His name and title here are Raneferka Shabaka. On the pillars of the main gateway at Karnak the goddess Hathor embraces him; the inscription on this gate describes him as "the good god, the giver of life for ever, like the sun," and declares that he has received the tribute of the negroes, and the tribute of the Chalu, _i.e._ the inhabitants of Palestine. How the latter statement is to be explained will become clear afterwards; we shall see that Sabakon had much better reason to be silent about the events in Syria than to boast of them. Sabakon died in the year 717 B.C.,[169] and left the empire over Napata and Egypt to his own son Sebichus, as Manetho calls him; Shabataka as the name is given on monuments at Memphis.[170] His successor was Tirhaka, the Taharka of the monuments. The list of Manetho describes him as not being the son of his predecessor. We do not know in what way he came to the throne of Egypt; it appears that he got the crown by force; we can only establish the fact that he obtained the sovereign power in the year 703 B.C.[171] Considerable relics of his buildings remain in his native land at Napata. Among them are especially prominent the ruins of a great temple, just as all the buildings there are wholly in Egyptian style.[172] In Egypt Tirhaka's name occurs frequently on the walls of Karnak. On the portals of the temple of Medinet Habu, we see him before the face of Ammon brandishing his war-club over ten bearded forms. The inscription tells us that he overcame the black land (Kemi, Egypt), and the red land; on a memorial stone of Dongola the names of the regions and tribes are given, which he subjugated there in the distant south; names quite unknown and inexplicable to us.[173] With Megasthenes it is the Ethiopian Tearkon (Tirhaka), a mighty warrior, who subjugated Libya, advanced as far as the Pillars of Hercules, and even crossed into Europe.[174] We shall see that as soon as he ascended the throne his attention was occupied in the East, and that he fought with success in Syria at this time. What he may have afterwards accomplished against the negroes, and perhaps against tribes of Libya, in almost thirty years we cannot ascertain accurately. The severest struggles awaited him in the last decade of his reign, in which a mighty opponent rose up against him, with whom he wrestled stubbornly but without success. FOOTNOTES: [127] Vol. i. 179. [128] Lepsius, "Abh. Berl. Akad." 1856, s. 258; Brugsch, "Hist. of Egypt," II. p. 193. [129] It ends in Brugsch, _loc. cit._ II. 198, with Ramses XVI. [130] II. 229, _note_. [131] II. 155. [132] Maspero reads Psiuncha; Brugsch, Pisebkhan. [133] In the unpublished inscription of Abydus in Brugsch, "Hist. of Egypt," II. p. 199. [134] Brugsch, _loc. cit._ II. p. 204. [135] According to Brugsch, Rakamat, or Karamat, was not the wife of Osorkon, but of Ssheshonk, _loc. cit._, p. 204.