, 1; x, 6, 1.

About Nebuchadnezzar, see the Fragment of Berosus ap. Joseph.
cont. Apion. i, 19-20, and Antiqq. J. x, 11, 1, and Berosi
Fragment. ed. Ritcher pp. 65-67.

[626] Menander ap. Joseph. Antiq. J. ix, 14, 2. Ἐπὶ Εἰθωβάλου τοῦ
βασιλέως ἐπολιόρκησε Ναβουχοδονόσορος τὴν Τύρον ἐπ᾽ ἔτε δεκάτρια.
That this siege of thirteen years ended in the storming,
capitulation, or submission (we know not which, and Volney goes
beyond the evidence when he says, “Les Tyriens furent emportés
_d’assaut_ par le roi de Babylone,” Recherches sur l’Histoire
Ancienne, vol. ii, ch. 14, p. 250) of Tyre to the Chaldæan king,
is quite certain from the mention which afterwards follows of the
Tyrian princes being detained captive in Babylonia. Hengstenberg
(De Rebus Tyriorum, pp. 34-77) heaps up a mass of arguments, most
of them very inconclusive, to prove this point, about which the
passage cited by Josephus from Menander leaves no doubt. What
is _not_ true, is, that Tyre was destroyed and laid desolate by
Nebuchadnezzar: still less can it be believed that that king
conquered Egypt and Libya, as Megasthenes, and even Berosus, so
far as Egypt is concerned, would have us believe,—the argument of
Larcher ad Herodot. ii, 168, is anything but satisfactory. The
defeat of the Egyptian king at Carchemisch, and the stripping
him of his foreign possessions in Judæa and Syria, have been
exaggerated into a conquest of Egypt itself.

[627] Herodot. ii, 161. He simply mentions what I have stated in
the text; while Diodorus tells us (i, 68) that the Egyptian king
took Sidon by assault, terrified the other Phenician towns into
submission, and defeated the Phenicians and Cyprians in a great
naval battle, acquiring a vast spoil.

What authority Diodorus here followed, I do not know; but the
measured statement of Herodotus is far the most worthy of credit.

[628] Herodot. iii, 19.

Nekôs in Egypt was succeeded by his son Psammis, and he again, after a reign of six years, by his son Apriês; of whose power and prosperity Herodotus speaks in very high general terms, though the few particulars which he recounts are of a contrary tenor. It was not till after a reign of twenty-five years, that Apriês undertook that expedition against the Greek colonies in Libya,—Kyrênê and Barka,—which proved his ruin. The native Libyan tribes near those cities, having sent to surrender themselves to him, and entreat his aid against the Greek settlers, Apriês despatched to them a large force composed of native Egyptians; who, as has been before mentioned, were stationed on the north-western frontier of Egypt, and were, therefore, most available for the march against Kyrênê. The Kyrenean citizens advanced to oppose them, and a battle ensued in which the Egyptians were completely routed with severe loss. It is affirmed that they were thrown into disorder from want of practical knowledge of Grecian warfare,[629]—a remarkable proof of the entire isolation of the Grecian mercenaries (who had now been long in the service of Psammetichus and his successors) from the native Egyptians.

[629] Herodot. ii, 161; iv, 159.

This disastrous reverse provoked a mutiny in Egypt against Apriês, the soldiers contending that he had despatched them on the enterprise with a deliberate view to their destruction, in order to assure his rule over the remaining Egyptians. The malcontents found so much sympathy among the general population, that Amasis, a Saïtic Egyptian of low birth, but of considerable intelligence, whom Apriês had sent to conciliate them, was either persuaded or constrained to become their leader, and prepared to march immediately against the king at Saïs. Unbounded and reverential submission to the royal authority was a habit so deeply rooted in the Egyptian mind, that Apriês could not believe the resistance to be serious. He sent an officer of consideration named Patarbêmis to bring Amasis before him, and when the former returned, bringing back from the rebel nothing better than a contemptuous refusal to appear except at the head of an army, the exasperated king ordered his nose and ears to be cut off. This act of atrocity caused such indignation among the Egyptians round him, that most of them deserted and joined the revolters, who thus became irresistibly formidable in point of numbers. There yet remained to Apriês the foreign mercenaries,—thirty thousand Ionians and Karians,—whom he summoned from their stratopeda on the Pelusiac Nile to his residence at Saïs; and this force, the creation of his ancestor Psammetichus, and the main reliance of his family, still inspired him with such unabated confidence, that he marched to attack the far superior numbers under Amasis at Momemphis. Though his troops behaved with bravery, the disparity of numbers, combined with the excited feeling of the insurgents, overpowered him: he was defeated and carried prisoner to Saïs, where at first Amasis not only spared his life, but treated him with generosity.[630] Such, however, was the antipathy of the Egyptians, that they forced Amasis to surrender his prisoner into their hands, and immediately strangled him.

