Page:The Pharaohs and their people; scenes of old Egyptian life and history (IA pharaohstheirpeo00berkiala).pdf/319

 threatening Greece, but the invasion of Xerxes was triumphantly repulsed, and the Athenians subsequently sent aid to the Egyptians in their renewed attempt to cast off the yoke of the common foe.

The revolt was at first successful, but on the arrival of Persian reinforcements the Athenians were driven from Memphis, and forced to retire to an island on the Nile. Here they were blockaded for eighteen months; the foe then, diverting the river from its course, took the Athenian camp by storm, and a fleet of fifty Athenian ships, which entered the Nile in ignorance of the disastrous turn of events, fell into the hands of the Persians. Amyrtæus, who had been proclaimed king, took flight, and sought refuge in the inaccessible marshes of the Delta.

Thus Egypt passed once more under the Persian yoke, but the Persian power itself was declining, and Amyrtæus of Sais (the grandson of the Amyrtæus who fled to the marshes) made himself King of Egypt. His reign of six years constitutes the twenty-eighth dynasty.