in Phoenicia* and Cyprus,
and the shekhs of the desert preserved their authority over the
marauding and semi-nomadic tribes of Idumasa, Nabatsea, Moab, and Ammon,
and the wandering Bedawin on the Euphrates and the Khabur. Egypt,
under Darius, remained what she had been under the Saitic and Ethiopian
dynasties, a feudal state governed by a Pharaoh, who, though a
foreigner, was yet reputed to be of the solar race; the land continued
to be divided unequally into diverse principalities, Thebes still
preserving its character as a theocracy under the guidance of the
pallacide of Amon and her priestly counsellors, while the other
districts subsisted under military chieftains. Our information
concerning the organisation of the central and eastern provinces is
incomplete, but it is certain that here also the same system prevailed.
In the years of peace which succeeded the troubled opening of his reign,
that is, from 519 to 515 B.C.,** Darius divided the whole empire into
satrapies, whose number varied at different periods of his reign from
twenty to twenty-three, and even twenty-eight.***

* Three kings, viz. the kings of Sidon, Tyre, and Arvad,
bore commands in the Phoenician fleet of Xerxes.

** Herodotus states that this dividing of the empire into
provinces took place immediately after the accession of
Darius, and this mistake is explained by the fact that he
ignores almost entirely the civil wars which filled the
earliest years of the reign. His enumeration of twenty
satrapies comprises India and omits Thrace, which enables us
to refer the drawing up of his list to a period before the
Scythian campaign, viz. before 514 B.C. Herodotus very
probably copied it from the work of Hecatseus of Miletus,
and consequently it reproduces a document contemporary with
Darius himself.

*** The number twenty is, as has been remarked, that given
by Herodotus, and probably by Hecataeus of Miletus. The great
Behistun Inscription enumerates twenty-three countries, and
the Inscription of Nakhsh-i-Rustem gives twenty-eight.

Persia proper was not included among these, for she had been the cradle
of the reigning house, and the instrument of conquest.*

* In the great Behistun Inscription Darius mentions Persia
first of all the countries in his possession. In the
Inscription E of Persepolis he omits it entirely, and in
that of Nakhsh-i-