The History of Antiquity Volume Vi Part 6

[137] Ctes. "Pers." 7; Arrian, "Anab." 6, 28; Strabo, p. 730; Plin. "H.

N." 6, 29; Plut. "Alex." 69. Curtius (10, 1) a.s.serts after Cleitarchus, that when Alexander visited the tomb of Cyrus on his return from India, he only found the s.h.i.+eld of Cyrus, then rotten, two Scythian bows, and a sword in the sepulchre.

[138] In the wings, the clothing, and the peculiar head-dress this portrait (Tenier, "Descript." pl. 84) differs essentially from the representation of Darius and his successors at Persepolis and Naksh-i-Rustem. It is not Cyrus but his Fravas.h.i.+ which is here represented. The building at Murghab is somewhat like the description of the tomb of Cyrus given in the text, but the site will not allow us to regard it as the tomb at Pasargadae. It must be a building which one of his successors has dedicated to the memory of the great king. The profile in the relief confirms to some degree Plutarch's statement that Cyrus had an aquiline nose, and the Persians therefore considered beaked noses the most becoming: "Praec. ger. reip." c. 30. The nose of Darius, as we see it in the monuments, appears straighter and longer.

CHAPTER X.

THE FALL OF EGYPT.

After the death of the great king who had founded the Persian empire, Cambyses (Kambujiya), the elder of the two sons whom Ca.s.sandane had borne to Cyrus, ascended the throne of the new kingdom in the year 529 B.C. A few years before his death Cyrus had entrusted him with the vice-royalty of Babylonia.[139] Herodotus tells us that "Cambyses again reduced the nations which Cyrus had subjugated, and then marched against Egypt." Egypt was the oldest of the great powers of the ancient East, and, after the fall of Media, Lydia, and Babylonia, it still remained independent beside the kingdom which had risen up so rapidly and brilliantly out of their ruins. A hundred and fifty years previously Egypt had succ.u.mbed to the arms of the a.s.syrians; how could an ambitious ruler of Persia imagine that it could now resist the incomparably greater forces which were at his command?

We know how Psammetichus and his descendants had restored Egypt to her ancient position, the place which they had a.s.signed to the Greeks and Greek civilisation in their state, a place which had not been altered by Amasis, though brought to the throne by a revolution which had removed the house of Psammetichus (570 B.C.). The attempt of Necho to renew the achievements of the Tuthmosis, Amenophis, and Ramses in Syria and on the Euphrates was wrecked by the sudden rise of the Babylonian kingdom under Nebuchadnezzar, and Hophra had in vain attempted to prevent the fall of Jerusalem and the advance of Babylon to the borders of Egypt. The growth of the Persian power threatened to give Egypt a far more dangerous neighbour than she had had in Babylonia. Amasis did not underrate the crisis. Herodotus told us above that he had combined with Lydia against Cyrus, that Croesus had called upon the Egyptian auxiliaries for the second campaign, and finally for the rescue of Sardis. The rapid progress of the war and the fall of Sardis defeated the aims of Amasis.

