he vital spark
was not actually fled; but the keenest observer would scarcely have
ventured to predict, at any time between B.C. 750 and B.C. 650, such a
revival as marked the period between B.C. 650 and B.C. 530.

XXII.

THE CORPSE COMES TO LIFE AGAIN--PSAMATIK I. AND HIS SON NECO.

When a country has sunk so gradually, so persistently, and for so long a
series of years as Egypt had now been sinking, if there is a revival, it
must almost necessarily come from without. The corpse cannot rise
without assistance--the expiring patient cannot cure himself. All the
vital powers being sapped, all the energies having departed, the Valley
of the Shadow of Death having been entered, nothing can arrest
dissolution but some foreign stock, some blood not yet vitiated, some
"saviour" sent by Divine providence from outside the nation (Isa. xix.
20), to recall the expiring life, to revivify the paralyzed frame, to
infuse fresh energy into it, and to make it once more live, breathe,
act, think, assert itself. Yet the saviour must not be altogether from
without. He must not be a conqueror, for conquest necessarily weakens
and depresses; he must not be too remote in blood, or he will lack the
power fully to understand and sympathize with the nation which he is to
restore, and without true understanding and true sympathy he can effect
nothing; he must not be a stranger to the nation's recent history, or
he will make mistakes that will be irremediable. What is wanted is a
scion of a foreign stock, connected by marriage and otherwise with the
nation that he is to regenerate, and well acquainted with its
circumstances, character, position, history, virtues, weaknesses. No
entirely new man can answer to these requirements; he must be found, if
he is to be found at all, among the principal men of the time, whose lot
has for some considerable period been cast in with the State which is to
be renovated.

In Egypt, at the time of which we are speaking, exactly this position
was occupied by Psamatik, son of Neco. He was, according to all
appearance, of Libyan origin; his stock was new; his name and his
father's name are unheard of hitherto in Egyptian history;
etymologically, they are non-Egyptian; and Psamatik has a non-Egyptian
countenance. He was probably of the same family as "Inarus the Libyan,"
whose father was a Psamatik. He belonged thus to a Libyan stock, which
had, however, been crossed, more than once, with the blood