per region, and, carrying
all before him, besieged and took Sais, made Bek-en-ranf a prisoner, and
barbarously burnt him alive for his rebellion. His fierce and sensuous
physiognomy is quite in keeping with this bloody deed, which was well
calculated to strike terror into the Egyptian nation, and to ensure a
general submission.

The rule of the Ethiopians was now for some fifty years firmly
established. Shabak founded a dynasty which the Egyptians themselves
admitted to be legitimate, and which the historian Manetho declared to
have consisted of three kings--Sabacos (or Shabak), Sevechus (or
Shabatok), and Taracus (or Tehrak), the Hebrew Tirhakah. The extant
monuments confirm the names, and order of succession, of these monarchs.
They were of a coarser and ruder fibre than the native Egyptians, but
they did not rule Egypt in any alien or hostile spirit. On the contrary,
they were pious worshippers of the old Egyptian gods; they repaired and
beautified the old Egyptian temples; and, instead of ruling Egypt, as a
conquered province, from Napata, they resided permanently, or at any
rate occasionally, at the Egyptian capitals, Thebes and Memphis. There
are certain indications which make it probable that to some extent they
pursued the policy of Piankhi, and governed Lower Egypt by means of
tributary kings, who held their courts at Sais, Tanis, and perhaps
Bubastis. But they kept a jealous watch over their subject princes, and
allowed none of them to attain a dangerous pre-eminence.

[Illustration: HEAD OF SHABAK (SABACO).]

By a curious coincidence the Ethiopic sway, or extension of influence
over Egypt by the great monarchy of the south, exactly synchronized with
the development of Assyrian power in south-western Asia, which bordered
Egypt upon the north; and thus were brought into hostile collision, the
two greatest military powers of the then known world who fought over the
prostrate Egypt, like Achilles and Hector over the corpse of Patroclus.
Shabak's conquest of the Lower Nile valley took place about B.C. 725 or
724. Exactly at that time Shalmaneser IV. was proceeding to extremities
against the kingdom of Israel, and was thus threatening to sweep away
one of the last two feeble barriers which had hitherto been interposed
between the Assyrian territory and the Egyptian. Shabak, entreated by
Hoshea, the last Israelite monarch, to lend him aid, consented to take
the kingdom of Israel under his protection (2 Kings xvii.