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The History of Antiquity, Vol. 3 (of 6). Duncker Max
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What Pianchi was unable to carry out was accomplished by his second successor, Sabakon.164 From the books of Manetho nothing has been preserved beyond the observation, that Sabakon the Ethiopian took Bocchoris prisoner in war, and caused him to be burnt alive; Herodotus tells us that Sabakon, the king of the Ethiopians, marched through Egypt with a mighty army of his people, and the king of Egypt (Herodotus calls him Anysis) fled into the marshes. Sabakon was a mild ruler, and did not punish any Egyptian with death. Those who had committed an offence, he condemned to raise the dams which Sesostris had caused to be thrown up round the cities, according to the measure of the offence, and thus the cities of Egypt became far higher; "and highest of all, in my opinion," Herodotus adds, "was the city of Bubastis."165 "Though by birth an Ethiopian," says Diodorus of Sabakon, "he surpassed his predecessors in piety and gentleness. Of this it is sufficient proof that he did away with the severest penalty, the penalty of death, and caused those who were condemned to death to perform task-work in chains in the cities, since he was of opinion that the reduction of the punishment would not only be an advantage to the condemned persons, but also bring great advantage to the cities." By these task-labourers he caused many dams to be raised, and many needful canals to be cut.166 With the gentleness of Sabakon, thus praised by Herodotus and Diodorus, the statement of Manetho, that he burnt Bocchoris alive, and the statement of Herodotus, that he put to death Necho of Sais, do not very well agree.
The last Bubastites, Petubastis and Osorkon, had not been able to maintain the power of the crown against the lords of the districts, and the brave and skilful attempt to restore the power of the Pharaohs made by Tnephachtus and Bocchoris was wrecked. After Bocchoris succumbed to the Ethiopians in the year 730 B.C.167 Egypt obeyed a foreign ruler. The king of Napata was also the Pharaoh of Egypt; Egypt and Meroe were united. The chief importance of the change thus accomplished lay in the fact that the valley of the Nile, from the mouths as far as Dongola, was united into one state; that the warlike power of Egypt, which had become extinct under the later Ramessids, and then was replaced by Libyan mercenaries to the ruin of Egypt, was now replaced by the unspent vigour of the Ethiopians; and the combination of the latter with the rich means and resources of Egypt availed to strengthen the country considerably, and restore her to her previous position. For the internal condition of Egypt the new sovereignty brought hardly any other change than this, that the rulers now found a strong point of support in their own land. The dynasties which, so far as we can see, Tnephachtus and Bocchoris overcame or removed, we find again at the head of their districts under the Ethiopians. It is possible that oppressed or expelled families among these invited or supported Sabakon's invasion of Egypt, just as in the preceding generation the princes of Upper Egypt summoned Pianchi to support them against the father of Bocchoris. That sovereigns and hereditary lords were at the head of the districts of Egypt under Sabaka and his successors of Meroe is beyond a doubt. Thus the rule of Sabakon and his Ethiopian successors might appear as a restoration of the old state of affairs in contrast to the innovations of Tnephachtus and Bocchoris, and the more so, as these rulers jealously adopted the national worship. We saw how earnest Pianchi was in visiting the temples of Egypt; how he offered sacrifice to his father Thot, his father Ptah, his father Ra, and saw the last in his shrine at Heliopolis; the memorial stone even assures us that of the princes who submitted to him he allowed those only to come into his presence at that time who had eaten no fish, i. e. who strictly observed the rules of purification. It was the reverence of the priests, the participation in the worship, the correct behaviour, in which Sabakon and his Ethiopian successors come forward as genuine followers of the Pharaohs, which appear to have won for Sabakon – who is to the Greeks the representative of the Ethiopian dynasty – that reputation for gentleness and justice which Herodotus and Diodorus repeat from the tradition of the Egyptians. At the temples at Memphis,168 at Luxor, and Karnak, Sabakon undertook works of restoration. His name and title here are Raneferka Shabaka. On the pillars of the main gateway at Karnak the goddess Hathor embraces him; the inscription on this gate describes him as "the good god, the giver of life for ever, like the sun," and declares that he has received the tribute of the negroes, and the tribute of the Chalu, i. e. the inhabitants of Palestine. How the latter statement is to be explained will become clear afterwards; we shall see that Sabakon had much better reason to be silent about the events in Syria than to boast of them.
