The Greatest Empires & Civilizations of the Ancient East: Egypt, Babylon, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Assyria, Media, Chaldea, Persia, Parthia & Sasanian Empire. George Rawlinson
and daughters, and was allowed once more to do homage to his lord in the temple of Thoth, leading his war-horse in one hand and holding a sistrum, the instrument wherewith it was usual to approach a god, in the other. Piankhi entered Hermopolis, and examined the treasury, store-houses, and stables, finding in the last a number of horses, which had been reduced almost to starvation by the siege. Either on this account, or for some other reason, Piankhi treated the Hermopolitan prince with coldness, and did not for some time reinstate him in his kingdom.
Continuing his triumphal march towards the north, Piankhi received the submission of Heracleopolis, the capital of Pefaabast, and of various other cities on either bank of the Nile, and in a short time appeared before Memphis and summoned it to surrender; but his summons was set at nought. Tafnekht had recently visited the city, had strengthened its defences, augmented its supplies, and reinforced its garrison with an addition of eight thousand men, thereby greatly inspiriting them. It was resolved to resist to the uttermost. So the gates were shut, the walls manned, and Piankhi challenged to do his worst. "Then was His Majesty furious against them, like a panther." Piankhi attacked the city fiercely, both by land and water. Taking the command of the fleet in person, he sailed down the Nile, and, bringing his vessels close up to the walls and towers on the riverside, made use of the masts and yards as ladders, and so scaled the fortifications; then after slaughtering thousands on the ramparts, he forced an entrance into the town. Memphis, upon this, surrendered. Piankhi entered the town, and sacrificed to the god Phthah. A number of the princes, including Aupot and Merkaneshu, a leader of mercenaries, came in and made their submission; but two of the principal rebels still remained unsubdued—Tafnekht, the leader of the revolt, and Osorkon, king of Bubastis, Piankhi proceeded against the latter. Advancing first on Heliopolis, instead of resistance he was received with acclamations, the people, priests, and soldiery having gone over to his side. "Nothing succeeds like success." Egypt was as prone as other countries to "worship the rising sun;" and Piankhi's victories had by this time marked him out in the eyes of the Egyptians as the favourite of Heaven, their predestined monarch and ruler. Accordingly, Heliopolis received him gladly, hailing him as "the indestructible Horus"—he was allowed to bathe in the sacred lake within the precincts of the great temple, to offer sacrifice to Ra, and to enter through the folding-doors into the central shrine, where were laid up the sacred boats of Ra and Turn. After this surrender, Osorkon thought it vain to attempt further resistance. He quitted Bubastis, and, seeking the presence of the victorious Piankhi, submitted himself and renewed his homage. At the same time, Petisis, king of Athribis, made his submission.
The only prince who still remained unsubdued was Tafnekht, the original rebel. Tafnekht had fled after the fall of Memphis, and had taken refuge either in one of the islands of the Delta, or beyond the seas, in Aradus or Cyprus. But he saw that further resistance was vain; and that, if he was to rule an Egyptian principality, it must be as a secondary monarch. Accordingly he, too, submitted himself, and was restored to his former kingdom. Piankhi returned up the Nile to his own city of Napata amid songs and rejoicings—whether sincere or feigned, who shall say? His own account of the matter is the following: "When His Majesty sailed up the river, his heart was glad; all its banks resounded with music. The inhabitants of the west and of the east betook themselves to making melody at His Majesty's approach. To the notes of the music they sang, 'O king, thou conqueror! O Piankhi, thou conquering king! Thou hast come and smitten Lower Egypt; thou madest the men as women. The heart of the mother rejoices who bare such a son, for he who begat thee dwells in the vale of death. Happiness be to thee, O cow that hast borne the Bull! Thou shalt live for ever in after ages. Thy victory shall endure, O king and friend of Thebes!'"
