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26 to abandon it; Herodotus says, on account of an unfavorable oracle. Necho then fitted out an exploring expedition for the circumnavigation of Africa, in hope of finding a possible passage for his fleets from the Red Sea to the Nile by a water channel already opened by nature, and to which the priests and oracles could interpose no objections. The expedition, we have reason to believe, actually accomplished the feat of sailing around the continent; for Herodotus, in his account of the enterprise, says that the voyagers upon their return reported that, when they were rounding the cape, the sun was on their right hand (to the north). This feature of the report, which led Herodotus to disbelieve it, is to us the very strongest evidence possible that the voyage was really performed.

The Last of the Pharaohs.—Before the close of his reign, Necho had come into collision with the king of Babylon, and was forced to acknowledge his supremacy. A little later, Babylon having yielded to the rising power of Persia, Egypt also passed under Persian authority (see p. 77). The Egyptians, however, were restive under this foreign yoke, and, after a little more than a century, succeeded in throwing it off; but the country was again subjugated by the Persian king Artaxerxes II. (about 340 B.C.), and from that time until our own day no native prince has ever sat upon the throne of the Pharaohs. Long before the Persian conquest, the Prophet Ezekiel, foretelling the debasement of Egypt, had declared, "There shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt."

Upon the extension of the power of the Macedonians over the East (333 B.C.) Egypt willingly exchanged masters; and for three centuries the valley was the seat of the renowned Græco-Egyptian Empire of the Ptolemies, which lasted until the Romans annexed the region to their all-absorbing empire (30 B.C.). "The mission of Egypt among the nations was fulfilled; it had lit the torch of civilization in ages inconceivably remote, and had passed it on to other peoples of the West."