Then, as we saw, a decade elapsed before Cyrus directed his arms against Babylonia. That Amasis made every attempt to support Nabonetus against the Persians is not told us by tradition, unless indeed we accept as tradition Xenophon's statement, who represents the Lydians and Egyptians as fighting against the Persians with the Babylonians (p. 17). The fall of Babylon was followed directly by the subjugation of Syria, the conquest of Gaza (p. 90), and the advance of the Persian border to the desert. Amasis does not appear to have been wholly inactive in the face of the approaching danger. Herodotus tells us that he took the island of Cyprus and made it tributary, and Diodorus narrates that he subjugated the cities in Cyprus, and adorned many of the temples there with splendid offerings.[140] We may a.s.sume that the enterprise of Amasis against Cyprus was intended to provide a counterpoise to the incorporation of Syria in the Persian empire. It may have appeared more desirable to the princes of the Cyprian cities to be va.s.sals of the remote and less powerful Egypt than of the rising and powerful kingdom of Persia. In any case, when he had set foot in Cyprus, Amasis prevented that rich island, with its numerous cities, from falling into the power of the Persians; the s.h.i.+ps of the Cyprian cities could a.s.sist him in keeping off the fleet of the Phenicians from their coasts, should the Persian monarch call out that fleet against Egypt. That this was the object of the occupation of Cyprus by Amasis is confirmed by the fact that some years after the fall of Babylon he entered into communication with the island of Samos. While Chios and Lesbos, as has been observed, submitted to the Persians without compulsion, Samos had remained independent. Polycrates, the son of Aeaces, who had made himself master of the island in the year 536 B.C., built a splendid fleet of eighty heavy and a hundred light s.h.i.+ps, with which he could maintain his independence against the Persians. The fleet of Polycrates could hold the fleet of the Ionians in check if it were called upon by the Persians, just as the Cyprians could restrain the Phenicians. Amasis entered into close and friendly relations with the prince of Samos, who on his part must have gladly accepted the support of Egypt against the Persians. Besides the possession of Cyprus and this union with Samos, Egypt's power of resistance rested essentially on the difficulty of crossing the desert which separates Egypt from Syria with a large army, on the considerable numbers of the warrior caste, in spite of the emigration under Psammetichus, and the fidelity and bravery of the Ionian and Carian mercenaries, to whom Amasis had entrusted his personal protection. The danger of an attack from Persia seemed to have pa.s.sed over when, after the subjugation of Syria, Cyrus turned towards the distant East, the Indus and Jaxartes; and Amasis may have been careful not to irritate his powerful neighbour. The skill of the physicians of Egypt was in great repute. When Cyrus asked Amasis for the best oculist, the Pharaoh, according to the Persian story, may have acceded to his wish.[141] The death of Cyrus would then bring still greater prospects of power to Amasis, until at last the decisive moment came thirteen years after the fall of Babylon.

"Cambyses," so Herodotus tells us, "sent to Egypt and asked the daughter of Amasis in marriage. Both hating and dreading the power of the Persians, Amasis was uncertain whether to send or refuse her, for he well knew that Cambyses did not intend to take her as his legitimate wife, but as a concubine. So he devised the following plan:--Nitetis, the daughter of the preceding king Hophra was the only member of her family remaining. She was tall and beautiful, and Amasis adorned her with garments and gold and sent her as his own daughter to Persia. But some time after, when Cambyses was embracing Nitetis and calling her by the name of her father, she said: 'O king, thou art deceived by Amasis, who has sent me to thee thus adorned as his daughter, whereas in truth I am the daughter of Hophra, whom, though his lord, Amasis slew together with the Egyptians.' This speech put Cambyses into a violent rage, and for this reason he marched against Egypt. This is the account which the Persians give; but the Egyptians claim Cambyses as their own, maintaining that he was the son of this daughter of Hophra. It was not Cambyses, but Cyrus, who desired the daughter of Hophra. But in this they are wrong. The law of the Persians is not unknown to them (for the Egyptians know the laws of the Persians better than any one else), that the son of the concubine is not made king if there are sons of the queen, and that Cambyses was the son of Ca.s.sandane, the daughter of Pharnaspes, and not of the Egyptian woman. They invert the transaction because they wish to give themselves out as allied to the house of Amasis. Among the auxiliary troops of Amasis there was a man of Halicarna.s.sus, Phanes by name, of good understanding and mighty in war.

Injured by Amasis in some way, he fled by s.h.i.+p out of Egypt, in order to join Cambyses. As he was a man of importance among the auxiliary troops, and most accurately acquainted with Egypt, Amasis was anxious to take him, and sent his most trusty eunuch after him in a trireme. The eunuch caught him up in Lycia, but he did not bring him back to Egypt. Phanes outwitted him, by making his guards intoxicated, and so escaped to Persia. When he came to Cambyses, who, though intending to invade Egypt, was uncertain how to pa.s.s through the waterless region, Phanes told him all the affairs of Amasis, and how the march was to be arranged. He advised him to send to the king of the Arabians, and ask him to give him a safe pa.s.sage. The approach to Egypt is open on this side only. From Phoenicia to the borders of the city of Gaza,[142] which, as it seems to me, is not much smaller than Sardis, the land belongs to the Syrians, who are called Palaestinians (Pelishtim), but from this city to Jenysus the harbours of the sea are subject to the Arabians; from Jenysus to the Serbonian Lake they again belong to the Syrians, and at the Serbonian Lake Egypt begins. The strip between the city of Jenysus and the Serbonian Lake, a journey of three days, is wholly without water.

