Brugsch, Heinrich: Egypt under the pharaohs: a history derived entirely from the monuments (London, 1891)

418 SBABAK AND SHABATAKH OH..XTI.

fled to Nineveh, for protection and help to punish King
Taharaqa. Assurbanipal, the son of Esarhaddon, who
had meanwhile been crowned king, marched against
Egypt with a large army. The further details are
placed before us with all needful clearness in the dupli-
cate records of the cuneiform inscriptions.

In these events a conspicuous part was played by
the king Nikuu, or Neku (Nechao, Necho, Neco), of
Sai's and Memphis, the son of that Tefnekht who had
opposed so long and obstinate a resistance to the Ethio-
pian king Piankhi. Carried in fetters to Nineveh, he
succeeded in obtaining pardon from Sardanapalus and
his renewed establishment as petty king of Sa'is and
Memphis. Of his violent end, according to the Greek
accounts, the inscriptions give us no information.

A thick veil covers the ensuing times, in which the
Ethiopians occupy the foreground of Egyptian history-
Taharaqa, Piankhi (with his oft-named wife, Ameni-
ritis), Shabak and Shabatak—all appear as contem-
porary, and are frequently introduced in connection
with each other. Their family relationships are set
forth with all exactness in the Genealogical Table facing
p. 325. If we might give credit to the lists of Manetho,
they would seem to have reigned in succession over
Patoris, whose capital, Thebes, retains manifold evi-
dences of their presence; but we are unable to find
anything in the monuments to confirm this succession.

Upon a mutilated statue of King Shabatakh at
Memphis, a brief inscription calls the Pharaoh thus
represented Miptah Shabatak. But the latter name
has already in ancient times been rendered half illegible
by chisel-strokes, obliterating the name of a usurper of
the throne.

At Thebes, the memorials of King Taharaqa and of
an Egyptian under-king have lasted the longest. The