Psammetichus was succeeded by his son NECO or NECHAO, the Pharaoh Necho of the second book of Kings, who reigned 16 years, B. c. 617-601. Among the greatest of his works was the canal between the Nile and the Red Sea. Whether he completed it or not is doubtful; in the reign of Darius it was, however, certainly open for vessels of large burden, and was finished by the Ptolemies (Plin. vi. 33). Modern surveys have ascertained that this canal left the Nile in the neighbourhood of the modern town of Belbeis - probably the Bubastis Agria of the Greeks and ran E. and S. to Suez. (Herod. iv. 42; Diod. i. 33.) At Neco's command also the Phoenicians undertook the circumnavigation of the African peninsula. The success of this enterprise is problematical, but, as Major Rennell, in hi Essay on the Geography of Herodotus, has shown, by no means impossible. In the reign of Necho Egypt came into direct collision with the Babylonian empire, at that time rising upon the ruins of the Assyrian. Egypt seems to have been in alliance with the latter, since about the time when Cyaxares resumed the siege of Niniveh, Necho marched towards the Euphrates, apparently to relieve the beleaguered city. Judah was then in league with Babylon; and its king Josiah threw himself in the way of Necho, and was defeated by him at Megiddo. The Jewish monarch died of his wounds at Jerusalem, and the conqueror entered the holy city, probably the Cadytis of Herodotus (ii. 159, iii. 5). Necho deposed and sent captive to Egypt Jehoahaz, the son and successor of Josiah, made his younger brother Eliakim king in his stead, and imposed an annual tribute on Judaea. The Judaean monarchs were four years later avenged. From the plains of Carchemish or Circesium, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, Neco fled to Egypt, leaving all his Asiatic conquests to the victor Nebuchadnezzar.

Necho was succeeded by his son PSAMMIS, who reigned 6 years, B. c. 601-595, and Psammis by his son APRIES, the Uaphris of the monuments, and the Pharaoh Hophra of the Scriptures, who reigned 25 years, B. c. 595-570. The earlier years of Apries were signalised by his victories over the Tyrians, Sidonians, Phoenicians, and Cypriots. But these acquisitions were transient, and there is reason to suppose that Lower Egypt at least was invaded by Nebuchadnezzar (Strab. p. 687; Jereminh, xliii. 12, xlvi. 13-26; Ezekiel, xxix). Apries experienced even greater calamities on his western frontier, a quarter from which Egypt had been hitherto unassailed. The Greeks of Cyrene exterminated his army at Irasa (Ain Ersen), between the bay of Bomba and Cyrene. His defeat, and the cruelties to which it led, rendered him odious to his subjects. A fortunate soldier, Amasis or Amosis, deposed, succeeded, and finally strangled

him.

AMASIS reigned 44 years, B. c. 570-526. He is the first Egyptian monarch with whose personal character we have any acquaintance. His friendship with Polycrates is well known. He was a shrewd, active, and intelligent sovereign, who possessed the love of the soldiers and the people, and nearly disregarded the rules and ceremonies of the priests. His reign was eminently prosperous, and his death occurred just in time to prevent his witnessing the snbjugation of Egypt by the Persians under Cambyses, which took place in the reign of his son PSAMMENITUS (B.C. 525), who sat upon the throne only

2. Persian Era.

The 27th dynasty contains 8 Persian kings, and extends over a period of 124 years, B. C. 525-401. Egypt became a satrapy, not, however, without much reluctation and various revolutions; for between the worshippers of animals and the worshippers of fire a religious antipathy subsisted which aggravated the pressure of conquest and the burden of subjection. The Persians indeed were the only masters of Egypt who assailed by violence, as well as regarded with contempt, its religious and political institutions. From this cause, no less than from the numerous Greek and Hebrew settlers in the Delta, the Macedonian conqueror, in B. c. 332, found scarcely any impediment to his occupation of Egypt. During the 27th dynasty Egypt became, for the first time, involved in European politics. A revolt, which commenced in the reign of Darius, B. c. 488, and which delayed for three years the second Persian invasion of Greece, was repressed by his son and successor Xerxes, in B. c. 486. A second revolt, in B. C. 462, was put down, in B. c. 456, by the satrap Megabyzus; but its leader Inaros, son of Psammitichus, was aided by the Athenians.