Instructed by the Halicarna.s.sian, Cambyses sent messengers to the Arabian, and received permission for the pa.s.sage, and when the Arabian had given the envoy of Cambyses a solemn promise with invocation of Urotal and Alilat, and smearing of seven stones with blood (I. 308), he caused bags of camel-skins to be filled with water, loaded all his camels with them, and after marching into the waterless district he there awaited the army of Cambyses. But Psammenitus, the son of Amasis, encamped on the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile. For when Cambyses marched with all over whom he ruled, even with those of the h.e.l.lenes who were in his power,[143] against Egypt, he found that Amasis was no longer alive; he had died after a reign of 44 years, without meeting with any great disaster in that time. When the Persians had marched through the waterless region and had pitched their camp opposite the Egyptians for battle, the auxiliaries of the Egyptians, h.e.l.lenes and Carians, who were enraged against Phanes because he had brought a foreign army against Egypt, did as follows:--The children of Phanes had remained in Egypt.

They brought them into the camp, and then led them between the two camps before the eyes of their father, and slew them one after the other over a vessel. When they were all dead they poured water and wine into the vessel; all the mercenaries drank of the blood and then went to battle.

The struggle was severe; when a great number had fallen on both sides the Egyptians were put to flight. And here I observed a very strange phenomenon, my attention being called to it by the natives. The bones of those who fell in the battle were gathered up separately; the Persians are on one side and on the other the Egyptians, and the sculls of the Persians are so thin, that even if a pebble is thrown upon them they break, while those of the Egyptians are so hard that they can hardly be broken with a stone. The Egyptians fled without any order. To those who were shut up in Memphis Cambyses sent a Persian herald in a trireme, to summon them to surrender. But when the Egyptians saw the s.h.i.+p come into Memphis they hastened down from the citadel, destroyed the s.h.i.+p, tore the men in pieces, and carried them to the citadel. Then the Egyptians were besieged and finally surrendered."

"On the tenth day after Cambyses had taken the citadel of Memphis he desired to make trial of Psammenitus, whom he had taken prisoner with the other Egyptians in the city, and who had reigned but six months. He therefore did as follows: He sent his daughter in the dress of a slave with a pitcher, and along with her the daughters of the leading Egyptians, similarly attired, to fetch water. When they pa.s.sed before their fathers with lamentations and sighs, these also cried and sighed at the sight of their daughters' shame, but when Psammenitus saw what was done he fixed his eyes on the earth. When the maidens had pa.s.sed with the water, Cambyses caused the son of Psammenitus to be led past with two thousand Egyptians of the same age, with ropes round their necks and in their mouths. They were to be the expiation of the Mytileneans, who were slain on the s.h.i.+p in Memphis; the royal judges of the Persians (p. 105) had decided that for every dead man ten of the leading Egyptians must die. Psammenitus saw the train, and knew that his son was being led out to death, and the Egyptians who sat round him wailed and lamented, but he did as he had done at the sight of his daughter. When they also had pa.s.sed, it happened that an old man, who had been a guest at the table of the king, but had now lost everything and was as poor as a beggar, and asked alms of the soldiers, pa.s.sed by Psammenitus and the Egyptians in the suburbs. When Psammenitus saw this he lamented aloud, beat his head, and called on his friend by name. The guards who stood by announced what he had done on each occasion.

Cambyses was astonished, and asked Psammenitus, by a messenger, why he had neither lamented nor sighed at the sight of his daughter in her shame, and his son when led out to execution, but had paid this tribute of respect to a beggar with whom Cambyses had discovered he was in no way connected. Psammenitus answered, 'O son of Cyrus, my own misfortune was too great for tears, but the sorrows of my friend called for lamentation, since on the threshold of old age he had fallen from great possessions to the condition of a beggar.' When this was told to Cambyses it seemed to him well said; but as the Egyptians tell the story, Croesus wept (he had followed Cambyses to Egypt), and the Persians who were present wept, and Cambyses was touched with some degree of compa.s.sion. He at once gave orders not to execute the son of Psammenitus, and to fetch Psammenitus from the suburb into his presence.