[630] Herodot. ii, 162-169; Diodor. i, 68.

It is not difficult to trace in these proceedings the outbreak of a long-suppressed hatred on the part of the Egyptian soldier-caste towards the dynasty of Psammetichus, to whom they owed their comparative degradation, and by whom that stream of Hellenism had been let in upon Egypt, which doubtless was not witnessed without great repugnance. It might seem, also, that this dynasty had too little of pure Egyptianism in them to find favor with the priests. At least Herodotus does not mention any religious edifices erected either by Nekôs or Psammis or Apriês, though he describes much of such outlay on the part of Psammetichus,—who built magnificent propylæa to the temple of Hephæstos at Memphis,[631] and a splendid new chamber or stable for the sacred bull Apis,—and more still on the part of Amasis.

[631] Herodot. ii, 153.

Nevertheless, Amasis, though he had acquired the crown by this explosion of native antipathy, found the foreign adjuncts both already existing and eminently advantageous. He not only countenanced, but extended them; and Egypt enjoyed under him a degree of power and consideration such as it neither before possessed, nor afterwards retained,—for his long reign of forty-four years (570-526 B. C.) closed just six months before the Persian conquest of the country. He was eminently phil-Hellenic, and the Greek merchants at Naukratis,—the permanent settlers, as well as the occasional visitors,—obtained from him valuable enlargement of their privileges. Besides granting permission to various Grecian towns, to erect religious establishments for such of their citizens as visited the place, he also sanctioned the constitution of a formal and organized emporium or factory, invested with commercial privileges, and armed with authority exercised by presiding officers regularly chosen. This factory was connected with, and probably grew out of, a large religious edifice and precinct, built at the joint cost of nine Grecian cities: four of them Ionic,—Chios, Teôs, Phôkæa, and Klazomenæ; four Doric,—Rhodes, Knidus, Halikarnassus, and Phasêlis; and one Æolic,—Mitylênê. By these nine cities the joint temple and factory was kept up and its presiding magistrates chosen; but its destination, for the convenience of Grecian commerce generally, seems revealed by the imposing title of _The Hellênion_. Samos, Milêtus, and Ægina had each founded a separate temple at Naukratis, for the worship of such of their citizens as went there; probably connected—as the Hellênion was—with protection and facilities for commercial purposes. But though these three powerful cities had thus constituted each a factory for itself, as guarantee to the merchandise, and as responsible for the conduct, of its own citizens separately,—the corporation of the Hellênion served both as protection and control to all other Greek merchants. And such was the usefulness, the celebrity, and probably the pecuniary profit, of the corporation, that other Grecian cities set up claims to a share in it, and falsely pretended to have contributed to the original foundation.[632]

[632] Herodot. ii, 178. The few words of the historian about
these Greek establishments at Naukratis are highly valuable,
and we can only wish that he had told us more: he speaks of
them in the present tense, from personal knowledge—τὸ μὲν νῦν
μέγιστον αὐτέων τέμενος καὶ οὐνομαστότατον ἐὸν καὶ χρησιμώτατον,
καλεύμενον δὲ Ἑλλήνιον, αἵδε πόλις ~εἰσὶν~ αἱ ἱδρυμέναι—Τουτέων
μέν ἐστι τοῦτο τὸ τέμενος, καὶ προστάτας τοῦ ἐμπορίου αὗται αἱ
πόλις εἰσὶν αἱ παρέχουσαι. Ὅσαι δὲ ἄλλαι πόλις ~μεταποιεῦνται~,
οὐδέν σφι μετεὸν μεταποιεῦνται.

We are here let into a vein of commercial jealousy between the
Greek cities about which we should have been glad to be farther
informed.

