The beginning of the 2nth d^'nasty was a time of disaster to Egypt. Tirhakah was either dead or had retired to Ethiopia, and Egypt fell into the hands of several petty princes, probablj' the dodccarchs of He- rodotus, whose rule precedes, and |)erhnps overlaps, that of Psaninietichus I, who is said to have been at first a dodecarch. In this time Esarhaddon twice in- vaded and conquered the country; but, after his sec- ond invasion, Psammetichus seems to have entirclj' thrown oflf the Assyrian yoke, and restored Egypt to somewhat of its ancient power. Tiiere are several passages in Scripture which probably refer to these invasions, and certainly show the relation of Ethiopia to Egypt at this time. The ])rophet Nahum, warning Nineveh, describes the fall of Tliebcs, " Art thou bet- ter than No Amon, that was situate among the- rivers, [that had] the waters round aWint it. whose ramp;irt [was] the sea, [and] lier wall from the sea.' Cush and Mizraim [were her] strength, and [it was] infi-
nite ; Put and Lubim were in thy help" (iii, S, 9). The sack and captivity of the city are then related. The exact period of Nahum is not known, but there is much probability that he lived about the time of the inva- sion of Jud»a by Sennacherib (i, 11, 12). See Na- hum. He therefore appears to refer to one of the con- quests of Egypt by Sennacherib, Sargon, or Shalma- neser. See No. The close alliance of Cush and Miz- raim seems to point to the period of the Ethiopian rule, when the states would have united against a com- mon enemy. Three chapters of Isaiah relate to the future of Ethiopia and Egypt, and it is probable that they contain what is virtually one connected suliject, although divided into a prophec}' against Ethio[)ia, the burden of Egypt, and the record of an event shown to prefigure the fall of both countries, these divisions having been followed by those who separated the book into chapters. The prophecy against Ethiopia is ex- tremel}' obscure. (See the version above.) It a] pears to foretell the calamity of Ethiopia to its farthest peo- ple, to whom messengers should be sent in vessels of papyrus, by the sea, here the Nile, as in the descrip- tion of Thebes by the prophet Nahum (/. c), bearing, probably, that news which is related in the next chap- ter. In the end the Ethiopians would send a present to the Lord at Zion (chap, xviii). Then follows " the burden of Egj'pt," apparentl}' foretelling the discord and strife of the dodecarchy, the delivering of the peo- ple into the hand of a cruel lord, probably the Assj'r- ian conqueror, the failure of the waters of Egj-pt and of its chief sources of revenue, and the partial convei'- sion of the Egyptians, and, as it seems, their ultimate admission to the Church (chap. xix). We then read how a Tartan, or general, of Sargon, the king of As- sj'ria, took Ashdod, no doubt with a garrison from the Egyptian army. At this time Isaiah was command- ed to walk " naked and barefoot," probably Avithout an outer garment, three years, as a sign to show how the Egj'ptians and Ethiopians, as no doubt had been the case with the garrison of Ashdod, probably of both na- tions, should be led captive by the king of Assyria. This captivity was to he witnessed by the Jews who trusted in Ethiopia and Egypt to he delivered from the king of Assyria, and the invasions of Egypt by Esar- haddon are therefore probably foretold (chap. xx). In the books of later prophets Ethiopia does not take this prominent place : no longer a great power, it oviiy ap- pears as furnishing part of the Egyptian forces or sharing the calamities of Egypt, as in the history of Egypt we find Ethiopia occupying a position of little or no political importance, the successors of Tirhakah in that country being perhaps tributaries of the kings of the 2Gth dynasty. In the description by Jeremiah of Pharaoh-Necho's army, the Ethiopians (Cush) j:re first spoken of among the foreign warriors mentioned as serving in it (xlvi, 9). Ezekiel prophecies the fear of Ethiopia at the overthrow of Egypt liy Nebuchad- nezzar (xxx, 4-9), and though the heljiers of Egypt were to fall, it does not seem that the invasion of their lands is necessarily to be understood. One passage illustrates the difficult 18th chapter of Isaiah : " In that day shall messengers go forth from me in ships to make ["secure" or] careless Ethiopia afraid, and great pain shall come upon them as in the day of Egypt" (Ezek. xxx, 9). Zephaniah, somewh;;t ear- lier, mentions the Ethiopians alone, predicting their overthrow (ii, 12). It is probable that the defeat of the Egyjitian army at Carchemish by Net uchadnezzar is referred to, or else the same king's invasion of Egypt.
The kings of Egypt do not appear to have regained the absolute rule of Ethiopia, or to have displaced the native kings, though it is probable that they made them tributary. I'nder Psammetichus I a revolt oc- curred in tlie Egyptian army, and a largo body of reb- els fled to Ethiopia, and thei-e established themselves. A Greek inscription on one of the colossi of the great
ETHIOPIA
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temple of Abu-Simbil, not far below the Second Cata- ract, records the passage of (.Ireek mercenaries on their return from an expedition up the river, "king Psani- aticluis" having, as it seems, not gone beyond Ele- l)hantine. This expedition was probably that which Herodotus mentions Psammetichus as having made in order to bring back the rebels (ii, 30), and, in any case, the inscription is valuable as the only record of the 2Gth dynasty which has been found above the First Cataract. It does not prove, more especially as the king remained at Elephantine, that he governed any part of Ethiopia. The next event of Ethiopian his- tory is the disastrous expedition of Cambj-ses, defeat- ed by the desert-march, and not by any valor of the invaded nation. From this time the country seems to have enjoj'ed tranquillity, until the earlier Ptolemies acquired part of Lower Nubia that was again lost to them in the decline of their dynasty. "When Egypt became a Roman province, Syene was its frontier town to the south ; but wlien, under Augustus, the garrison of that town had been overwhelmed by the Ethiopi- ans, the prsefect Petronius invaded Ethiopia, and took Napata, said to have been the capital of queen Can- dace. The extensive territor}' suLidued was not held, and though the names of souie of the Cassars are found in the temples of Lower Nubia, in Strabo's time Syene marlved the frontier. This part of Ethiopia must have been so unproductive, even before the falling of the level of the Nile, which Sir Gardner Wilkinson sup- poses to have happened between the early part of the 13th dynasty and the beginning of the 18th, that it may well have been regarded as a kind of neutral ground.