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

421

CHAPTER XVn.

DYNASTIES XXVI.-XXX.'
B.C. 666-358.

DYNASTY XXVI.

The momirn.en.ts now become more and more silent.
The beautiful old capitals Memphis and Thebes were at
"this time in ruins, or at all events depopulated and
deserted, and the strong bulwark of the ' white citadel'
of Memphis alone served as a refuge for the persecuted
native kings and their warriors in times of need. The
Persian satraps dwelt in the old royal halls of the city,
and they, after a short interval, took up the part played
•by the Assyrians, and gave Egypt her final death-blow.
Although, by his sage measures, Psamthek I. succeeded
in gaining the throne as sole king, for himself and his
descendants, and though the monuments, from the
rnins of Sal's to the weather-worn rocks of Elephan-
tine, show traces of the rule of the Pharaohs of the
Twenty-sixth Dynasty, the old splendour was gone.

The city of Sai's, at this period the capital of
■^gypt* in whose temples the goddess Nit was invoked,
stood near the sea, and was easily accessible to the
Creek and Persian foreigners. When Alexander the
Great entered Egypt Sais in its turn became deserted
and forlorn. The new capital of Alexandria—which
-is called ' the fortress of the king of Upper and Lower
Egypt, Alexander, on the shore of the great sea of

1 For Table of Kings see p. xxvii.