Psammetichus, the head of the Saïte dynasty, was, it is said, the first king of Egypt who dared shake off the yoke of the laws imposed from time immemorial on royalty.[19] Relying on an army of foreign mercenaries, Arabians, Carians, and Ionian Greeks, he was not afraid of violating the privileges of the military class, and thus a revolution was effected in Egypt which became fatal to the country. “Two hundred and forty thousand Egyptian warriors revolted.... They therefore conferred together, and with one accord abandoned Psammetichus to go among the Ethiopians. Psammetichus, hearing of it, pursued them. When he overtook them, he implored them for a long time not to abandon their gods, their wives, and their children. Then one of them replied that everywhere ... they could find wives and children.”[20] There are such bold colors in the picture of Herodotus that modesty requires us to efface them, but we may say that he depicts to the life the brutal cynicism into which idleness had caused the military class to fall. Whatever their wrongs on the part of the king, it is difficult to allow they were right in carrying their resentment so far as to abandon their religion, their families, and their country. When, less than a century after, the Persians, led by Cambyses, invaded the land, the unarmed nation could offer no resistance, and Egypt was devastated. It had not recovered from this disaster when it fell into the power of Alexander. The military system of ancient Egypt possessed, nevertheless, several advantages which should be noticed. First: Exemption from military service ensured the tillers of the soil complete stability to their occupation, so that war did not, as among modern nations, hinder the cultivation of the land by enrolling the ablest part of the population and endangering the subsistence of the country. On the other hand, the possession of landed property guaranteed the patriotism of the soldiers, who, as Diodorus justly remarks, defended their country with all the more ardor that they were at the same time the safeguards of their own property. Finally, the perpetuity of the military service in the same families must have singularly favored 71 the development of the art of war, respect for discipline, and the maintenance of an _esprit de corps_ in the army. After the expulsion of the Hyksos, the Egyptians, inured to war by their long struggles against these foreign invaders, obtained great victories in Asia, under their kings, Ahmes (Amosis), Thothmes III., and Rameses II., called the great Sesostris by the Greeks. The military pre-eminence of Egypt is attested by the Holy Scriptures in the prophecies of Isaiah respecting her downfall.