This concludes our examination of the history of the early Saites. It points to a consistent policy carried out with a remarkable combination of perseverance and versatility by a succession of rulers who may have been all of a single family and who certainly inherited in unbroken succession the same aims and the same essential method of attaining them, which was marked out for them by the place and the age they lived in. The Saite power grew to be supreme in Egypt while Ethiopians and Assyrians were contending for the land. From force of circumstances Sais had to be a military power. But the city owed its victory over its rivals between 721 and 670 B.C. first and foremost to the fact that it lay off the main track of war. As always when Egypt is involved in a great war it is the Eastern frontier that faces the main enemy. Sais was not always able to remain neutral, but lying right away in the West it was able at least to preserve and even to develop its commerce. It seized its opportunity and did so. The commercial code of Bocchoris, the hucksters and artizans and tradespeople of Sethon, and the cargoes of Psammetichus mark three great stages in the development, at the end of which, to quote the words of Maspero, “the valley of the Nile becomes a vast workshop, where work was carried on with unparalleled activity[535].” All these considerations lend a general probability to the narrative of Diodorus. They do not however specially confirm his statements about Psamtek’s trading with the Greeks. [Sidenote: Sais and Greece: foundation of Naukratis:] Greek commerce in Egypt in the days of the Saites is bound up with the name of Naukratis. “In the days of old,” says Herodotus[536], “Naukratis was the only emporium in Egypt. There was none other.” This is an overstatement the origin of which will be seen when we come to deal with Amasis, the last but one of the Saite Pharaohs. But it implies that Naukratis eclipsed in importance all the other Greek trading stations in the country. It concerns us therefore to enquire what was the position of Naukratis in the days of Psammetichus. The question has been much disputed, especially since the eighties of the last century, when the site was excavated by Petrie and Ernest Gardner, and an account of the city was published by Petrie[537] based on the literary sources and the results of the dig. As however some of the excavators’ archaeological conclusions have been challenged in many quarters, and as too some important archaeological evidence has only recently come to light, it may be worth while to summarise briefly the whole body of available material. [Sidenote: (_a_) literary evidence;]