if Herodotus may be credited, who intermixes his account of this war with a great many fabulous particulars. Sennacherib, (so Herodotus calls this prince,) king of the Arabians and Assyrians, having entered Egypt with a numerous army, the Egyptian officers and soldiers refused to march against him. The high-priest of Vulcan, being thus reduced to the greatest extremity, had recourse to his god, who bid him not despond, but march courageously against the enemy with the few soldiers he could raise. Sethon obeyed. A small number of merchants, artificers, and others, who were the dregs of the populace, joined him; and with this handful of men he marched to Pelusium, where Sennacherib had pitched his camp. The night following a prodigious number of rats entered the enemy's camp, and gnawing to pieces all their bow-strings and the thongs of their shields, rendered them incapable of making the least defence. Being disarmed in this manner, they were obliged to fly; and they retreated with the loss of a great part of their forces. Sethon, when The returned home, ordered a statue of himself to be set up in the temple of Vulcan, holding in his right hand a rat, and these words inscribed thereon: LET THE MAN WHO BEHOLDS ME LEARN TO REVERENCE THE GODS.* It is very obvious that this story, as related here from Herodotus, is an alteration of that which is told in the second book of Kings. We there see, that Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians, having subdued all the neighbouring nations, and seized upon all the cities of Judah, resolved to besiege Hezekiah in Jerusalem, his capital city. The ministers of this holy king, in spite of this opposition and the remonstrances of the prophet Isaiah, who promised them, in God's name, a sure and certain protection, provided they would trust in him only, sent secretly to the Egyptians and Ethiopians for succour. Their armies, being united, marched to the relief of Jerusalem at the time appointed, and were met and vanquished by the Assyrians in a pitched battle. He pursued them into Egypt, and entirely laid waste the country. At his return from thence, the very night before he was to have given a general assault to Jerusalem, which then seemed lost to all hopes, the destroying angel made dreadful havoc in the camp of the Assyrians, destroyed a hundred fourscore and five thousand men by fire and sword, and proved evidently, that they had great reason to rely, as Hezekiah had done, on the promise of the God of Israel. This is the real fact. But as it was no ways honourable to the Egyptians, they endeavoured to turn it to their own advantage, by disguising and corrupting the circumstances of it. Nevertheless, the account of this history, though so much defaced, ought yet to be highly valued, as coming from a historian of so great antiquity and authority as Herodotus. The prophet Isaiah had foretold, at several times, that this expedition of the Egyptians, which had been concerted seemingly with much prudence, conducted with the greatest skill, and in which the forces of two powerful empires were united, in order to relieve the Jews, would not only be of no service to Jerusalem, but even destructive to Egypt itself, whose strongest cities would be taken, its territories plundered, and its inhabitants of all ages and sexes led into captivity. See the 18th, 19th, 20th, 30th, 31st, &c. chapters of the second book of Kings. Archbishop Usher and dean Prideaux suppose that it was at this period that the ruin of the famous city No-Amon, spoken of by the prophet Nahum, happened. That prophet says, that she was carried away that her young children were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets-that the enemy cast lots for her honourable men, and that all her great men were bound in chains.§ He observes, that all these misfortunes befel that city, when * Ες ἐμέ τις ορίων, εὐσεβὴς ἔστω ↑ Chap. xvii. The Vulgate calls that city Alexandria, to which the Hebrew gives the name of No-Amon; because Alexandria was afterwards built in the place were this stood, Dean Prideaux, after Bochart, thinks that it was Thebes, surnamed Diospolis. Indeed, the Egyptian Amon is the same with Jupiter. But Thebes is not the place where Alexandria was since built. Perhaps there was another city there, which also was called No-Amon Chap. iii, 3, 10, Egypt and Ethiopia were her strength; which seems to refer clearly enough to the time of which we are here speaking, when Tharaca and Sethon had united their forces. However, this opinion is not without some difficulties, and is contradicted by some learned men. It is sufficient for me to have hinted it to the reader. Till the reign of Sethon, the Egyptian priests computed three hundred and forty-one generations of men; which make eleven thousand three hundred and forty years, allowing three generations to a hundred years.