The 28th dynasty contains only one name, that of AMYRTAEUS the Saite. In his reign of six years, through some unexplained weakness in Persia, Egypt regained its independence, for monuments at Karnak and Eilethya prove that the Saite monarch was king of the whole land. Amyrtaeus was magnificently interred in a sarcophagus of green breccia, which, after passing from an Egyptian tomb to a Greek basilica, from a Greek basilica to a Moslem mosque, finally rests in the British Museum. The 29th dynasty contained four kings, of whom hardly any thing is related, and the 30th dynasty three kings, NECTANEBUS I., TACHOS, and NECTANEBUS II., who are better known from their connection with Grecian history. In the reign of Nectanebus II., and in the year B. c. 350, Egypt was reconquered by Bagoas and Mentor, the generals of Darius Ochus, and the last Pharaoh of the 30 dynasties retired an exile into Aethiopia. The succession of Egyptian monarchs, embracing a period of 3553 years, is unexampled in history. Upon the annals of their successors the Ptolemies we shall not however enter, since the lives of the Macedonian kings are given in the Dictionary of Biography (art. Ptolemaeus). It will suffice in this place to make a few general remarks upon the political aspect of Egypt under its Greek and Roman masters.

3. Macedonian or Hellenic Era. Many causes rendered the accession of a Greek dynasty an easy and even a welcome transition to the Egyptian people. In the decline of the native monarchy, they had suffered much from anarchy and civil wars. For two centuries the yoke of Persia had pressed heavily upon their trade, agriculture and religion: their wealth had been drained, their children enslaved, their ceremonial and national prejudices systematically outraged by their rulers. For the advent of the Greeks a gradual preparation had been made since the reign of Psammetichus. Hellenic colonies had penetrated to the Great Oasis and the coast of the Red Sea. Greek travellers and philosophers had explored the Thebaid, and Greek immigrants had established numerous colonies in the Delta. Lower Egypt too had admitted Spartans and Athenians alternately as the allies of the Saite and

The regulations which Alexander mede for the government of his new conquest were equally wise and popular: and as they were generally adopted by his successors the Lagidae, they may be mentioned in this place. The Egyptians were governed by their own laws. The privileges of the priests and their exemption from land-tax were secured to them, and they were encouraged, if not assisted, to repair the temples, and to restore the ancient ritual. Already in the reign of Ptolemy Soter the inner-chamber of the Temple of Karnak was rebuilt, and the name of Philip Arrhidaeus, the son of Alexander, inscribed upon it. Alexander himself offered sacrifice to Apis at Memphis, and assumed the titles of "Son of Ammon" and " Beloved of Ammon"; and when the sacred Bull died of old age Ptolemy I. bestowed fifty talents upon his funeral. Euergetes, the third monarch of the Lagid house, enlarged the temple of Karnak, added to that of Ammon in the Great Oasis, and erected smaller shrines to Osiris at Canobus, and to Leto, at Esne or Latopolis. The structures of the Ptolemies will be noticed under the names of the various places which they restored or adorned.

It would have been impolitic to reinstate the ancient militia of Egypt, which indeed had long been superseded by a standing army or Greek mercenaries. Under the most despotic of the Ptolemies, however, we meet with few instances of military oppression, and these rarely extended beyond the suburbs of Alexandria or the frontiers of the Delta. Alexander established two principal garrisons, one at Pelusium, as the key of Egypt, and another at Memphis, as the capital of the Lower Country. Subsequently Parembole in Nubia, Elephantine, and the Greek city of Ptolemais in the Thebaid were occupied by Macedonian troops. The civil jurisdiction he divided between two nomarchies or judgeships, and he appointed as nomarchs two native Egyptians, Doloaspis and Petisis. (Arrian, Anab. iii. 5. § 2.)

Like their predecessors the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies aspired to extend their power over Palestine and Syria, and protracted wars were the results of their contests with the Seleucid kings. But even these campaigns tended to the augmentation of the Egyptian navy; and, in consequence of the foundation of Alexandria the country possessed one of the strongest and most capacious havens in the Mediterranean. Becoming a maritime, the Egyptians became also an actively commercial nation, and exported corn, papyrus, linen, and the articles of their Libyan and Indian traffic to western Asia and Europe. Ptolemy Philadelphus gave a new impulse to the internal trade of the Nile-valley, in the first place, by establishing a system of police from Cercasorum to Syene, and, in the next, by completing the canal which Necho and Darius Hystaspis had begun, from the Pelusiac arm of the Nile to Arsinoë at the head of the Red Sea. (Plin. vi. 33; Herod. ii. 158) [BUBASTIS; ARSINOE]. He also rebuilt the old port of Aennum or Cosseir [PHILOTERA], and improved the caravan route from the interior by erecting inns and cisterns in the desert between Coptos and Berenice. The monuments of Lower Nubia attest the wealth and enterprise of the Lagid monarchs. Egypt indeed did not regain under this family the splendour which it had enjoyed under Thoutmosis and Rameses III., but it was perhaps more uniformly prosperous, and less exposed to in

