but nevertheless have a basis of truth. The
inscriptions from the time of Psammetichus onwards never mention the
Mashauasha, while their name and their exploits constantly recur in the
history of the preceding dynasties: henceforth they and their chiefs
vanish from sight, and discord and brigandage simultaneously cease in
the Egyptian nomes. It was very probably the most turbulent among these
auxiliaries who left the country in the circumstances above narrated:
since they could not contest the superiority of their Greek rivals,
they concluded that their own part was played out, and rather than be
relegated to the second rank, they preferred to quit the land in a body.
Psammetichus, thus deprived of their support at the moment when Egypt
had more than ever need of all her forces to regain her rightful
position in the world, reorganised the military system as best he could.
He does not seem to have relied much upon the contingents from Upper
Egypt, to whom was doubtless entrusted the defence of the Nubian
frontier, and who could not be withdrawn from their posts without danger
of invasion or revolt. But the source of imminent peril did not lie in
this direction, where Ethiopia, exhausted by the wars of Taharqa and
Tanuatamanu, perhaps needed repose even more than Egypt itself, but
rather on the Asiatic side, where Assur-bani-pal, in spite of the
complications constantly arising in Karduniash and Elam, had by no means
renounced his claims to the suzerainty of Egypt. The Pharaoh divided the
feudatory militia of the Delta into two classes, which resided apart
in different sets of nomes. The first group, who were popularly called
Hermotybies, were stationed at Busiris, Sais, and Khemmis, in the island
of Prosopitis, and in one half of Natho--in fact, in the district which
for the last century had formed the centre of the principality of
the Saite dynasty: perhaps they were mostly of Libyan origin, and
represented the bands of Mashauasha who, from father to son, had served
under Tafnakhti and his descendants. Popular report numbered them at
160,000 men, all told, and the total number of the other class, known as
the Calasiries, at 250,000; these latter belonged, in my opinion, to the
pure Egyptian race, and were met with at Thebes, while the troops of
the north, who were more generally called out, were scattered over the
territory which formerly supported the Tanite and Bubastite kings, and
latterly Pakruru, and which comprised