The messengers found the son no longer alive, but they brought Psammenitus himself to Cambyses, who did him no further injury. Had Psammenitus known how to remain quiet, he would certainly have received the government of Egypt; for the Persians are wont to honour the sons of kings, and even though the fathers have revolted, they give the dominion to the son. But when Psammenitus dealt treacherously he received his reward. He was detected in exciting the Egyptians to revolt. When Cambyses discovered this, he compelled him to drink bulls' blood, and he died on the spot. Such was his end."

"But Cambyses came from Memphis to Sais, and when he entered the palace of Amasis, he gave orders to take his body out of the grave; when this was done he caused the corpse to be scourged, the hair to be torn out; he stabbed it and treated it with every kind of indignity. When those who were executing his commands grew weary, for the body being embalmed resisted their blows, and did not come to pieces, he ordered it to be burned. This was a sacrilegious command. The Persians regard fire as a deity, and the burning of the dead is not according to the laws either of the Persians or the Egyptians. The Persians do not consider it right to offer a corpse to a G.o.d; the Egyptians regard fire as a living all-consuming animal, and as it is by no means lawful to give up corpses to animals, they embalm them that they may not be consumed by worms.

Hence Cambyses had commanded what was not allowed by the law of either nation. But the Egyptians say that it was not Amasis who endured this contumely, but another Egyptian of the same age, whom the Persians outraged under the impression that they were outraging Amasis. Amasis had been informed by an oracle what would happen to him after death; to escape his fate he had buried a man, who died at the time, in the tomb which he had made for himself at the temple of Neith at Sais, near the door, and had commanded his son to bury him in the innermost grave-chamber. In my opinion these arrangements of Amasis about his burial were not carried out, they were mere inventions of the Egyptians."

Ctesias' narrative is as follows: Cambyses fulfilled the last commands of his father that his younger brother Tanyoxarkes should be made lord of the Bactrians, Chorasmians, Parthians, and Carmanians, and in every other respect, and sent his corpse to Persia for burial. Having ascertained that the Egyptian women were more desirable than others, he asked Amasis for one of his daughters, and Amasis sent Nitetis the daughter of Hophra. Cambyses took great delight in her, and loved her much, and when he had learned all her story he acceded to her request that he would avenge the murder of her father. When he had armed against Egypt and Amyrtaeus, the Egyptian king, the eunuch Combaphes, who had great influence with Amyrtaeus, betrayed the pa.s.ses into Egypt, and all the affairs of the country, in order that he might be viceroy of it.

Then Cambyses set out on his march; in the battle 50,000 Egyptians and 20,000 Persians were slain,[144] Amyrtaeus was taken alive, and all Egypt was subjugated. Cambyses did no further harm to Amyrtaeus beyond sending him with 6000 Egyptians of his own choice to Susa; but Combaphes became governor of Egypt as Cambyses had promised first by Izabates, his most trusted eunuch and the cousin of Combaphes, and then by his own mouth.[145]

Herodotus' account is once more dominated by the desire to give prominence to the vengeance for the crime which Amasis committed in betraying Hophra his master and thrusting from the throne the legitimate ruler of Egypt (III. 407). Amasis was spared, but the punishment fell upon the son, who thus suffered for his father's sins. The sources open to Herodotus were the narratives of the Persians, of the Egyptians, and of his own people. The Greeks of Asia Minor had taken part in the campaign of Cambyses against Egypt; Greek mercenaries a.s.sisted in the defence; and as we have seen, Greeks were settled in Egypt in considerable numbers. Herodotus himself rejects the story that Cambyses was the son of the daughter of Hophra, as the Egyptians maintained by way of consolation; as well as another story that Cambyses had invaded Egypt in order to avenge the preference which Cyrus showed to the daughter of Hophra over his mother Ca.s.sandane. On the other hand, he adopts, though with hesitation, the story of the Persians that Cambyses sought a wife from Amasis, because it agrees with his own idea that ruin was brought upon Amasis by his own treachery and the daughter of the Pharaoh whom he had deposed. Deinon in his Persian History and Lyceas of Naucratis retained both these stories together in the form that Amasis sent Nitetis to Cyrus, and that she was the mother of Cambyses who invaded Egypt to avenge Hophra. The solicitation of Cambyses, and the deception of Amasis, in Herodotus, and in a still more pointed form in Ctesias, the source of which, Herodotus tells us, was the narrative of the Persians, has obviously arisen out of Persian poems about Cambyses, which required some poetical motive for the campaign against Egypt; we saw that the modern version of the poems concerning Cyrus represented the campaign against Tomyris as due to a similar motive. Hophra died in the year 570; when Cambyses ascended the throne, his youngest daughter must have been more than forty years of age. There was no need of any motive of this kind to excite Cambyses against Egypt, as has been shown above; after the fall of Lydia and Babylonia, Egypt was the natural aim for the Persian weapons.

