, the news of his
pious acts produced a complete revulsion of feeling, and "those whose
intention it had been to fight were moved with joy." No one opposed him
until he had nearly reached the northern capital, Memphis, which was
doubtless held in force by the Assyrians, to whom the princes of Lower
Egypt were still faithful. A battle, accordingly, was fought before the
walls, and in this Mi-Ammon-Nut was victorious; the Egyptians probably
did not fight with much zeal, and the Assyrians, distrusting their
subject allies, may well have been dispirited. After the victory,
Memphis opened her gates, and soon afterwards the princes of the Delta
thought it best to make their submission--the Assyrians, we must
suppose, retired--Mi-Ammon-Nut's authority was acknowledged, and the
princes, having transferred their allegiance to him, were allowed to
retain their governments.

The consequences of this last Ethiopian invasion of Egypt appear to have
been transient. Mi-Ammon-Nut did not live very long to enjoy his
conquest, and in Egypt he had no successor. He was not even recognized
by the Egyptians among their legitimate kings. Egypt at his death
reverted to her previous position of dependence upon Assyria, feeling
herself still too weak to stand alone, and perhaps not greatly caring,
so that she had peace, which of the two great powers she acknowledged as
her suzerain. She had now (about B.C. 650) for above twenty years been
fought over by the two chief kingdoms of the earth--each of them had
traversed with huge armies, as many as five or six times, the Nile
valley from one extremity to the other; the cities had been half ruined,
harvest after harvest destroyed, trees cut down, temples rifled,
homesteads burnt, villas plundered. Thebes, the Hundred-gated, probably
for many ages quite the most magnificent city in the world, had become a
by-word for desolation (Nahum iii. 8, 9); Memphis, Heliopolis, Tanis,
Sais, Mendes, Bubastis, Heracleopolis, Hermopolis; Crocodilopolis, had
been taken and retaken repeatedly; the old buildings and monuments had
been allowed to fall into decay; no king had been firmly enough
established on his throne to undertake the erection of any but
insignificant new ones. Egypt was "fallen, fallen, fallen--fallen from
her high estate;" an apathy, not unlike the stillness of death, brooded
over her; literature was silent, art extinct; hope of recovery can
scarcely have lingered in many bosoms. As events proved, t