tributary kings, who held their courts at Saïs, Tanis, and perhaps
Bubastis. But they kept a jealous watch over their subject princes, and
allowed none of them to attain a dangerous pre-eminence.

[Illustration: HEAD OF SHABAK (SABACO).]

By a curious coincidence the Ethiopic sway, or extension of influence
over Egypt by the great monarchy of the south, exactly synchronized with
the development of Assyrian power in south-western Asia, which bordered
Egypt upon the north; and thus were brought into hostile collision, the
two greatest military powers of the then known world who fought over the
prostrate Egypt, like Achilles and Hector over the corpse of Patroclus.
Shabak's conquest of the Lower Nile valley took place about B.C. 725 or
724. Exactly at that time Shalmaneser IV. was proceeding to extremities
against the kingdom of Israel, and was thus threatening to sweep away
one of the last two feeble barriers which had hitherto been interposed
between the Assyrian territory and the Egyptian. Shabak, entreated by
Hoshea, the last Israelite monarch, to lend him aid, consented to take
the kingdom of Israel under his protection (2 Kings xvii. 4), actuated
no doubt by an enlightened view of his own interest. But when Samaria
was besieged (B.C. 723) and the danger became pressing, he had not the
courage to act up to his engagements. The stout resistance offered by
the Israelite capital for more than two years (2 Kings xvii. 5) drew
forth no corresponding effort on the part of the Ethiopic king. Hoshea
was left to his own resources, and in B.C. 722 was forced to succumb.
His capital was taken by storm, its inhabitants seized and carried off
by the conqueror, the whole territory absorbed into that of Assyria, and
the cities occupied by Assyrian colonists (2 Kings xvii. 24). Assyria
was brought one step nearer to Egypt, and it became more than ever
evident that contact and collision could not be much longer deferred.