Cambyses did not begin the war against Egypt immediately after his accession. Though Ctesias tells us that he first placed his brother over the Bactrians, Chorasmians, Parthians, and Carmanians, Cyrus, when he entrusted the kingdom of Babylonia to Cambyses, may have given the viceroyalty over the regions of the East to his younger son. We may confidently believe Herodotus that the death of Cyrus gave the subject nations the hope of again throwing off the yoke. After overcoming these rebellions (p. 131), in the fifth year of his reign, Cambyses marched against Egypt. Amasis, as we have observed, had made himself master of the island of Cyprus, and had entered into communication with Polycrates the prince of Samos, in order to cover an attack on Egypt by sea, and provide, in case of necessity, a counterpoise to the naval power of the Greek cities on the coast, and that of the Phenicians.

Cyrus had allowed his empire to be bounded by the sea, though he did not refuse the voluntary submission of Chios and Lesbos. Cambyses went further. He wished to procure a fleet for his kingdom; Persia was to rule by sea as well as land. This, it is true, could only be done by forcing arms into the hands of subject tribes and cities, and that on an element on which the Persians could not pursue them. It was a bold conception, and in forming it Cambyses must have felt quite secure of the obedience of the Greek and Phenician cities, and of the allegiance of the old princely houses who ruled in the latter no less than of the new ones who ruled in the former. For the first time the command went forth to the harbour cities of the Syrian and Anatolian coasts, that they were to arm their s.h.i.+ps for the king. The fleet was to support the attack of the land army, and then, pa.s.sing up the Nile, facilitate the movements of the army in Egypt. The s.h.i.+ps of the Greeks were to unite with those of the Phenicians in the harbour of Acco to the south of Carmel.[146] This resolution of Cambyses and the a.s.sembling of so magnificent a fleet on the coast of Phoenicia at once bore fruit. The princes of the Cyprian cities abandoned Egypt, recognised the supremacy of Persia, and at once prepared their s.h.i.+ps for a voyage against Egypt.

In return for this sudden and voluntary submission they were allowed to remain at the head of the cities; they were only to pay tribute and furnish contingents in war.[147] On Polycrates of Samos also the naval armament of Cambyses made a most lively impression. When in possession of a strong fleet Cambyses could use it against Samos. Was Polycrates to fight for Egypt whose naval power could not defend him against this fleet, or was he to remain neutral? Polycrates held the latter course to be the worst; neutrality during the war of Cyrus and Croesus had cost the Greek cities dear enough. He determined to change his front. When the Ionian cities launched their s.h.i.+ps, and the vessels of Chios and Lesbos steered towards the Syrian coast, he also offered to place s.h.i.+ps at the disposal of the Persian king for use in Egypt. Cambyses accepted the submission of Polycrates, and he sent forty well-manned s.h.i.+ps of war.[148]

Thus Cambyses had already deprived the Pharaoh of two important points of support before he had begun the war. Whether Amasis was alive at the defection of the princes of Cyprus, and of Polycrates, is doubtful. It is possible that his death, which elevated to the throne of Egypt his son Psammenitus (Psamtek III.), an untried prince in the place of a proved and experienced leader such as Amasis, was another weight in the scale on the side of defection. There was still another difficulty to remove. The Syrian coast formed a strong wall of protection for Egypt.

