We are standing beside the open grave of the Egyptian kingdom.1 The array of kings, whose names are enrolled in these last dynasties-some of them native and some foreigners-appear as the bearers of the old decaying corpse, whose last light of life flickered up once more in the Dynasty of Saïs, only to go out soon and for ever. The monuments become more and more silent, from generation to generation, and from reign to reign. The ancient seats of splendour, Memphis and Thebes, have fallen

1 See Note at the end of Chapter XX.

into ruin, or at all events are depopulated and deserted. The strong bulwark of the white citadel' of Memphis alone serves as a refuge for the persecuted native kings and their warriors in times of need. The Persian satraps dwell in the old royal halls of the city. The whole people has grown feeble with age, disordered to the marrow, and exhausted by the lengthened struggle of the petty kings and the satraps of the mighty power of Assyria.

The Persians, who after a short interval took up the part played by the Assyrians, gave Egypt her final deathblow. Although, by his sage and wellcalculated measures, the distinguished king Psamethik I. succeeded in gaining the throne, as sole sovereign, for himself and his descendants; and though the monuments, from the extant ruins of Saïs to the weather-worn rocks of Elephantiné, show the scattered traces of the rule of the Pharaohs of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty; nevertheless the old splendour was gone-no Ptah, no Hormakhu, no Amon, any longer attests his help, or his thanks to the lord of the land for his great deeds.

The city of Sai (Saïs), in whose temples the great Mother of the Gods, Neit, was invoked and hallowed, standing near the sea, easily accessible for the Greek and Persian foreigners,' formed the last revered divine sanctuary under the Pharaohs, and the new capital of the kingdom, whence the kings issued their edicts to the land.

When Alexander the Great entered Egypt as a conqueror and deliverer, Saïs in its turn became de

serted and forlorn. The new capital of Alexandria -which is called the fortress of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Alexander, on the shore of the great sea of the Ionians: it was before called Ra-kot (Racotis),'-succeeded to the inheritance of Thebes, Memphis, and Saïs, assuredly not for the welfare of the Egyptians. All that they lost, all they were doomed to lose, turned to the profit of the young and energetic world in the North. Alexandria was one of the capitals of the world, with all the privileges and disadvantages pertaining to such a rank. The city itself grew with incredible speed; her foundations were laid from the destroyed temples and monuments of Saïs, which found a new destination in the construction of the royal palaces, temples, fountains, canals, and other public works. Thus was the young Grecian capital of the world built on the ruined greatness of ancient Egypt.

Strong as is the impression of pity made by the sight of this miserable end to the mighty empire of the Pharaohs, yet the temples and edifices built to last hundreds of thousands of years' could offer no resistance to the perishableness of all things earthly; for it was not in their everlasting stones, but on the enduring loyalty of their people, that the Pharaohs should have established their imperishable monument. The harassed and exhausted people, persecuted with war and oppression, a plaything for the

2 Compare my Essay, 'A Decree of the Satrap Ptolemæus, the son of Lagus,' in the Aegypt. Zeitschrift, 1871, p. 2. For a further account of the text referred to, see below, p. 315.

caprices and ambition of their princes, easily broke their faith, when they no longer received their reward in the fidelity and affection of their rulers. Degraded into the mere means to a selfish end, it was the same to them whom they served, whether Assyrian, Persian, or Greek. No foreign prince could prove worse to them than Pharaoh and his court.

From this epoch the monuments are conspicuously silent. There are only isolated inscriptions, containing no more records of the victories of each age, but continual songs of woe, which we must read between the lines. They form the dying swan-song of the mighty empire on the Nile.

It is no longer the everlasting stone or monument that makes known to us the unenviable fortune of the land; but the inquisitive Greek, who travels through the Nile-valley under the protection of the Persians or the kings of his own race and gathers his information from ignorant interpreters, becomes henceforth the source of our knowledge.

The reader will find the history of Egypt, according to the classical accounts, from the year 666 B.C. to the times of the Greeks and Romans, in every handbook of Ancient History. But from this we refrain, as inconsistent with our purpose of depicting Egypt only according to the monuments. What these teach us, in some conspicuous examples, of the last days of the kingdom of the Pharaohs, will form the conclusion of our work.

3

3 For those readers, who may feel-as we ourselves have felta certain incompleteness in the mere fragments of monumental records which seem to want the background of continuous history for the real understanding of their value, we have added the brief summary at the end of Chapter XX.-ED.

The monuments of this time, belonging to the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., are distinguished by a peculiar beauty-one might almost use the word elegance-in which we cannot fail to recognize foreign, that is, Greek influence. An extreme neatness of manipulation in the drawings and lines, in imitation of the best epochs of art in earlier times, serves for the instant recognition of the work of this age, the fineness of which often reminds us of the performances of a seal-engraver. The work, executed in the hardest stone with a finish equal to metal-casting, bears the character of a gentle and almost feminine delicacy, which has impressed upon the imitations of living creatures the stamp of an incredible refinement both of conception and execution. The little statues, holding a shrine, of the Saïte dignitary Pi-tebhu, son of Psamethik-Seneb, and the monument (of which we shall have more to say) of Uza-hor-en-pi-ris in the Vatican at Rome; the stone sarcophagi of the Saïte dignitaries, Auf-ao, surnamed Nofera bra-Minit (among whose offices we find that of chief overseer of the Ionian peoples'), of Nahkt-hor-hib, called Nofer-hor-monkh, and of

4 Most of these monuments were obtained from excavations at Saïs, and are in the Museums of Italy.

5 Compare p. 304.