(9) _The Lower Empire_ is the name given by scholars to the period of the twenty-sixth dynasty, 663-525 B. C. This dynasty was founded by Psammetik I, who became the viceroy of Egypt under Assurbanipal, of Assyria, in 663 B. C. Psammetik was descended from a native Egyptian family of the city of Sais in the western Delta, and a number of his ancestors had been prominent in the history of Egypt during the preceding century. At first he was a vassal of Assyria, but soon troubles in the eastern part of the Assyrian dominions enabled him to make Egypt independent. The Egyptians, finding themselves once more free under a native dynasty, experienced a great revival of national feeling. Everything Egyptian interested them. They looked with particular affection upon the age of the pyramid builders, who lived more than two thousand years before them. They revived old names and old titles, and emulated the art of the olden days. They manifested such vigor and originality withal, that the art of the lower empire rivals that of the best periods of Egyptian history. Necho, the son and successor of Psammetichus, endeavored, as Assyria was declining to her fall, to regain an Asiatic empire. Josiah, of Judah, who sought to thwart him, was defeated by Necho and killed at the battle of Megiddo in 608 B. C. (2 Kings 23:29). Necho afterward deposed Jehoahaz and took him captive to Egypt (2 Kings 23:34). Four years later, when Necho made a second campaign into Asia, he was defeated by Nebuchadrezzar at Charchemish on the Euphrates, and compelled to hastily retreat to Egypt, hotly pursued by the Babylonians. Jeremiah, who perhaps caught sight of the rapidly moving armies from the Judæan hills, has given a vivid account of the flight in Jeremiah 46. Jeremiah considered this event so important that he began then to commit his prophecies to writing. (See Jeremiah 36.) After this Necho devoted himself to the internal government of Egypt, though he became the patron of an enterprise for the circumnavigation of Africa, which was carried out by some Phœnicians. (See Herodotus, IV, 42.) Hophra, a later king of this dynasty (588-569 B. C.), in order to gain influence in Asia, tempted King Zedekiah to rebel against Babylon, and thus lured the little state of Judah to its destruction. During the reign of Hophra’s successor, Amosis II, Cyrus the Great founded the Persian empire, and in 525 B. C. Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, overthrew the twenty-sixth dynasty, and made Egypt a Persian province.