extent of the inhabitants of cities or of people who had fixed habı tations. Egypt still remains a principal seat of the caravan trade; yet but few of its inhabitants form part of those traveling communities, which are chiefly composed of the nomad tribes of interior Africa.

So far as we can discover, such was the state of Egyptian trade during the flourishing period, and that in which it continued without any remarkable change down to the time of Psammetichus. He, however, inaugurated some changes even during the dodecarchy and while he resided at Sais, by opening Lower Egypt to the Greek and Phoenician merchants; the products of the Delta were now advantageously exchanged for the manufactures of Phoenicia and Greece, whereby he did not fail to make for himself friends in those foreign countries. Although history be silent concerning the effect on Egypt which their conquests produced and their almost uninterrupted wars with the Phoenican cities, still we know it must in the issue have been rather disadvantageous, although in the progress somewhat profitable to Egypt.

In the reign of Amasis, however, the whole internal commerce of Egypt underwent a remarkable change. This prince who greatly admired the Greeks and was much given to luxury and licentiousness, opened at last to foreign merchants the mouths of the Nile, which had so long been barred against them; a concession which led to important changes in the normal and political character of the nation.

Naucratis, a city of the Delta, situated on the Canopian arm of the Nile, near whose mouth Alexandria, the seat, for a time, of the Ptolemaic dynasty, was afterwards erected, was assigned to such Greek merchants as desired to settle in Egypt. The commercial states of Greece were at the same time permitted to build temples in certain places for the accommodation of their traveling merchants, and which might also serve as marts for the merchandise, which they should send into Egypt.

The rivalry of the Greeks, especially those of Asia Minor, in their endeavor to profit by this privilege, is the surest proof of its importance. The principal and largest of those temples, which was called Hellenium, was founded by nine Greek colonial cities of Asia Minor, namely, by the Ionian colonies of Chios, Teos, Phocaea, and Clazomenae; by the Doric colonies of Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicarnassus and Phaselis; and by the Aeolian colony of Mitylene. Although afterwards many other towns claimed credit for

having taken a share in it, Herodotus assures us that those claims were without foundation. The Aegintae erected besides a particular temple for themselves, which they dedicated to Jupiter; the Samians another consecrated to Juno, and those of Miletus ananother consecrated to Apollo.

Under such restrictions as prudence seemed to him to dictate Amasis at first granted this permission to the Greeks. Their vessels were only allowed to enter the Canopian arm and they were obliged to land at Naucratis. If a ship happened to enter another mouth it was detained, and the captain was deprived of his liberty unless he swore that he was forced through necessity to do so. This done he was obliged to sail to Naucratis, or, if continual north winds prevented this, he had to send his freight in small Egyptian vessels round the Delta to Naucratis.

However strictly those rules were primarily enforced they must soon have fallen into disuse; as, after the conquest of Egypt by the Persians, the mouths of the Nile were made open to all nations.

The Egyptains, however, soon experienced the good effects of the liberality of Amasis; every part of Egypt enjoyed more prosperity than it ever had before, and the reign of this king was regarded as one of the happiest that the country had experienced. The dead capital, which had accumulated by a long trade with the gold countries, was now put into circulation; the new wares, imported by the Greeks, gave rise to new wants; and, as such an extensive novel market now opened, new branches of industry naturally sprung up.

This general movement of trade had the most noticeable effect in the extension and improvement of agriculture. "The Egyptians," says Herodotus, "had never before turned to so good account the produce of their fields," a natural consequence of the ready sale which they now found for their agricultural products in Europe and Asia. By the enactment of certain regulations one of which obliged every citizen under a heavy penalty to give annually an account to the chief of his district of the means by which he obtained his livelihood Amasis exerted himself to promote industry and commercial activity.

But, as the event proved, Egypt, in some measure, purchased this prosperity by sacrifice of her national character. The Greek merchants and their agents who now formed a separate and influential caste, under the name of interpreters now spread over all Egypt; and introduced with their Greek wares Greek manners and ideas.

Such a change as this must, however, have come sooner or later, even without the intervention of Amasis; the Egyptians could scarcely have preserved their former government and customs, after they had begun by conquests and treaties to come into close political contact with foreign nations. But, though the comparison of Egyptian and Greek deities might cause some slight change in religious notions, the deeply rooted institution of castes was a strong barrier against the introduction of novelties.

Upon the Egyptian commerce, especially that carried on by land, the Persian invasion must at first have had an unfavorable influence. Cambyses directed his armaments exactly against those places, which happened to be the principal seats of the caravan trade; against Ammonium and the principal places in Ethiopia; and though his bad success rendered this interruption only temporary, yet the re-establishment of the ancient course became difficult, in proportion as it had been regular before.

After, however, the first storms had subsided Egypt appears to have revived, especially under the mild government of Darius. The annual tribute which he imposed upon the country, and towards whose payment the neighboring Libya, Barca and Cyrene contributed, amounted to only seven hundred talents. To this, however, is to be added the corn required for the maintenance of the Persian garrison at Memphis (in which it is said 120,000 men were for a time quartered); all of which together would seem to have made a tax sufficiently large for Egypt. Of Darius the Egyptians always bore a grateful rememberance, notwithstanding the frequent revolts against the Persians.

