under the walls of Memphis, close to the temple of
Isis. Such is the legendary account of the Saite renaissance; its true
history is not yet clearly and precisely known. Egypt was in a state
of complete disintegration when Psammetichus at length revived the
ambitious projects of his family, but the dissolution of the various
component parts had not everywhere taken place in the same manner.

[Illustration: 335.jpg THREE HOPLITES IN ACTION]

Drawn by faucher-Gudin, from an archaic vase-painting in the
collection of Salzmann.

In the north, the Delta and the Nile valley, as far as Siut, were in the
power of a military aristocracy, supported by irregular native troops
and bands of mercenaries, for the most part of Libyan extraction, who
were always designated by the generic name of Mashauasha. Most of these
nobles were in possession of not more than two or three cities apiece:
they had barely a sufficient number of supporters to maintain their
precarious existence in their restricted domains, and would soon have
succumbed to the attacks of their stronger neighbours, had they not
found a powerful protector to assist them. They had finally separated
themselves into two groups, divided roughly by the central arm of the
Nile. One group comprised the districts that might be designated as
the Asiatic zone of the country--Heliopolis, Bubastis, Mendes, Tanis,
Busiris, and Seben-nytos--and it recognised as chief the lord of one or
other of those wealthy cities, now the ruler of Bubastis, now of Tanis,
and lastly Pakruru of Pisaptit. The second group centred in the lords
of Sais, to whom the possession of Memphis had secured a preponderating
voice in the counsels of the state for more than a century.*

* This grouping, which might already have been suspected
from the manner in which the Assyrian and Egyptian monuments
of the period show us the feudal princes rallying round
Necho I. and Pakruru, is indicated by the details in the
demotic romance published by Krall, where the foundation of
the story is the state of Egypt in the time of the "twelve
kings."

The fiefs and kingdoms of Middle Egypt wavered between the two
groups, playing, however, a merely passive part in affairs: abandoning
themselves to the stream of events rather than attempting to direct it,
they owed allegiance to Sais and Tanis alternately as each prevailed
over its rival. On passing thence into the Thebaid a differ