vengeance, and Apries was strangled by the mob.  He was honourably interred between the royal palace and the temple of Nit, not far from the spot where his predecessors reposed in their glory,* and the usurper made himself sole master of the country.  It was equivalent to a change of dynasty, and Amasis had recourse to the methods usual in such cases to consolidate his power.  He entered into a marriage alliance with princesses of the Saite line, and thus legitimatised his usurpation as far as the north was concerned.**

     * It was probably from this necropolis that the coffin of
     Psammetichus II. came.

     ** The wife of Amasis, who was mother of Psammetichus III.,
     the queen Tintkhiti, daughter of Petenit, prophet of Phtah,
     was probably connected with the royal family of Sais.

In the south, the “divine worshippers” had continued to administer the extensive heritage of Amon, and Nitocris, heiress of Shapenuapit, had adopted in her old age a daughter of her great-nephew, Psammetichus IL, named Ankhnasnofiribri:  this princess was at this time in possession of Thebes, and Amasis appears to have entered into a fictitious marriage with her in order to assume to himself her rights to the crown.  He had hardly succeeded in establishing his authority on a firm basis when he was called upon to repel the Chaldaean invasion.  The Hebrew prophets had been threatening Egypt with this invasion for a long time, and Ezekiel, discounting the future, had already described the entrance of Pharaoh into Hades, to dwell among the chiefs of the nations—­Assur, Elam, Meshech, Tubal, Edom, and Philistia—­who, having incurred the vengeance of Jahveh, had descended into the grave one after the other:  “Pharaoh and all his army shall be slain by the sword, saith the Lord God!  For I have put this terror in the land of the living:  and he shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised, with them that are slain by the sword, even Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord God!” Nebuchadrezzar had some hesitation in hazarding his fortune in a campaign on the banks of the Nile:  he realised tolerably clearly that Babylon was not in command of such resources as had been at the disposal of Nineveh under Esarhaddon or Assur-bani-pal, and that Egypt in the hands of a Saite dynasty was a more formidable foe than when ruled by the Ethiopians.  The report of the revolution of which Apries had become a victim at length determined him to act; the annihilation of the Hellenic troops, and the dismay which the defeat at Irasa had occasioned in the hearts of the Egyptians, seemed to offer an opportunity too favourable to be neglected.  The campaign was opened by Nebuchadrezzar about 568, in the thirty-seventh year of his reign,* but we have no certain information as to the issue of his enterprise.