Sabakon died in the year 717 B.C.,169 and left the empire over Napata and Egypt to his own son Sebichus, as Manetho calls him; Shabataka as the name is given on monuments at Memphis.170 His successor was Tirhaka, the Taharka of the monuments. The list of Manetho describes him as not being the son of his predecessor. We do not know in what way he came to the throne of Egypt; it appears that he got the crown by force; we can only establish the fact that he obtained the sovereign power in the year 703 B.C.171 Considerable relics of his buildings remain in his native land at Napata. Among them are especially prominent the ruins of a great temple, just as all the buildings there are wholly in Egyptian style.172 In Egypt Tirhaka's name occurs frequently on the walls of Karnak. On the portals of the temple of Medinet Habu, we see him before the face of Ammon brandishing his war-club over ten bearded forms. The inscription tells us that he overcame the black land (Kemi, Egypt), and the red land; on a memorial stone of Dongola the names of the regions and tribes are given, which he subjugated there in the distant south; names quite unknown and inexplicable to us.173 With Megasthenes it is the Ethiopian Tearkon (Tirhaka), a mighty warrior, who subjugated Libya, advanced as far as the Pillars of Hercules, and even crossed into Europe.174 We shall see that as soon as he ascended the throne his attention was occupied in the East, and that he fought with success in Syria at this time. What he may have afterwards accomplished against the negroes, and perhaps against tribes of Libya, in almost thirty years we cannot ascertain accurately. The severest struggles awaited him in the last decade of his reign, in which a mighty opponent rose up against him, with whom he wrestled stubbornly but without success.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FIRST COLLISION OF ASSYRIA AND EGYPT
When Tiglath Pilesar ascended the throne of Assyria, he first compelled Babylonia to recognise his supremacy; after that he advanced into the table land of Iran, as far as Arachosia, and there at the least maintained his supremacy far and wide over the Medes. To the North he fought against Nairi and Urarti, against Kummukh and Tubal (743 B.C.); even the union into which the distressed princes of that region entered against him did not protect them; after a second subjugation the Tubal, i. e. the Tibarenes, received a prince from the hand of Tiglath Pilesar (735 B.C.). Meanwhile he had already overthrown Arpad in the West, which had resisted his predecessors so vigorously in a struggle which continued for three years; received tribute from Karchemish, Damascus, and Tyre; and placed the region of Amanus, Lebanon, Hadrach, and several districts of Hamath under Assyrian viceroys (742-740 B.C.). Two years afterwards the princes of Cilicia, of Hamath, of Byblus, Menahem king of Israel, and Zabibieh, the queen of the Arabs, submitted (738 B.C.). The appeal of Ahaz for help brought
Mariette, "Bab. Athen. Franc." p. 58-62.
Ælian. "Hist. An." 11, 11.
Ælian.
De Rougé, "Mélanges d'Archéol." 1, 37, concludes from the monuments of Tirhaka and the statue of Ameniritis, that Kashta succeeded Pianchi, that Sabakon and the others are children of Kashta (?) According to Brugsch the – ka in Shabaka and Shabataka is the attached article of the Barabra language. Hence it is explained how Saba(ka) can become Seveh among the Hebrews, or Sabhi among the Assyrians. Cf. Oppert. "Mémoire sur les rapports de l'Egypte et de l'Assyrie," p. 12-14.
Herod. 2, 137-141.
Diod. 1, 45, 65.
