Manetho, that he burnt Bocchoris alive, and the statement of Herodotus, that he put to death Necho of Sais, do not very well agree. The last Bubastites, Petubastis and Osorkon, had not been able to maintain the power of the crown against the lords of the districts, and the brave and skilful attempt to restore the power of the Pharaohs made by Tnephachtus and Bocchoris was wrecked. After Bocchoris succumbed to the Ethiopians in the year 730 B.C.[167] Egypt obeyed a foreign ruler. The king of Napata was also the Pharaoh of Egypt; Egypt and Meroe were united. The chief importance of the change thus accomplished lay in the fact that the valley of the Nile, from the mouths as far as Dongola, was united into one state; that the warlike power of Egypt, which had become extinct under the later Ramessids, and then was replaced by Libyan mercenaries to the ruin of Egypt, was now replaced by the unspent vigour of the Ethiopians; and the combination of the latter with the rich means and resources of Egypt availed to strengthen the country considerably, and restore her to her previous position. For the internal condition of Egypt the new sovereignty brought hardly any other change than this, that the rulers now found a strong point of support in their own land. The dynasties which, so far as we can see, Tnephachtus and Bocchoris overcame or removed, we find again at the head of their districts under the Ethiopians. It is possible that oppressed or expelled families among these invited or supported Sabakon's invasion of Egypt, just as in the preceding generation the princes of Upper Egypt summoned Pianchi to support them against the father of Bocchoris. That sovereigns and hereditary lords were at the head of the districts of Egypt under Sabaka and his successors of Meroe is beyond a doubt. Thus the rule of Sabakon and his Ethiopian successors might appear as a restoration of the old state of affairs in contrast to the innovations of Tnephachtus and Bocchoris, and the more so, as these rulers jealously adopted the national worship. We saw how earnest Pianchi was in visiting the temples of Egypt; how he offered sacrifice to his father Thot, his father Ptah, his father Ra, and saw the last in his shrine at Heliopolis; the memorial stone even assures us that of the princes who submitted to him he allowed those only to come into his presence at that time who had eaten no fish, _i.e._ who strictly observed the rules of purification. It was the reverence of the priests, the participation in the worship, the correct behaviour, in which Sabakon and his Ethiopian successors come forward as genuine followers of the Pharaohs, which appear to have won for Sabakon--who is to the Greeks the representative of the Ethiopian dynasty--that reputation for gentleness and justice which Herodotus and Diodorus repeat from the tradition of the Egyptians. At the temples at Memphis,[168] at Luxor, and Karnak, Sabakon undertook works of restoration.