In one respect the amalgamation of the Egyptians with their conquerors was incomplete. The Greeks were always the dominant class. The children of mixed marriages were declared by the Macedonian laws to be Egyptian not Greek. They were incapable of the highest offices in the state or the army, and worshipped Osiris and Isis, rather than Zeus or Hera. Thus, according to Hellenic prejudices, they were regarded as barbarian or at most as Perioeci, and not as full citizens or freemen. To this distinction may in part be ascribed the facility with which both races subsequently submitted to the auhority of the Roman emperors.

The ancient divisions of the Upper and Lower kingdoms were under the Macedonian dynasty revived but inverted. Power, population, wealth and enterprise were drawn down to the Delta and to the space between its chief cities Memphis and Alexandria. The Thebaid gradually declined. Its temples were indeed restored: and its pompous hierarchy recovered much of their influence. But the rites of religion could not compete with the activity of commerce. The Greek and Hebrew colonists of the Delta absorbed the vitality of the land: and long before the Romans converted Egypt into a province of the empire, the Nubians and Arabs had encroached upon the upper country, and the ancient Diospolite region partly returned to the waste, and partly displayed a superannuated grandeur, in striking contrast with the busy and productive energy of the Lower Country. This phenomenon is illustrated by the mummies which are found in the tombs of Memphis and the catacombs of Thebes respectively. Of one hundred mummies taken from the latter, about twenty show an European origin, while of every hundred derived from the necropolite receptacles of the former, seventy have lost their Coptic peculiarities (Sharpe, History of Egypt, p. 133, 2nd ed.). The Delta had, in fact, become a cosmopolite region, replenished from Syria and Greece, and brought into contact with general civilisation. The Thebaid remained stationary, and reverted to its ancient Aethiopian type, neglecting or incapable of foreign admixture.

4. Roman Era.

For more than a century previous to B. c. 30 the family and government of the Lagid house had been on the decline. It was rather the jealousy of the Roman senate which dreaded to see one of its own members an Egyptian proconsul, than its own integral strength, which delayed the conversion of the Nilevalley into a Roman province. When however the Roman commonwealth had passed into a monarchy, and the final struggle between Antonius and Augustus had been decided by the surrender of Alexandria, Egypt ceased to be an independent kingdom. The regulations which Augustus made for his new acquisition manifested at once his sense of its value, and his vigilance against intrusion. Egypt became properly a province neither of the senate nor the emperor. It was thenceforth governed by a prefect, called Praefectus Aegypti, afterwards Praefectus Augustalis, immediately appointed by the Caesar and responsible to him alone. The prefect was taken from the equestrian order: and no senator was permitted to set foot in Egypt without special imperial license. (Tac. Ann. ii. 59, Hist. ii. 74; Dion Cass. li. 17; Arrian Anab. iii. 5.) Even after Diocletian had re

modelled or abolished nearly all the other institutions of the empire, this interdict remained in force. The dependence of Egypt was therefore more absolute and direct than that of any other province of Rome. Its difficulty of access, and the facility which it presented to an enterprising and ambitious governor to render himself independent, dictated these stringent precautions. The prefect, however, possessed the same powers as the other provincial governors, although | he did not receive the fasces and the other insignia of the latter. (Tac. Ann. xii. 60; Poll. Trig. Tyr. 22.)

Augustus made very little change in the internal government of Egypt. It was divided into three great districts called Epistrategiae (èniorparnyíai) -Upper Egypt (Thebais), of which the capital was Ptolemais, Middle Egypt (Heptanomis), and Lower Egypt (Strab. xvii. p. 787). Each of these three districts was divided into nomes, the nomes into toparchies, and the toparchies into kŵμai and Tóжоi, in which the land was carefully measured according to ǎpoupai. Each of the great districts was under an epistrategus (émiσtpáτnyos), who was a Roman, and possessed both civil and military authority, and to him all the officials in his district were amenable. Each nome was governed by a strategus (σTpaTηyós), in ancient times called vouápxns, who carried into execution the edicts of the prefect, and superintended the collection of the taxes imposed upon his nome. The strategus was appointed by the prefect, and was selected from the natives, either Greeks or Egyptians: the term of his office was three years. The subdivisions of the nores above mentioned were in like manner under the administration, each of its own officers, whose names and titles frequently occur in inscriptions.

