ages kept herself as much as possible aloof from foreigners, and looked upon them with aversion.  Foreign vessels were, until the time of Psamatik, forbidden to enter any of the Nile mouths, or to touch at an Egyptian port.  Psamatik saw that the new circumstances required an extensive change.  The mercenaries, if they were to be content with their position, must be allowed to communicate freely with the cities and countries from which they came, and intercourse between Greece and Egypt must be encouraged rather than forbidden.  Accordingly the Greeks were invited to make settlements in the Delta, and Naucratis, favourably situated on the Canopic branch of the Nile, was specially assigned to them as a residence.  Most of the more enterprizing among the commercial states of the time took advantage of the opening, and Miletus, Phocaea, Rhodes, Samos, Chios, Mytilene, Halicarnassus, and AEgina established factories at the locality specified, built temples there to the 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