If the fleet followed the army along the coast it found none but difficult landing-places; at present there are none in that region for the heavier s.h.i.+ps of our days. In any case, in a numerous army such as Cambyses no doubt led, care would have to be taken for the horses and camels. It is not true that Cambyses requested a free pa.s.sage from the king of the Arabians; the men in question were the chiefs of the Arabs in the peninsula of Sinai, the Midianites and Amalekites; and it was the supply of water for the army which these tribes undertook. After completing his preparations Cambyses set out early in the year 525 B.C., in order to march through the desert before the beginning of the hottest weather, and arrive in Egypt sufficiently early before the inundation.[149]

As the desertion of Eurybatus aided Cyrus in the Lydian war (p. 20), so was Cambyses a.s.sisted in his preparations for the campaign against Egypt according to the narrative of Herodotus by the advice of Phanes, and according to Ctesias by the advice of Combaphes. We may here give unhesitating confidence to the definite a.s.sertion of Herodotus as it concerns his own countryman of Halicarna.s.sus. The departure of Phanes for Egypt must have taken place in the autumn of the year 526 B.C., for it is Amasis who sends his trusted eunuch after him as far as Lycia. For the name of Psammenitus the fragment of Ctesias gives the incorrect name of Amyrtaeus (if this name of the later opponent of Persia on the Nile is not due to the excerpt), it subst.i.tutes Combaphes for Phanes, _i.e._ to all appearances the eunuch who pursues Phanes for Phanes himself. We do not find elsewhere the slightest trace that Combaphes received the vice-royalty of Egypt; on the contrary, the statements of the fragments about the cousins.h.i.+p of the chief eunuch of Pharaoh and the chief eunuch of Cambyses, and the repeated promise of the vice-royalty which is made to Combaphes, point to Persian poems, which had to clothe incidents of this nature in a poetical garb; we have already frequently met with the a.n.a.logous promises of Arbaces to Belesys, and of Cyrus to the interpreters of dreams at Babylon.

With regard to the course of the war we can only establish the fact, that Psammenitus collected all his forces, _i.e._ the warrior caste, and his Ionian and Carian troops, which were apparently strengthened by Libyan tribes, and Greeks from Cyrene, and awaited the attack of the Persians at the point where at the present day the caravan road from Gaza reaches Egypt, near Pelusium, the old border fortress, surrounded by the sand of the desert and wide expanses of mud. In regard to this battle we only learn from Ctesias that 50,000 Egyptians and 20,000 Persians fell; whether it be that these numbers are taken from the Persian poems, or whether they belong to the official Persian account. A part of the Egyptian army retired to Pelusium; with another band of fugitives Psammenitus reached Memphis. When the Persians had besieged and captured Pelusium, which made a bold resistance, Egypt lay open to them. Cambyses shaped his course to Memphis. There in past days the empire of the Pharaohs had arisen; there stood the temple of Ptah, the most sacred shrine of the land, which Menes himself was said to have founded, which all his successors, including Amasis, had enlarged and adorned. Memphis closed the approach to the upper river valley, which was barred to the Persians so long as the city held out. Hence it appears to have been the determination of Psammenitus to give up the delta to the Persians, to defend Memphis, and shut himself up in its walls. The city is said to have been twenty miles in circuit (I. 85); it lay on the western bank of the Nile, and Cambyses had the difficult task of crossing the river before he could invest the city. But now it was seen how great was the support afforded by the fleet. The Egyptian s.h.i.+ps must have been forced to retire; the union of the Persian army with the fleet was accomplished; one of these s.h.i.+ps appeared before the walls of Memphis sooner than the army. According to the account of Herodotus it would seem that it was not the city but only the citadel of Memphis, "the white tower" on the southern dam, which defended itself. If this was the case Cambyses had no doubt to thank the fleet for it. Elsewhere the city must have been defended on the side towards the Nile by the river-dams merely, which the garrison despaired of holding against the attack of numerous s.h.i.+ps of war. Thus invested and attacked the citadel must at length have opened the gates; and with the citadel Psammenitus fell into the hands of the Persians.[150] After the fall of Memphis Cambyses does not seem to have found resistance anywhere. It is nevertheless possible that Sais, the residence of Psammetichus and his descendants, as well as of Amasis and Psammenitus, the burial-place of the princes and of Amasis, attempted a defence. In any case the conquest of Sais completed the subjugation of the Egyptian land. An inscription of the Egyptians says: "When the great prince, the lord of the world, Kambathet, marched against Egypt, all nations of the earth were with him. He became lord of the whole land and settled there."[151] In a war of a few months Cambyses had overthrown a kingdom which reckoned by millenniums, and had been the wonder of the world.