The three Greek cities of Alexandria, Ptolemais, and Arsinoë were not subject to the authorities of the nome, but were governed by their own municipal institutions (σύστημα πολιτικὸν ἐν τῷ Ἑλληνικῷ rpore, Strab. xvii. p. 813).

Two legions were found sufficient to keep Egypt in obedience. They were stationed at Elephantine and Parembole, in the south: at the Hermopolitan castle, on the borders of Heptanomis and the Thebaid: at Memphis and Alexandria in the Delta: and at Paretonium in Libya. Cohorts of German horse were quartered in various portions of the Nile-valley. The native population were not allowed to possess arms-a precaution partly dictated by the fierce and excitable temper of the Egyptian people. (Amm. Marc. xxii. 16. § 23.)

The Romans presently set themselves to improve the revenues and restore the agriculture of their new province. Under the second prefect C. Petronius (Sueton. Octav. 18; Strab. xvii. p. 820) the canals of the Nile were cleared of sand, and many thousand acres brought again into cultivation. Egypt, under the emperors, shared with Sicily and northern Africa the distinction of being accounted a granary of Rome. To the general survey of the Nile-valley under Aelius Gallus, the third prefect, we owe the accurate description of it by the geographer Strabo. He accompanied the prefect to Syene (xvi. p. 816), and explored both the vestiges of ancient grandeur in the Thebaid, and the new cities which, like Ptolemais, had been built and were occupied by Greeks alone. The Caesars were as tolerant as the Macedonian kings, and made no change in the religion of their Coptic subjects. The names of

tian and Nubian temples; e. g., that of Augustus at Philae, and that of Tiberius at Thebes, Aphroditopolis, and Berenice. Augustus was invested with the titles of the native kings -Son of the Sun, of Ammon, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, &c. The country was well governed under Tiberius, who strictly repressed the avarice of his prefects (Joseph. Ant. xviii. 5; Dion Cass. Ivii. 32). From Tacitus (Ann. ii. 64) we learn that the emperor was highly displeased with his adopted son Germanicus for travelling in Egypt without a previous licence from himself. Pliny (viii. 71) records that, on this tour, Germanicus consulted the sacred bull Apis, and received an answer indicative of his future misfortunes. The liberty of coining money was taken from the Egyptians by Tiberius in the tenth year of his reign (A. D. 23); but the right of mintage was restored to them by Claudius. Pliny (vi. 26) has given an interesting description of the Egyptian trade with the East in this reign. The history of Egypt from this period is so nearly identified with that of Alexandria, that we may refer generally to that head for the summary of its events. The country, indeed, had been so completely subjugated, that Vespasian could venture to withdraw from it nearly all the disposable military force, when in A. D. 67-68 it was required to put down the rebellion of Judaea. The principal commotions of Egypt were, indeed, caused by the common hostility of the Greek and Hebrew population. This, generally confined to the streets of Alexandria, sometimes raged in the Delta also, and in the reign of Hadrian demanded the imperial interference to suppress. The Jews, indeed, were very numerous in Egypt, especially in the open country; and after the destruction of Jerusalem, their principal temple was at Leontopolis. Hadrian (Spartian. 14) visited Egypt in the 6th year of his reign, and ascended the Nile as far as Thebes. The most conspicuous monument of this imperial progress was the city of Antinopolis, on the east bank of the Nile, which he raised as a monument to his favourite, the beautiful Antinous. (Dion Cass. Ixix. 16.)

In the reign of M. Aurelius, A. D. 166, occurred the first serious rebellion of Egypt against its Roman masters. It is described as a revolt of the native soldiers. But they were probably Arabs who had been drafted into the legions, and whose predatory habits prompted them to desert and resume their wild life in the desert. The revolt lasted nearly four years (A. D. 171–175), and was put down by Avidius Cassius, who then proclaimed himself emperor of Egypt, and his son Maecianus praetorian prefect. Avidius and his son, however, were put to death by their own troops, and the clemency of the emperor speedily regained the affections of his Egyptian subjects. (Capitol. M. Anton, 25.)

On the death of Pertinax in A. D. 193, Pescennius Niger, who commanded a legion in Upper Egypt, and had won the favour of the natives by repressing the license of the soldiery, proclaimed himself emperor. He was defeated and slain at Cyzicus, A. D. 196, and his successful rival the emperor Severus visited the vacant province, and examined the monuments at Thebes and Memphis. Severus, however, was unpopular with the Egyptians, as well from his exactions of tribute as from his impolitic derision of the national religion. In the reign of Caracalla, Egyptians for the first time took their seat in the Roman senate, and the worship of Isis was publicly sanctioned at Rome. (Dion Cass. lxxvii. 23; Spartian.