thalassocrats from 725 to 707 B.C.), who are said by all our ancient authorities to have been the basis of Psamtek’s power[495]. If the king who ruled Egypt in 700 B.C. based his power on the trading and industrial classes, and a king who reigned twenty years earlier drew up the first commercial code in Egypt, while under the predecessor of this latter king Egypt had been supreme at sea, then by 670 B.C. conditions may well have been favourable for the commercial activities of Prince Psammetichus as described by Diodorus. [Sidenote: Tafnekht and probably Bocchoris and Sethon were (not kings of all Egypt but) princes of Sais, the city of Psammetichus, and belonged possibly to the same family as Psammetichus.] But still more will this have been so if, as seems likely, both Sethon and Bocchoris were Saite princes of the same house as Psammetichus himself. The evidence is weak and inconclusive and for that reason difficult to summarize shortly. But the conclusions that it seems to point to are sufficiently important to make the attempt worth while. One point seems fairly certain. Sethon was not the name of the conqueror of the Assyrians. Far more probably it was his title, a graecized form of the priestly title stm, stne, setmi, or satni[496]. If his actual name is still doubtful, it is not for lack of suggestions. Sethon has been identified with (_a_) Khamois son of Ramses II[497], (_b_) Shabaka, first king of the Ethiopian dynasty[498], (_c_) Shabataka, successor of Shabaka[499], (_d_) Taharqa, the Biblical Tirhaka[500].