The hordes probably swarmed down from Media through the Zagros passes into the most fruitful portion of the empire--the flat country between the mountains and the Tigris.

Many of the old cities, rich with the accumulated stores of ages, were besieged, and perhaps taken, and their palaces wantonly burnt by the barbarous invaders.

The tide then swept on.

Wandering from district to district, plundering everywhere, settling nowhere, the clouds of horse passed over Mesopotamia, the force of the invasion becoming weaker as it spread itself, until in Syria it reached its term through the policy of the Egyptian king, Psamatik I.That monarch bribed the nomads to advance no further,[14185] and from this time their power began to wane.

Their numbers must have been greatly thinned in the long course of battles, sieges, and skirmishes wherein they were engaged year after year; they suffered also through their excesses;[14186] and perhaps through intestine dissensions.