Greek
gods, and sent out a body of colonists. A considerable trade grew up
between Egypt and Greece. The Egyptians of the higher classes especially
appreciated the flavour and quality of the Greek wines, which were
consequently imported into the country in large quantities. Greek
pottery and Greek glyptic art also attracted a certain amount of favour.
On her side Egypt exported corn, alum, muslin and linen fabrics, and the
excellent paper which she made from the _Cyperus Papyrus_.

The trade thus established was carried on mainly, if not wholly, in
Greek bottoms, the Egyptians having a distaste to the sea, and regarding
commerce with no great favour. Nevertheless, the life and stir which
foreign commerce introduced among them, the familiarity with strange
customs and manners, engendered by daily intercourse with the Greeks,
the acquisition (on the part of some) of the Greek language, the sight
of Greek modes of worship, of Greek painting and Greek sculpture, the
insight into Greek habits of thought, which could not but follow,
produced no inconsiderable effect upon the national character of the
Egyptians, shaking them out of their accustomed groove, and awakening
curiosity and inquiry. The effect was scarcely beneficial. Egyptian
national life had been eminently conservative and unchanging. The
introduction of novelty in ten thousand shapes unsettled and disturbed
it. The old beliefs were shaken, and a multitude of superstitions rushed
in. The corruptions introduced by the Greeks were more easy of adoption
and imitation than the sterling points of their character, their
intelligence, their unwearied energy, their love of truth. Egypt was
awakened to a new life by the novel circumstances of the Psamatik
period; but it was a fitful life, unquiet, unnatural, feverish. The
character of the men lost in dignity and strength by the discontinuance
of military training consequent upon the substitution for a native army
of an army of mercenaries. The position of the women sank through the
adoption of those ideas concerning them which their contact with
orientals had engrained into the minds of the Asiatic Greeks. The
national spirit of the people was sapped by the concentration of the
royal favour on a race of foreigners whose manners and customs were
abhorrent to them, and whom they regarded with envy and dislike. If some
improvement is to be seen on the surface of Egyptian life under the
Psamatiks, some greater activity and ent