Naukratis was for a long time the privileged port for Grecian commerce with Egypt. No Greek merchant was permitted to deliver goods in any other part, or to enter any other of the mouths of the Nile except the Kanôpic. If forced into any of them by stress of weather, he was compelled to make oath that his arrival was a matter of necessity, and to convey his goods round by sea into the Kanôpic branch to Naukratis; and if the weather still forbade such a proceeding, the merchandise was put into barges and conveyed round to Naukratis by the internal canals of the delta. Such a monopoly, which made Naukratis in Egypt, something like Canton in China, or Nangasaki in Japan, no longer subsisted in the time of Herodotus.[633] But the factory of the Hellênion was in full operation and dignity, and very probably he himself, as a native of one of the contributing cities, Halikarnassus, may have profited by its advantages. At what precise time Naukratis first became licensed for Grecian trade, we cannot directly make out; but there seems reason to believe that it was the port to which the Greek merchants first went, so soon as the general liberty of trading with the country was conceded to them; and this would put it at least as far back as the foundation of Kyrênê, and the voyage of the fortunate Kôlæus, who was on his way with a cargo to Egypt, when the storms overtook him,—about 630 B. C., during the reign of Psammetichus. And in the time of the poetess Sapphô, and her brother Charaxus, it seems evident that Greeks had been some time established at Naukratis.[634] But Amasis, though his predecessors had permitted such establishment, may doubtless be regarded as having given organization to the factories, and as having placed the Greeks on a more comfortable footing of security than they had ever enjoyed before.

[633] Herodot. ii, 179. ~Ἦν δὲ τοπαλαιὸν~ μούνη ἡ Ναύκρατις
ἐμπόριον, καὶ ἄλλο οὐδὲν Αἰγύπτου.... Οὕτω δὴ Ναύκρατις
~ἐτετίμητο~.

[634] The beautiful Thracian courtezan, Rhodôpis, was purchased
by a Samian merchant named Xanthês, and conveyed to Naukratis,
in order that he might make money by her (κατ᾽ ἐργασίην). The
speculation proved a successful one, for Charaxus, brother of
Sappho, going to Naukratis with a cargo of wine, became so
captivated with Rhodôpis, that he purchased her for a very large
sum of money, and gave her her freedom. She then carried on her
profession at Naukratis on her own account, realized a handsome
fortune, the tithe of which she employed in a votive offering
at Delphi, and acquired so much renown, that the Egyptian
Greeks ascribed to her the building of one of the pyramids,—a
supposition, on the absurdity of which Herodotus makes proper
comments, but which proves the great celebrity of the name of
Rhodôpis (Herodot. ii, 134). Athenæus calls her Dôrichê, and
distinguishes her from Rhodôpis (xiii. p. 596, compare Suidas,
v. Ῥοδωπίδος ἀνάθημα). When Charaxus returned to Mitylênê, his
sister Sappho composed a song, in which she greatly derided him
for this proceeding,—a song which doubtless Herodotus knew, and
which gives to the whole anecdote a complete authenticity.

Now we can hardly put the age of Sappho lower than 600-580 B. C.
(see Mr. Clinton, Fasti Hellen ad ann. 595 B. C., and Ulrici,
Geschichte der Griech. Lyrik, ch. xxiii, p. 360): Alkæus, too,
her contemporary, had himself visited Egypt. (Alcæi Fragm. 103,
ed. Bergk; Strabo, i, p. 63). The Greek settlement at Naukratis,
therefore, must be decidedly older than Amasis, who began to
reign in 570 B. C., and the residence of Rhodôpis in that town
must have begun earlier than Amasis, though Herodotus calls her
κατ᾽ Ἄμασιν ἀκμάζουσα (ii, 134). Nor can we construe the language
of Herodotus strictly, when he says that it was Amasis who
_permitted_ the residence of Greeks at Naukratis (ii, 173).

This Egyptian king manifested several other evidences of his phil-Hellenic disposition, by donations to Delphi and other Grecian temples, and he even married a Grecian wife from the city of Kyrênê.[635] Moreover, he was in intimate alliance and relations of hospitality both with Polykratês despot of Samos, and with Crœsus king of Lydia.[636] He conquered the island of Cyprus, and rendered it tributary to the Egyptian throne: his fleet and army were maintained in good condition, and the foreign mercenaries, the great strength of the dynasty which he had supplanted, were not only preserved, but even removed from their camp near Pelusium to the chief town Memphis, where they served as the special guards of Amasis.[637] Egypt enjoyed under him a degree of power abroad, and prosperity at home—the river having been abundant in its overflowing—which was the more tenaciously remembered on account of the period of disaster and subjugation immediately following his death. And his contributions, in architecture and sculpture, to the temples of Saïs[638] and Memphis, were on a scale of vastness surpassing everything before known in lower Egypt.

[635] Herodot. ii, 181.

[636] Herodot. i, 77; iii, 39.

[637] Herodot. ii, 182, 154. κατοίκισε ἐς Μέμφιν, φυλακὴν ἑωϋτοῦ
ποιεύμενος πρὸς Αἰγυπτίων.

[638] Herodot. ii, 175-177.