I have already been able to fix the end of the Ramessids, the date of the Tanites and Bubastites, by the date of the accession of Shishak in the Hebrew reckoning; the length of the dynasty of the Tanites in Manetho; and the length of the Bubastites as corrected by the monuments, and the synchronism of the first Olympiad for Petubastis. For the period from the end of the Bubastites to the accession of Sabakon, the important points are the seventh Olympiad for Bocchoris, and the sarcophagus of the Apis of Bokenranef. If Bocchoris came to the throne in the year 753 B.C., Ssheshonk IV. died in the year 780 B.C.; if this was the thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth of his reign, the successor of the Apis buried in the thirty-seventh year of Ssheshonk might certainly live to the year 748, the sixth year of Bocchoris according to my reckoning. It is decisive for Sabakon's accession in Egypt that Hoshea of Israel undoubtedly ascended the throne in 734 B.C. (p. 16, note; 48). Shalmanesar IV. of Assyria marched against Israel in the year 726 B.C., when he had discovered the conspiracy of Hoshea with Seveh (Sabakon, p. 69). Hoshea must, therefore, have negotiated with Seveh in 727 B.C. at the latest, and probably earlier. Sabakon must have been previously established on the throne of Egypt. He cannot, therefore, have conquered Egypt later than 730 B.C. Bocchoris therefore reigned 23 years (753-730 B.C.); the time which Manetho allots to Bocchoris, six years, is too short for the completion of his legislation and the attainment of that fame as a legislator which he left behind him, according to the account of the Greeks. That Tirhaka reigned over Meroe and Egypt in the year 702 at the latest, is proved by the battle of Eltekeh, which was fought in 701 B.C. (p. 125). If Seveh, who negotiated with Hoshea, is supposed to be Sabataka, the conquest of Egypt by Sabakon must be put in the year 739. The Apis discovered in the twenty-sixth year of Tirhaka and buried in the twentieth year of Psammetichus, shows that according to the chronology of that period, Psammetichus was regarded as the immediate successor of Tirhaka. According to the reign of 54 years allotted to him by Herodotus and Manetho, Psammetichus begins in 664 B.C., since his death is fixed with certainty in 610 B.C. If Tirhaka's reign over Egypt began in the year 703 B.C., the year 678 would be the twenty-sixth of his reign; the Apis lived down to the twentieth year of the reign of Psammetichus,
Goodwin in Chabas, "Mélanges," 1, 249 ff.
Among the Hebrews, the king with whom Hoshea of Israel (734-722 B.C.), negotiates is called Seveh (So). Sargon's inscriptions name the opponent against whom he fought at Raphia in the year 720 B.C. "Sabhi, Sar of the land of Muzur," and also "Sabhi Siltannu of Muzur." The inscription of Karnak gives Sabakon's (Shabaka's) twelfth year; we must, therefore, although Manetho's list allows him only eight years, assume that Sabakon was the opponent of Sargon at Raphia, as stated in a preceding note. If Sabakon died immediately after his twelfth year, he died in 717 B.C. The ruler of Egypt who pays tribute to Sargon in the year 716, is repeatedly called by the Assyrian inscriptions, "Pirhu (Pharaoh), Sar of Muzur." So in the cylinder of G. Smith ("Disc." p. 295), the ruler of Egypt, who unites with Ashdod in the year 711 B.C., is called "Pirhu Sar of Muzur;" finally, the prince who delivers up Yaman, when it has been mentioned that Yaman fled beyond Egypt into the border land of Miluhhi, is called by Sargon "Sar Miluhhi." The Pharaoh, Sar Muzur, whom we find on the throne of Egypt in 716 to 711 B.C., and the Sar Miluhhi, who gives up Yaman, can only be Shabataka-Sebichus, the successor of Sabakon.
Mariette, "Monuments," pl. 29 e.
Not much weight could be laid on the observation in the Palatine codex of Hieronymus (Jerome); Tarachus (ab Æthiopia duxit exercitum), Sebico interfecto Ægyptiis regnavit annis xx.; but in the inscription of Medinet Habu Tirhaka calls himself conqueror of Kemi,
Lepsius, "Briefe," s. 239, 275.
Brugsch, "Geogr." 1, 163.
Strabo, p. 61, 686, 687. Büdinger's view ("Ægypt. Forschung. Herodots," 2, 32), that we must recognise Tirhaka in the Etearchus of Herodotus might be adopted if the narrative did not too definitely point out travelling Cyrenæans as the source; and the founding of Cyrene cannot be carried back to the time of Tirhaka.