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especially when the humble princes proposed to hand over their best horses. Despite Namlot’s neglect of “his” horses Piye dealt mercifully with him and the other rebels he encountered on his northward march. This was a mistake, but an attractive one. Piye was hopelessly old-fashioned in his piety, and perhaps he trusted in the oaths of others because he did not readily break his own word. There is no point in worrying about the moral rights involved in the conquest of Egypt. Piye was in one sense a foreigner and an invader; but the native Egyptians he fought had been squabbling unpleasantly among themselves for four generations, and would squabble again as soon as he left the country. There has been a lot of debate about Piye’s “race,” or ethnic connections; some Egyptologists want to make him a Libyan, others claim he was a descendant of Egyptian emigrants to Nubia. But there is no reason not to take Piye for what he seemed to be, a Nubian—whatever that means. Judging from the most significant factor, that of cultural and religious affinity, Piye was an Egyptian of the Egyptians and considered himself the heir of Egypt’s long, rich past.

Piye had one more little “rebellion” to deal with as he headed south. His success brought a bunch of other would-be rulers to beg for mercy, including the archenemy Tefnakhte, who was allowed to surrender, with solemn vows not to do it again. So Piye sailed happily home to Napata, leaving Tefnakhte, no doubt, rubbing his hands together and chortling like Iago.

When he stopped at Thebes, Piye requested that the current God’s Wife take his daughter under her wing, which she did all the more readily because she herself was the daughter of Piye’s father, who had installed her in the office as the successor to the daughter of the last king of the preceding dynasty.

As soon as Piye left, Tefnakhte was up to his old tricks. We do not know what Piye was doing while his enemy was breaking his solemn vows; he lived long enough to set up a handsome stela, written in good Egyptian, in the temple of Amon at Gebel Barkal, the Holy Mountain. It is from this stela that we get the story of Piye’s conquest. Certain it is, however, that Tefnakhte was successful enough to set up his son as pharaoh. This son, known to the Greeks as Bocchoris, is the aforementioned sole king of Manetho’s Twenty-fourth Dynasty. The Nubians, beginning with Piye, are the Twenty-fifth, a slight confusion chronologically, but that is the least of the confusion that attends upon the last years of Egypt.

Bocchoris did not last long; Manetho says he was burned alive by Shabaka, the successor of Piye. The burning may be apocryphal, but Shabaka did put a premature end to Bocchoris and his dynasty. The Cushite conquered all of Egypt, transferred his capital to Thebes, and ruled as the “king of Egypt and Cush.” He was as pious as Piye; almost every temple in Egypt was enlarged or restored by him, and he was remembered by Greek historians as a righteous king.

At this point we acquire some new sources of information. The most important comes from the kingdom of Assyria, which was fighting its way to world supremacy in a series of bloody battles in western Asia. From this time on we can also see Egypt and Assyria through the eyes of the Israelites. The books of Kings tell of the terror of Assyria and the broken reed of Egypt, upon which the small kings of Judah and Israel tried to lean in their struggle for independence against the fierce warriors of Sargon and Sennacherib. The Egyptians are typically silent on the subject of Assyria.

This is the time of Hosea, when Sargon II carried Israel away captive, and Egypt sent no help. The name given to the Egyptian pharaoh in the biblical account cannot be identified with any of the men ruling in Egypt during this period; it may have been that of a viceroy or general. A few years later, perhaps under Shabaka, came the rebellion of Hezekiah and the first meeting of the two powers—Assyria, young, arrogant, in the early morning of its strength, and Egypt, the tottering wreckage of the colossus