When, in about thirty years after the death of Darius, Herodotus visited Egypt, the trade with Ethiopia and the interior of Africa had again revived. At this time any one could acquaint him with the general state of trade and with the chief routes leading to Meroë and Libya. He, moreover, enumerates the chief articles of trade which were imported at this period from the southern countries as well as the productions of Ethiopia (iii. 114). Any loss, which Egypt sustained in the land trade, was, at this time, fully made good by her maritime trade with the Greeks, which was less exposed to interruption and must have increased in activity in proportion as the hatred felt by both nations for the Persians brought them more frequently into contact and strengthened their connection.

Though it did occasion some few deviations from its course in

Asia, the Persian dominion taken altogether did not prove hurtful to commerce. Under its sway the Phoenician towns lost nothing of their splendor, it made the peoples of Asia better acquainted with each other; and the lively intercourse to which it gave rise must in consequence of the continual intercourse between Egypt and Asia have benefited the trade of the Nile's valley. But Egypt was affected far beyond this by the downfall of the Persian empire, an event which in its time gave rise to a new order of things, and which, in its place, succeeding pages may through some light upon.

The end of the splendid period of the Pharoahs is placed between the years 800 and 700 B. C. It was probably about the year 750 B. C. that Sabacus, the Ethiopian, conquered Thebes and all Upper Egypt; but it appears that the two dynasties of Tanis and Bubastis continued in Lower Egypt as contemporaries, if not as tributaries to this Ethiopic-Egyptian dynasty. The predictions of Isaiah concerning Egypt, which occupy about the whole of the 19th chapter of his book, were delivered perhaps a little before this time, and indicate the affairs of Egypt to have been in that period in an unsettled, if not in a stormy condition. Powerful convulsions must have distracted the country at this time of which the history in Herodotus only mentions the result, namely, that the Egyptians shook off the yoke of Sethos, the priest king* and instituted a government of twelve princes, to each of whom a particular district of Egypt was allotted. It may possibly have been that this division was made according to the then division of the land into nomes, for De Pauw (Recherches sur les Egyptiens, tom. ii, p. 324), says that this was the exact number of nomes which existed at this time in Egypt. It would seem from the accounts given by Herodotus from the priests that those dodecarchi were taken from the warrior caste and that it was intended that they should be subservient to the authority of the sacerdotal college and the chief priest, its head. If this were the intention the plan was soon after frustrated by Psammetichus, to whom the government over Sais, in Lower Egypt, was entrusted; for, by the actual help of Greek mercenaries, he expelled the other eleven rulers and took upon himself the sole dominion of Egypt.

Thus, according to the account in Herodotus (a differentiation of

* Says Rawlinson, Herodotus, Bk. ii, p. 219, note: Sethos, whom Herodotus calls a contempo. rary of Sennacherib, is unnoticed in Manetho's lists; and as Tirhaka was king of the whole country from Nepata, in Ethiopia, to the frontier of Syria, no other Pharaoh could have ruled at that time in Egypt. We, may therefore conclude that Herodotus has given to a priest of Ptah the title of king.".

the same is shown farther on), Psammetichus re-established the rule of the Pharaohs and his reign forms an epoch in Egyptian history. From the time of his attaining to the sole dominion down to the time of the Persian invasion, under Cambyses, Herodotus reckons it at one hundred and thirty years, viz.: Psammetichus, he reigned after the fifteen years of the dodecarchy thirty-nine years (617 B. C.); Necho, seventeen years; Psammis, six years; Apries, twenty-five years; Amasis, forty-four years; Psammenett, a year and a half. During the whole of this period Egypt continued as one government and kept up a constant communication with foreign nations, both Greek and Asiatic. It numbered among its rulers some princes who were men of considerable parts and with happy results to that country made it, in effect, a maritime power. The obscurity, therefore, which surrounds the early history of Egypt, becomes gradually dispelled, and the narrative of Herodotus, which says or implies that the Egyptian history here begins to have a higher degree of probability, becomes the more authentic; and we can also compare this history with that of the Jews, who, in their books, frequently refer to Egypt, with which country that people were in various ways historically connected.

In his interesting work, "The Pharaohs and their People," Mr. E. Berkeley appears to understand the Assyrian empire to have mixed a good deal in Egyptian affairs for a century or two prior to the time of Psammetichus; and as the Assyrian empire, both first and second, as so-called, has made such a considerable figure in history, involving in its somewhat transient conquests not only Egypt but the Jewish and other surrounding nations, it will be found eminently fitting for me to fill in here whatever may tend to throw light upon this subject, still keeping within my intended limits.

Mr. Berkeley, after tracing the history of the Israelites and showing that they had existed in the tribal state, in effect without an organized national government until the time of Solomon, expresses himself as of the opinion that the Egyptian influence is traceable in the Jewish court after the marriage of Solomon with the daughter of a Pharaoh, who reigned somewhere in the Delta, but that the alliance which this brought about between Egypt and Israel was of only short duration. Solomon having passed away a contention arose between Rehoboam, his son, and Jeroboam, a leader of the

* Necho and Apries are mentioned in the chronicies and prophets as Pharaoh Necho and Pharaoh Hophra.