Among these princes, by means of the Assyrians, Necho and his son Psammetichus rose into power. It was Esarhaddon who entrusted to Necho the government of Memphis and Sais. If Herodotus states that Sabakon put Necho, the father of Psammetichus, to death, the inscriptions of Assurbanipal prove the contrary. It must, therefore, have been the grandfather of Psammetichus, the Nechepsus of Manetho, who suffered this fate, and he must have suffered at the hands of Tirhaka, and not at the hands of Sabakon.[566] The flight of Psammetichus before Sabakon into Syria, which Herodotus relates, cannot have taken place till Tirhaka's time. In the account given by Herodotus only so much can be regarded as certain as is also clear from Manetho's list--_i.e._ that Necho and Psammetichus belonged to the district of Sais. Though raised by Esarhaddon, Necho began, after the death of that prince and the first campaign of Assurbanipal to Egypt, to join in a conspiracy with Tirhaka in connection with two of his fellow-vassals. He was taken prisoner and carried to Nineveh, but received pardon, and was, at any rate, again placed over Sais. His son, who had assumed the Assyrian name of Neboshezban, received the canton of Athribis. Necho died towards the year 664 B.C.; his son succeeded him in the administration of the district of Sais. Ten or twelve years afterwards (653 B.C.[567]), apparently availing himself of the dissension which broke out in the royal house of Assyria, the rebellion of Samul-sum-ukin against his brother, he undertook to liberate Egypt from the dominion of the Medes, and at the same time to make himself master of Egypt. As to the manner in which this was done, and the means of doing it, we have no information beyond very scanty facts, suppositions, and conclusions. We saw above, from the inscriptions of Assurbanipal, that Psammetichus acted in concert with Gyges of Lydia, that "Gyges sent his power to aid him in breaking off the yoke of the Assyrians" (p. 170). The Ionians and Carians in brazen armour, in Herodotus, who come up from the sea, were thus the soldiers whom Gyges sent over the sea. He could only send his auxiliaries or Ionian vessels; and that he was in close combination with Carians will be made clear below. This fact does not make it at all impossible that Psammetichus before he revolted did not on his part gain the favour of the Ionians and Phenicians by opening the harbours of his canton, and favouring their trade, as Diodorus states (p. 298). This would give the harbour cities of the Greeks in Asia Minor sufficient reason to support strongly the rising of Psammetichus. For the independent support of Psammetichus by the Ionian cities of Asia Minor we have evidence in a statement of Strabo, according to which thirty ships from Miletus were active in the cause of Psammetichus, and also the position afterwards assigned to the Ionians in Egypt under the reign of Psammetichus. The ships of the Milesians are said to have conquered