ect of their disaster
remained except an additional incentive for hating Nineveh, and a
determination more relentless than ever not to spare her when the day of
her overthrow should come and they should have her in their power.

It was impossible for so violent and so prolonged a crisis to take place
without in some degree injuring the prestige of the empire. Subjects
and allies of long standing remained loyal, but those only recently
subjugated by conquest, as well as the neighbouring independent
kingdoms, without hesitation threw off the yoke of suzerainty or of
obligatory friendship under which they had chafed. Egypt freed herself
from foreign domination as soon as the possibilities of war with Elam
had shown themselves, and it was Psammetichus of Sais, son of Necho, one
of the princes most favoured by the court of Nineveh, who set on foot
this campaign against his former patron. He expelled the Assyrian
garrisons, reduced the petty native princes to submission, and once
more set up the kingdom of the Pharaohs from Elephantine to the Syrian
desert, without Assur-bani-pal having been able to spare a single
soldier to prevent him, or to bring him back to a sense of his duty. The
details of his proceedings are unknown to us: we learn only that he owed
his success to mercenaries imported from Asia Minor, and the Assyrian
chroniclers, unaccustomed to discriminate between the different peoples
dwelling on the shores of the AEgean, believed that these auxiliaries
were supplied to the Pharaoh by the only sovereign with whom they had
had any dealings, namely, Gyges, King of Lydia. That Gyges had had
negotiations with Psammetichus and procured assistance for him has not
yet been proved, but to assert that he was incapable of conceiving and
executing such a design is quite a different matter. On the contrary,
all the information we possess concerning his reign shows that he was
daring in his political undertakings, and anxious to court
alliances with the most distant countries. The man who tried to draw
Assur-bani-pal into a joint enterprise against the Cimmerians would not
have hesitated to ally himself with Psammetichus if he hoped to gain
the least profit from so doing. Constant intercourse by sea took place
between Ionia or Caria and Egypt, and no event of any importance
could occur in the Delta without being promptly reported in Ephesus or
Miletus. Before this time the Heraclid rulers of Sardes had lived on
excellent terms