he represents the Scythians as passing beyond the cities of the Philistines to the borders of Egypt, where Psammetichus, by gifts and entreaties, induces them to desist from any further advance, and turn back to Syria. If the war of Psammetichus in Syria is placed after the incursion of the Scythians, _i.e._ in the last fifteen years of his reign, another event shortly to be mentioned will have also to be placed at the end of his reign,--an event which must certainly have belonged to a previous period. In no case did Psammetichus obtain success in Syria. If his successor had to conquer Gaza, _i.e._ the city nearest Egypt, it is obvious that Psammetichus maintained none of these border cities, though one or other may have been brought for a time into his power. Egypt had been liberated and restored, but not by her own power. We saw that even from the times of the later Ramessids the military power of Egypt had been replaced by foreign mercenaries, especially by Libyans; that the house of the Pharaohs of Bubastis owed its rise to the command of these troops. We saw how under these Pharaohs, and those of the succeeding house of Tanis, the leaders of these troops became hereditary lords of the districts--how these dynasties summoned the Ethiopians against Tnephachtus and Bocchoris, and then others, including Necho and Psammetichus, joined Assyria against the Ethiopians. Before the reign of Sabakon it was chiefly Libyans on whom the power of the princes rested; under Sabakon, Sevechus, and Tirhaka it was the Ethiopians who supported the authority of the crown; and in the same way Psammetichus succeeded in breaking loose from Assyria, and establishing his authority in Egypt, and on the throne of the Pharaohs, mainly by strangers and mercenaries, by Ionians and Carians. Psammetichus could not do without them. In his internal administration they were required to keep down the overthrown dynastic families, and he needed them to protect his kingdom from without. His elevation, the foundation of his power, the restoration of Egypt, rested on the attempt to establish Egypt and his own crown, as against Ethiopia and Assyria, on a third external power, the mariners of the north. Psammetichus therefore was compelled to give preference to Ionians and Carians over the native soldiers, the warrior caste, who, under the dominion of the kings of Napata, must obviously have received a considerable addition of Ethiopians from the native land of the kings. In the Syrian war also, as Diodorus tells us, the Ionians and Carians received the place of honour on the right wing, in the order of battle. The Ionians and Carians were entrusted with the protection of the eastern border, the most important border of the kingdom. There they were placed in a standing camp, on the Pelusic arm of the Nile; on one bank was the camp of the Ionians, on the other the camp of the Carians.[571] These Ionians and Carians--their numbers under the