* They counted the like number of priests and kings. The latter, whether gods or men, had succeeded one another without interruption, under the name of piromis, an Egyptian word signifying good and virtuous. The Egyptian priests showed Herodotus three hundred and forty-one wooden colossal statues of these piromis, all ranged in order in a great hall. Such was the folly of the Egyptians, to lose themselves, as it were, in a remote antiquity, to which no other people pretended. THARACA. He it was who joined Sethon, with an Ethiopian army, to relieve Jerusalem. After the death of Sethon, who had sat fourteen years on the throne, Tharaca ascended it, and reigned eighteen years. He was the last Ethiopian king who reigned in Egypt. After his death, the Egyptians, not being able to agree about the succession, were two years in a state of anarchy, during which there were great disorders and confusions among them. TWELVE KINGS. At last, twelve of the principal noblemen, conspiring together, seized upon his kingdom, and divided it among themselves into so many parts. It was agreed by them, that each should govern his own district with equal power and authority, and that no one should attempt to invade or seize the dominions of another. They thought it necessary to make this agreement, and to bind it with the most dreadful oaths, to elude the prediction of an oracle, which had foretold, that he among them who should offer his libation to Vulcan out of a brazen bowl, should gain the sovereignty of Egypt. They reigned together fifteen years in the utmost harmony and to leave a famous monument of their concord to posterity, they jointly, and at a common expense, built the famous labyrinth, which was a pile of building consisting of twelve large palaces, with as many edifices under ground as appeared above it. I have spoken elsewhere of this labyrinth. : One day, as the twelve kings were assisting at a solemn and periodical sacrifice offered in the temple of Vulcan, the priests, having presented each of them a golden bowl for the libation, one was wanting; when Psammetichus,§ without any design, supplied the want of this bowl with his brazen heimet, for each wore one, and with it performed the ceremony of the libation. This accident struck the rest of the kings, and recalled to their memory the prediction of the oracle above mentioned. They thought it therefore necessary to secure themselves from his attempts, and therefore with one consent banished him into the fenny parts of Egypt. These After Psammetichus had passed some years there, waiting a favourable opportunity to revenge himself for the affront which had been put upon him, a courier brought him advice, that brazen men were landed in Egypt. were Grecian soldiers, Carians and Ionians, who had been cast upon the coasts of Egypt by a storm, and were completely covered with helmets, cuirasses, and other arms of brass. Psammetichus immediately called to mind the oracle, which had answered him, that he should be succoured by brazen men from the sea-coast. He did not doubt that the prediction was now fulfilled. He therefore made a league with these strangers; engaged them with great Herod. l. ii. cap. 142. †A. M. 3299. Ant. J. C. 795. Afric. apud Syncel. p. 74. A. M. 3319, Ant. J. C. 685. Herod. 1. ii. cap. 147, 152. Diod. 1. i. p. 59 He was one of the twelve. promises to stay with him; privately levied other forces, and put these Greeks at their head; when, giving battle to the eleven kings, he defeated them, and remained sole possessor of Egypt. PSAMMETICHUS. As this prince owed his preservation to the Ionians and Carians, he settled them in Egypt, from which all foreigners hitherto had been excluded; and, by assigning them sufficient lands and fixed revenues, he made them forget their native country.* By his order, Egyptian children were put under their care to learn the Greek tongue; and on this occasion, and by this means, the Egyptians began to have a correspondence with the Greeks; and from that era, the Egyptian history, which till then had been intermixed with pompous fables, by the artifice of the priests, begins, according to Herodotus, to speak with greater truth and certainty. As soon as Psammetichus was settled on the throne, he engaged in a war against the king of Assyria, on account of the limits of the two empires. This war was of long continuance. Ever since Syria had been conquered by the Assyrians, Palestine, being the only country that separated the two kingdoms, was the subject of continual discord: as afterwards it was between the Ptolemies and the Seleucida. They were perpetually contending for it, and it was alternately won by the stronger. Psammetichus, seeing himself the peaceable possessor of all Egypt, and having restored the ancient form of government, thought it high time for him to look to his frontiers, and to secure them against the Assyrian, his neighbour, whose power increased daily. For this purpose he entered Palestine at the head of an army. Perhaps we are to refer to the beginning of this war, an incident related by Diodorus; that the Egyptians, provoked to see the Greeks posted on the right wing by the king himself in preference to them, quitted the service, being upwards of two hundred thousand men, and retired into Ethiopia, where they met with an advantageous settlement. Be this as it will, Psammetichus entered Palestine, where his career was stopped by Azotus, one of the principal cities of the country, which gave him so much trouble, that he was forced to besiege it twenty-nine years before he could take it. This is the longest siege mentioned in ancient history. This was