[84] A descendant, doubtless, of the twenty-second dynasty kings, of Assyrian origin. [85] This would be meant to apply only to all the rival claimants to sovereignty in the north, not to his own successors. [86] The priests were prohibited from eating fish, which was considered as unclean food—at any rate sea fish, of which the more devout and scrupulous Egyptians would not partake. [87] Compare Isa. xi. 11, xxvii. 13; Hosea ix. 6. [88] Isa. xxx. 4-7. [89] He was an Egyptian, and son of Tafnekht, who headed the league of northern chiefs against Piankhi (p. 246). [90] In this and in other quotations from the Old Testament the renderings of Ewald and Stanley have sometimes been adopted. CHAPTER XIV. Psammetichus and the Saite Dynasty—The Persian Conquest—Last Independent Dynasties. (666-340 B.C.) After the capture and sack of Thebes, the successors of Tirhakah made no further attempts to recover their lost dominion. The princes who ruled in the north, more or less as the vassals of Assyria, were often engaged in mutual strife, and the twenty satrapies established there by Esar-haddon had dwindled down to twelve—the ‘Dodecarchy,’ of Greek writers. Bravest and most conspicuous amongst the twelve princes was Psamtek (Psammetichus), son of that Necho who had been imprisoned and restored by Assur-bani-pal[91] (p. 260). Banished by the jealousy of his rivals, Psammetichus[92] determined on a new and energetic policy. He formed an alliance with the king of Lydia, and obtained the assistance of a large number of Greek mercenaries—chiefly Carians and Ionians by birth. He resolved, by their aid, to win back the independence of Egypt by driving out the Assyrians, and to reunite the divided land, by bringing it all under his own sceptre. At Momemphis he defeated the Assyrians in a great battle, and they left Egypt to return no more. Assur-bani-pal, who had conquered Egypt and devastated Thebes, was still reigning at Nineveh; and it must have been not a little humiliating to his pride, to be unable to make another attempt to regain what he had lost. But the time had come when Assyria had no soldiers to spare for foreign conquests; they were all wanted at home to defend the monarchy. Weakened by the incessant warfare that had won so triumphant a military ascendency, she was assailed on every side by the nations to whom she had long been a terror, and by her own subject provinces, ever restlessly eager to cast off the yoke of her tyranny.