serious opposition, and the citizens who had been most seriously compromised in the revolt paid for their disaffection with their lives.  This success confirmed the neighbouring states of Tyre, Sidon, Judah, Ammon, and Moab in their allegiance, which had shown signs of wavering since the commencement of hostilities; but Gaza remained unsubdued, and caused the more uneasiness because it was perceived that behind her was arrayed all the majesty of the Pharaoh.  The Egyptians, slow to bestir themselves, had not yet crossed the Isthmus when the Assyrians appeared beneath the walls of Gaza:  Hannon, worsted in a preliminary skirmish, retreated on Raphia, where Shabe, the Egyptian general, had at length arrived, and the decisive battle took place before this town.  It was the first time that the archers and charioteers of the Nile valley had measured forces with the pikemen and cavalry of that of the Tigris; the engagement was hotly contested, but the generals and soldiers of Bocchoris, fighting according to antiquated methods of warfare, gave way before the onset of the Assyrian ranks, who were better equipped and better led.  Shabe fled “like a shepherd whose sheep had been stolen,” Hannon was taken prisoner and loaded with chains, and Raphia fell into the hands of the conqueror; the inhabitants who survived the sack of their city were driven into captivity to the number of 9033 men, with their flocks and household goods.  The manifest superiority of Assyria was evident from the first encounter, but the contest had been so fierce and the result so doubtful that Sargon did not consider it prudent to press his advantage.  He judged rightly that these troops, whom he had not dispersed without considerable effort, constituted merely an advanced guard. 4 Egypt was not like the petty kingdoms of Syria or Asia Minor, which had but one army apiece, and could not risk more than one pitched battle.  Though Shabe’s force was routed, others would not fail to take its place and contend as fiercely for the possession of the country, and even if the Assyrians should succeed in dislodging them and curbing the power of Bocchoris, the fall of Sais or Memphis, far from putting an end to the war, would only raise fresh complications.  Above Memphis stretched the valley of the Nile, bristling with fortresses, Khininsu, Oxyrhynchus, Hermopolis, Siut, Thinis, and Thebes, the famous city of Amon, enthroned on the banks of the river, whose very name still evoked in the minds of the Asiatics a vivid remembrance of all its triumphal glories.*

* Thebes was at that time known among the Semites by its popular name of the city of Amon—­which the Hebrew writers transcribed as No-Amon (Nahum iii. 8) or No alone (Jer. xlvi. 25; Ezek. xxx. 14, 15, 16), and the Assyrians by Ni.

Thebes itself formed merely one stage in the journey towards Syene, Ethiopia, Napata, and the unknown regions of Africa which popular imagination filled with barbarous