The Historians' History of the World 01 [Prolegomena; Egypt, Mesopotamia]

Psamthek had his reign dated from the death of Tirhaqa (664), without taking the Dodecarchy into account, and this is doubtless the reason why Herodotus gives him fifty-four years’ reign, although in reality he reigned only forty-four. He had built the southern pylon of the temple of Ptah at Memphis, and a peristyle court where the Apis bull was fed. The walls were covered with bas-reliefs, and colossi, twelve ells high, took the place of columns; these were probably caryatides like those which are seen at Thebes and Abu Simbel. These structures have disappeared, like all the other buildings of Memphis. The only monuments of the reign of Psamthek which still exist are the twelve columns, twenty-one metres (about sixty-nine feet) high, whose ruins are seen in the first court of the temple of Karnak, where they formed a double rank. One only of these columns is still upright. It is not known whether they were raised to form the centre avenue of a hypostyle hall like that of Seti, or whether they were intended to bear symbolic images which served the Egyptians as military ensigns, such as the ram, the ibis, the sparrow-hawk, the jackal, etc.

Psamthek and his successors, though not residing at Thebes, restored its monuments and repaired the disasters of the Assyrian invasion. In the Louvre and the British Museum there are numerous sculptures of the Saïtic epoch, which is one of the grand epochs of Egyptian art.

In the reign of Psamthek, the Scythians, driving the Cimmerians before them, had invaded Asia and were threatening Egypt. Psamthek preferred to buy their retreat by a money payment, rather than expose the country to the danger of invasion, and the barbarians retraced their steps northward. But in order to protect Egypt on the northeast, it was necessary to have a foothold in Palestine, and Psamthek therefore laid siege to the town of Ashdod.

Egyptian Birds

(From the monuments)

[612-594 B.C.]

This siege, says Herodotus, lasted twenty-nine years, but perhaps, as M. Maspero thinks, Herodotus’ interpreters meant to say that the taking of Ashdod took place in the twenty-ninth year of Psamthek’s reign. His son, Neku II, who succeeded him in 612, desiring to profit by the changes which had supervened in Asia, and to re-establish the dominion of Egypt, gave battle to the Jews and Syrians near Megiddo. Josiah, king of Judah, was killed, his son Jehoahaz, whom the Jews had proclaimed king, was dethroned by Neku, who put in his place Eliakim, another son of Josiah, and remained master of all Syria. But he soon found a redoubtable adversary in front of him, for the kingdom of Babylon had succeeded to that of Nineveh. Beaten by Nebuchadrezzar at Carchemish on the banks of the Euphrates, Neku lost all his conquests and returned precipitately to Egypt.

His name remains connected with an enterprise more important than his military expeditions. Two kings of the XIXth Dynasty, Seti I and Ramses II, had had a canal of communication dug between the eastern branch of the Nile and the Red Sea. But whether it was that this canal had not been finished, or that it was blocked up by the sands, Neku desired to restore it. The canal began a little above Bubastis. According to Herodotus, a hundred and twenty thousand workmen perished in digging it, and Neku had it discontinued in consequence of an oracle, which warned him that he was labouring for the barbarians; an oracle which was accomplished, for the canal was finished by the Persians. In our own day, when it was desired to open direct communication between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, the operations were begun with the restoration of Neku’s canal, to supply fresh water for the workmen who were digging the maritime canal.