* This legend, preserved by Manetho and Ulian is also known
     from the fragments of a demotic papyrus at Vienna, which
     contains the prophecy of the lamb.

[Illustration:  375.jpg SABACO]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Lepsius.

The monuments of his reign which have come down to us tell us nothing of his deeds; we can only conjecture that after the defeat sustained by his generals at Raphia, the discords which had ruined the preceding dynasties again broke out with renewed violence.  Indeed, if he succeeded in preserving his crown for several years longer, he owed the fact more to the feebleness of the Ethiopians than to his own vigour:  no sooner did an enterprising prince appear at Barkal and demand that he should render an account of his usurpation, than his power came to an end.  Kashto having died about 716,* his son Shabaku, the Sabaco of the Greeks, inherited the throne, and his daughter Amenertas the priesthood and principality of Thebes, in right of her mother Shapenuapit.

* The date of the accession of Sabaco is here fixed at 716- 715, because I follow the version of the lists of Manetho, which gives twelve years as the reign of that prince; an inscription from Hammamat mentions his twelfth year.

Sabaco was an able and energetic prince, who could by no means tolerate the presence of a rival Pharaoh in the provinces which Pionkhi had conquered.  He declared war, and, being doubtless supported in his undertaking by all the petty kings and great feudal nobles whose jealousy was aroused by the unlooked-for prosperity of the Saite monarch, he defeated Bocchoris and took him prisoner.  Tafnakhti had formerly recognised the Ethiopian supremacy, and Bocchoris, when he succeeded to his father’s dominions, had himself probably sought investiture at the hands of the King of Napata.  Sabaco treated him as a rebel, and either burnt or flayed him alive (715).*

     * According to Manetho, he was burnt alive; the tradition
     which mentions that he was flayed alive is found in John of
     Antioch.

The struggle was hardly over, when the news of Sargon’s victories reached Egypt.  It was natural that the new king, not yet securely seated on his throne, should desire to conciliate the friendship of a neighbour who was so successful in war, and that he should seize the first available pretext to congratulate him.  The Assyrian on his part received these advances with satisfaction and pride:  he perceived in them a guarantee that Egyptian intrigues with Tyre and Jerusalem would cease, and that he could henceforth devote himself to his projects against Busas without being distracted by the fear of an Ethiopian attack and the subversion of Syria in his rear.