anciently one of the five capital cities of the Philistines. The Egyptians, having seized it some time before, had fortified it with such care, that it was their strongest bulwark on that side. Nor could Sennacherib enter Egypt, till he had first made himself master of this city, which was taken by Tartan, one of his generals. The Assyrians had possessed it hitherto ; and it was not till after the long siege just now mentioned, that Egypt recovered it. In this period the Scythians, leaving the banks of the Palus Mæotis, made an inroad into Media, defeated Cyaxares, the king of that country, and laid waste all Upper Asia, of which they kept possession during twenty-eight years. ¶ They pushed their conquests in Syria, even to the frontiers of Egypt; but Psammetichus marching out to meet them, prevailed so far, by his presents and entreaties, that they advanced no farther; and by that means delivered his kingdom from these dangerous enemies. Till his reign the Egyptians had imagined themselves to be the most ancient nation upon earth.** Psammetichus was desirous to prove this himself, and he employed a very extraordinary experiment for this purpose. He commanded, if we may credit the relation, two children, newly born of poor parents, to be brought up in the country, in a hovel, that was to be kept continually shut. They were committed to the care of a shepherd, others say of nurses whose tongues were cut out, who was to feed them with the milk of goats, and was commanded not to suffer any person to enter this hut, nor himself to speak even a single word in the hearing of these children. At the expiration of two years, This revolution happened about seven years after the captivity of Manasseh, king of Judah. as the shepherd was one day coming into the hut, to feed these children, they both cried out, with hands extended towards their foster-father, beckos, beckos. The shepherd, surprised to hear a language that was quite new to him, but which they repeated frequently afterwards, sent advice of this to the king, who ordered the children to be brought before him, in order that he might be witness to the truth of what was told him; and accordingly both of them began in his presence to stammer out the sounds above mentioned. Nothing now was wanting but to inquire what nation it was that used this word, and it was found that the Phrygians called bread by this name. From this time they were allowed the honour of antiquity, or rather of priority, which the Egyptians themselves, notwithstanding their jealousy of it, and the many ages they had possessed this glory, were obliged to resign to them. As goats were brought to these children, in order that they might feed upon their milk, and historians do not say that they were deaf, some are of opinion, that they might have learned the word bek or bekkos, by mimicking the cry of those creatures. Psammetichus died in the 24th year of Josias king of Judah, and was succeeded by his son Nechao. NECHAO.* This prince is often called in Scripture, Pharaoh-Necho.† He attempted to join the Nile to the Red Sea, by cutting a canal from one to the other. They are separated at the distance of at least a thousand stadia. After a hundred and twenty thousand workmen had lost their lives in this attempt, Necho was obliged to desist,-the oracle, which had been consulted by him, having answered, that this new canal would open a passage to the barbarians, (for so the Egyptians called all other nations,) to invade Egypt. Nechao was more successful in another enterprise.§ Skilful Phoenician mariners, whom he had taken into his service, having sailed from the Red Sea in order to discover the coast of Africa, went successfully round it; and the third year after their setting out, returned to Egypt through the Strait of Gibraltar. This was a very extraordinary voyage, in an age when the compass was not known. It was made twenty-one centuries before Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese, by discovering the Cape of Good Hope in the year 1497, found out the very same way to sail to the Indies, by which these Phoenicians had come from thence to the Mediterranean. The Babylonians and Medes having destroyed Nineveh, and with it the empire of the Assyrians, were thereby become so formidable, that they drew upon themselves the jealousy of all their neighbours. Nechao, alarmed at the danger, advanced to the Euphrates, at the head of a powerful army, in order to check their progress. Josiah, king of Judah, so famous for his uncommon piety, observing that he took his route through Judea, resolved to oppose his passage. With this view he raised all the forces of his kingdom, and posted himself in the valley of Megiddo (a city on this side of Jordan, belonging to the tribe of Manasseh, and called Magdolus by Herodotus.) Nechao informed him by a herald, that his enterprise was not designed against him; that he had other enemies in view, and that he had undertaken this war in the name of God, who was with him; that for this reason he advised Josiah not to concern himself with this war for fear it otherwise should turn to his disadvantage. However, Josiah was not moved by these reasons; he was sensible that the bare march of so powerful an army through Judea would entirely ruin it. And besides, he feared that the victor, after the defeat of the Babylonians, would fall upon him and dispossess him of part of his dominions. He therefore marched to engage Nechao; and was not only overthrown by him, but unfortunately received a wound of which he died at Jerusalem, whither he had crdered himself to be carried. *He is called Necho in the English version of the Scriptures. Allowing 625 feet, or 125 geometrical paces, to each stadium, the distance will be 118 English miles, and a little above one-third of a mile. Herodotus says, that this design was afterwards put in execution by Darius the Persian, l. ii. c. 158. Herod. 