rm the narrative as it now
stands.

The Egyptians considered the event no less miraculous than did the
Hebrews, and one of their popular tales ascribed the prodigy to Phtah,
the god of Memphis. Sethon, the high priest of Phtah, lived in a time of
national distress, and the warrior class, whom he had deprived of some
of its privileges, refused to take up arms in his behalf. He repaired,
therefore, to the temple to implore divine assistance, and, falling
asleep, was visited by a dream. The god appeared to him, and promised
to send him some auxiliaries who should ensure him success. He enlisted
such of the Egyptians as were willing to follow him, shopkeepers,
fullers, and sutlers, and led them to Pelusium to resist the threatened
invasion. In the night a legion of field-mice came forth, whence no one
knew, and, noiselessly spreading throughout the camp of the Assyrians,
gnawed the quivers, the bowstrings, and the straps of the bucklers in
such a way that, on the morrow, the enemy, finding themselves disarmed,
fled after a mere pretence at resistance, and suffered severe losses. A
statue was long shown in the temple at Memphis portraying this Sethon:
he was represented holding a mouse in his hand, and the inscription bade
men reverence the god who had wrought this miracle.*

* The statue with which this legend has been connected, must
have represented a king offering the image of a mouse
crouching on a basket, like the cynocephalus on the
hieroglyphic sign which denotes centuries, or the frog of
the goddess Hiqit. Historians have desired to recognise in
Sethon a King Zet of the XXIIIth dynasty, or even Shabitoku
of the XXVth dynasty; Krall identified him with Satni in the
demotic story of Satni-Umois.

The disaster was a terrible one: Sennacherib's triumphant advance was
suddenly checked, and he was forced to return to Asia when the goal of
his ambition was almost reached. The loss of a single army, however much
to be deplored, was not irreparable, since Assyria could furnish her
sovereign with a second force as numerous as that which lay buried in
the desert on the road to Egypt, but it was uncertain what effect the
news of the calamity and the sight of the survivors might have on the
minds of his subjects and rivals. The latter took no immediate action,
and the secret joy which they must have experienced did not blind them
to the real facts of the case; for though the power