After Psammetichus had passed some years there, waiting a favourable opportunity to revenge himself for the affront which had been put upon him, a courier brought him advice, that brazen men were landed in Egypt. These were Grecian soldiers, Carians and Ionians, who had been cast upon the coasts of Egypt by a storm, and were completely covered with helmets, cuirasses, and other arms of brass. Psammetichus immediately called to mind the oracle, which had answered him, that he should be succoured by brazen men from the sea-coast. He did not doubt but the prediction was now fulfilled. He therefore made a league with these strangers; engaged them with great promises to stay with him; privately levied other forces; and put these Greeks at their head; when giving battle to the eleven kings, he defeated them, and remained sole possessor of Egypt.
(M88) PSAMMETICHUS. As this prince owed his preservation to the Ionians and Carians, he settled them in Egypt, (from which all foreigners hitherto had been excluded;) and, by assigning them sufficient lands and fixed revenues, he made them forget their native country.(452) By his order, Egyptian children were put under their care to learn the Greek tongue; and on this occasion, and by this means, the Egyptians began to have a correspondence with the Greeks; and from that æra, the Egyptian history, which, till then, had been intermixed with pompous fables, by the artifice of the priests, begins, according to Herodotus, to speak with greater truth and certainty.
As soon as Psammetichus was settled on the throne, he engaged in war against the king of Assyria, on the subject of the boundaries of the two empires. This war was of long continuance. Ever since Syria had been conquered by the Assyrians, Palestine, being the only country that separated the two kingdoms, was the subject of continual discord; as afterwards it was between the Ptolemies and the Seleucidæ. They were eternally contending for it, and it was alternately won by the stronger. Psammetichus, seeing himself the peaceable possessor of all Egypt, and having restored the ancient form of government,(453) thought it high time for him to look to his frontiers, and to secure them against the Assyrian, his neighbour, whose power increased daily. For this purpose, he entered Palestine at the head of an army.