This happy condition of things did not, however, continue long. Piankhi, soon after his return to his capital, died without leaving issue; and the race of Herhor being now extinct, the Ethiopians had to elect a king from the number of their own nobles. Their choice fell on a certain Kashta, a man of little energy, who allowed Egypt to throw off the Ethiopian sovereignty without making any effort to prevent it. Bek-en-ranf, the son of Tafnekht, was the leader of this successful rebellion, and is said to have reigned over all Egypt for six years. He got a name for wisdom and justice, but he could not alter that condition of affairs which had been gradually brought about by the slow working of various more or less occult causes, whereby Ethiopia had increased and Egypt diminished in power, their relative strength, as compared with former times, having become inverted. Ethiopia, being now the stronger, was sure to reassert herself, and did so in Bek-en-ranf's seventh year. Shabak, the son of Kashta, whose character was cast in a far stronger mould than that of his father, having mounted the Ethiopian throne, lost no time in swooping down upon Egypt from the upper region, and, carrying all before him, besieged and took Saïs, made Bek-en-ranf a prisoner, and barbarously burnt him alive for his rebellion. His fierce and sensuous physiognomy is quite in keeping with this bloody deed, which was well calculated to strike terror into the Egyptian nation, and to ensure a general submission.
The rule of the Ethiopians was now for some fifty years firmly established. Shabak founded a dynasty which the Egyptians themselves admitted to be legitimate, and which the historian Manetho declared to have consisted of three kings—Sabacos (or Shabak), Sevechus (or Shabatok), and Taracus (or Tehrak), the Hebrew Tirhakah. The extant monuments confirm the names, and order of succession, of these monarchs. They were of a coarser and ruder fibre than the native Egyptians, but they did not rule Egypt in any alien or hostile spirit. On the contrary, they were pious worshippers of the old Egyptian gods; they repaired and beautified the old Egyptian temples; and, instead of ruling Egypt, as a conquered province, from Napata, they resided permanently, or at any rate occasionally, at the Egyptian capitals, Thebes and Memphis. There are certain indications which make it probable that to some extent they pursued the policy of Piankhi, and governed Lower Egypt by means of tributary kings, who held their courts at Saïs, Tanis, and perhaps Bubastis. But they kept a jealous watch over their subject princes, and allowed none of them to attain a dangerous pre-eminence.
By a curious coincidence the Ethiopic sway, or extension of influence over Egypt by the great monarchy of the south, exactly synchronized with the development of Assyrian power in south-western Asia, which bordered Egypt upon the north; and thus were brought into hostile collision, the two greatest military powers of the then known world who fought over the prostrate Egypt, like Achilles and Hector over the corpse of Patroclus. Shabak's conquest of the Lower Nile valley took place about B.C. 725 or 724. Exactly at that time Shalmaneser IV. was proceeding to extremities against the kingdom of Israel, and was thus threatening to sweep away one of the last two feeble barriers which had hitherto been interposed between the Assyrian territory and the Egyptian. Shabak, entreated by Hoshea, the last Israelite monarch, to lend him aid, consented to take the kingdom of Israel under his protection (2 Kings xvii. 4), actuated no doubt by an enlightened view of his own interest. But when Samaria was besieged (B.C. 723) and the danger became pressing, he had not the courage to act up to his engagements. The stout resistance offered by the Israelite capital for more than two years (2 Kings xvii. 5) drew forth no corresponding effort on the part of the Ethiopic king. Hoshea was left to his own resources, and in B.C. 722 was forced to succumb. His capital was taken by storm, its inhabitants seized and carried off by the conqueror, the whole territory absorbed into that of Assyria, and the cities occupied by Assyrian colonists (2 Kings xvii. 24). Assyria was brought one step nearer to Egypt, and it became more than ever evident that contact and collision could not be much longer deferred.
The collision came in B.C. 720. In that year Sargon, the founder of the last and greatest of the Assyrian dynasties, who had succeeded Shalmaneser IV. in B.C. 722, having arranged matters in Samaria and taken Hamath, pressed on against Philistia, the last inhabited country on the route which led to Egypt. Shabak, having made alliance with Hanun, king of Gaza, marched to his aid. The opposing hosts met at Ropeh, the Raphia of the Greeks, on the very borders of the desert. Sargon commanded in person on the one side, Shabak and Hanun on the other. A great battle was fought, which was for a long time stoutly contested; but the