1. iv. c. 42. Joseph. Antiq. 1. x. c. 6. 2 Kings, xxiii. 29, 30 2 Chron. xxxv. 20–25. Nechao, animated by this victory, continued his march, and advanced towards the Euphrates. He defeated the Babylonians; took Carchemish, a large city in that country; and securing to himself the possession of it by a strong garrison, returned to his own kingdom, after having been absent three months. Being informed in his march homeward, that Jehoaz had caused himself to be proclaimed king at Jerusalem, without first asking his consent, he commanded him to meet him at Riblah in Syria.* The unhappy prince was no sooner arrived there than he was put in chains by Nechao's order, and sent prisoner to Egypt, where he died. From thence, pursuing his march, he came to Jerusalem, where he gave the sceptre to Eliakim (called by him Jehoiakim,) another of Josiah's sons, in the room of his brother; and imposed an annual tribute on the land, of a hundred talents of silver, and one talent of gold. This being done, he returned in triumph to Egypt. Herodotus, mentioning this king's expedition, and the victory gained by him at Magdolus,§ (as he calls it,) says that he afterwards took the city Cadytis, which he represents as situated in the mountains of Palestine, and equal in extent to Sardis, the capital at that time not only of Lydia, but of all Asia Minor. This description can suit only Jerusalem, which was situated in the manner above described, and was then the only city in those parts that could be compared to Sardis. It appears besides, from Scripture, that Nechao, after his victory, made himself master of this capital of Judea; for he was there in person, when he gave the crown to Jehoiakim. The very name Cadytis, which, in Hebrew, signifies the holy, points clearly to the city of Jerusalem, as is proved by the learned dean Prideaux. Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, observing, that since the taking of Carchemish by Nechao, all Syria and Palestine had shaken off their allegiance to him, and that his years and infirmities would not permit him to march against the rebels in person, associated his son Nebuchodonosor, or Nebuchadnezzar, with him in the empire, and sent him at the head of an army into those countries. This young prince vanquished the army of Nechao near the river Euphrates, recovered Carchemish, and reduced the revolted provinces to their allegiance as Jeremiah had foretold.** Thus he dispossessed the Egyptians of all that belonged to them,†† from the little river‡‡ of Egypt to the Euphrates, which comprehended all Syria and Palestine. Nechao dying, after he had reigned sixteen years, left the kingdom to his son. PSAMMIS. His reign was but of six years' duration, and history has left us nothing memorable concerning him, except that he made an expedition into Ethiopia. It was to this prince that the Eleans sent a splendid embassy, after having instituted the Olympic games. They had established the whole with such * 2 Kings xxiii. 33, 35. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 1. 4. The Hebrew silver talent, according to Dr. Cumberland, is equivalent to L. 358: 11: 104 so that 100 talents English money. make L. 35,359 7 6 The gold talent, according to the same, 5,075 15 7 The amount of the whole tribute, Lib. ii. c. 159. L. 40,435 3 1 About $179,532. From the time that Solomon, by means of his temple, had made Jerusalem the common place of wor ship to all Israel, it was distinguished from the rest of the cities by the epithet holy, and in the Old Tes tament, was called Air Hakkodesh, i. e. the city of holiness, or the holy city. It bore this title upon the coins, and the shekel was inscribed Jerusalem Kedusha, i. e. Jerusalem the holy. At length Jerusalem, for brevity's sake, was omitted, and only Kedusha reserved. The Syriac being the prevailing language in Herodotus's time, Kedusha, by a change in that dialect of sh into th, was made Kedutha; and Herodotus, giving it a Greek termination, it was written Kaduris, or Cadytis. Prideaux's Connexion of the Old and New Testament, Vol. I. Part. I. p. 80, 81. 8vo. edit. ** Jer. xlvi. 2, &c. tt 2 Kings, xxiv. 7. TA. M. 3397. Ant. J. C. 607. A rivo Egypti. This little river of Egypt, so often mentioned in Scripture, as the boundary of Pales tine towards Egypt, was not the Nile, but a small river, which running through the desert that lay between those nations, was anciently the common boundary of both. So far the land, which had been promised to the posterity of Abraham, and divided among them by lot, extended. { A. M. 3404. Ant. J. C. 600. Herod. 1. ii. c. 160. |