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 enterprise, some increased intellectual stir, some improved methods in art, these ameliorations scarcely compensate for the indications of decline which lie deeper, and which in the sequel determined the fate of the nation.

The later years of the reign of Psamatik were coincident with a time of extreme trouble and confusion in Asia, in the course of which the Assyrian Monarchy came to an end, and south-western Asia was partitioned between the Medes and the Babylonians.  A tempting field was laid open for an ambitious prince, who might well have dreamt of Syrian or even Mesopotamian conquest, and of recalling the old glories of Seti, Thothmes, and Amenhotep.  Psamatik did go so far as to make an attack upon Philistia, but met with so little success that he was induced to restrain any grander aspirations which he may have cherished, and to leave the Asiatic monarchs to settle Asiatic affairs as it pleased them.  Ashdod, we are told, resisted the Egyptian arms for twenty-nine years; and though it fell at last, the prospect of half-a-dozen such sieges was not encouraging.  Psamatik, moreover, was an old man by the time that the Assyrian Empire fell to pieces, and we can understand his shrinking from a distant and dangerous expedition.  He left the field open for his son, Neco, having in no way committed him, but having secured for him a ready entrance into Asia by his conquest of the Philistine fortress.

Neco, the son of Psamatik I., from the moment that he ascended the throne, resolved to make the bold stroke for empire from which his father had held back.  Regarding his mercenary army as a sufficient land force, he concentrated his energies on the enlargement and improvement of his navy, which was weak in numbers and of antiquated construction.  Naval architecture had recently made great strides, first by the inventiveness of the Phoenicians, who introduced the bireme, and then by the skill of the Greeks, who, improving on the hint furnished them, constructed the trireme.  Neco, by the help of Greek artificers, built two fleets, both composed of triremes, one in the ports which opened on the Red Sea, the other in those upon the Mediterranean.  He then, with the object of uniting the two fleets into one, when occasion should require, made an attempt to re-open the canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, which had been originally constructed by Seti I. and Ramesses II., but had been allowed to fall into disrepair.  The Nile mud and the desert sand had combined to silt it up.  Neco commenced excavations