Sethon
（
Σεθών). A priest of Hephaestus (Ptah), who made himself
master of Egypt after the expulsion of Sabacon, king of the Ethiopians, and was succeeded by
the Dodecarchia, or government of the twelve chiefs, which ended in the sole sovereignty of
Psammetichus. Herodotus relates (ii. 141) that in Sethon's reign Sanacharibus, king of the
Arabians and Assyrians, advanced against Egypt, at which Sethon was in great alarm, as he had
insulted the warrior class, and deprived them of their lands, and they now refused to follow
him to the war. But the god Hephaestus came to his assistance; for while the two armies were
encamped near Pelusium, the field-mice in the night gnawed to pieces the bow-strings, the
quivers, and the shield-handles of the Assyrians, who fled on the following day with great
loss. The recollection of this miracle was perpetuated by a statue of the king in the temple
of Hephaestus, holding a mouse in his hand, and saying, “Let every one look at me
and be pious.” This Sanacharibus is the Sennacherib of the Scriptures, and the
destruction of the Assyrians at Pelusium is evidently only another version of the miraculous
destruction of the Assyrians by the angel of the Lord, when they had advanced against
Jerusalem in the reign of Hezekiah. According to the Jewish records, this event happened in
B.C. 711.