What Herodotus tells us of the fate of Psammenitus and the death of his son reminds us in a striking manner of the legend of the Greeks about the distress and the rescue of Croesus, who also reappears in this narrative. In both Herodotus becomes uncertain towards the end, and changes from direct to indirect narration, from a.s.sertion to supposition. When Cyrus commanded Croesus to be burned, he intended, according to Herodotus, to prove whether a G.o.d would come to his aid; Cambyses intends to put the endurance of Psammenitus to the test. Two trials are made with this object; and a third trial also takes place; and if Croesus calls on Solon three times on the pyre, Psammenitus remains dumb "with horror," as Aristotle says, at the sight of his daughter at her slavish task, and of his son when led out to execution; it is only at the sight of his friend who has become a beggar that he breaks forth into lamentation. Like Cyrus at Sardis, Cambyses at Memphis inquires into the reason of such conduct. But if Cyrus weeps at the pyre, and desires to save Croesus, who is finally rescued by a G.o.d, so in this place, all the Persians who are present weep, and Croesus weeps, and Cambyses himself is touched by compa.s.sion; he wishes to save the son of Psammenitus; and though he cannot do this he releases the father out of captivity and receives him at his court. There is a difference in the stories in the fact that though Cambyses is putting Psammenitus to the test, the son is actually executed, and that the compa.s.sion of Cambyses is not aroused by the danger impending over the Egyptian king, but by his conduct. As in the story of Croesus and Cyrus, so in this, we have obviously a legend of the Greeks--the Greeks in Egypt. The first story has arisen out of the intention of Croesus not to survive the fall of his kingdom, to offer himself as a sacrifice to the angry G.o.d of the Lydians; and the second has no other foundation than the punishment exacted by Cambyses in accordance with the sentence of the seven judges (p. 105), for the murder of his herald who had demanded the surrender of Memphis, and for the ma.s.sacre of the crew of the s.h.i.+p in which the herald had gone to the city. If the seven judges demand ten Egyptians for every man slain, this sentence, though it fell on the most distinguished families of Egypt, would seem mild enough according to the scale of oriental punishments; as 2000 men were brought out for execution, the s.h.i.+p must have had the usual crew of a Greek trireme.

Whether the son of Psammenitus was really put to death for the herald, we must leave to the legend; Ctesias tells us only of the deportation of Psammenitus and 6000 Egyptians to Susa.

Cambyses resolved to treat Psammenitus and Egypt in precisely the same way as Cyrus had treated Croesus and Lydia, Nabonetus and Babylon. It is not said that any harm was done to the city of Memphis, and Herodotus tells us himself that if Psammenitus had known how to keep quiet, Cambyses would have entrusted him with the governors.h.i.+p of Egypt. Yet the degradation of his daughter and the execution of his son were a strange initiation of such treatment.[152] Still more incredible is the ill-treatment and burning of the corpse of Amasis, for which Cambyses had not the slightest reason, especially as Herodotus states that Cambyses sent Ladice, the widow of Amasis, unharmed back to her own city of Cyrene.[153] The story belongs to the context of the narrative according to which Cambyses sues for the daughter of Amasis, and is deceived by him with the daughter of Hophra, whose desire for vengeance on Amasis he satisfies. As Amasis is no longer alive, vengeance comes upon his son and grandson, and even on his own body. For this reason Herodotus has adopted this story, for he lays great stress on the fact that no misfortune befell Amasis in his life, though he rejects the Egyptian version that Amasis had taken the precaution to subst.i.tute the corpse of another person of the same age for his own. If Sais resisted and was taken by storm, the temple of Neith might certainly be injured, the royal sepulchres violated, and the mummies taken from them, without any blame attaching to Cambyses, though on a similar occasion at Memphis he is charged by Herodotus with opening the tombs and disturbing the rest of the dead.[154] The Egyptian inscription informs us that the conduct of Cambyses at Sais and in the temple of Neith, in the portico of which Amasis had built his sepulchre, was widely different from that described by the legend. He removed his soldiers from the temple, purified it, and both here and in other places he showed his regard for the wors.h.i.+p of the Egyptians as Cyrus had shown it for the wors.h.i.+p of the Babylonians and the Hebrews. From the account of Herodotus, no less than from the later circ.u.mstances of Egypt, it is clear that no alteration was made in the government, law, and administration of justice, except that a Persian satrap was placed at the head of the country and Persian garrisons were sent to the citadels of the most important places. Even the Egyptian warrior caste remained unchanged and undiminished; it merely pa.s.sed from the service of the Pharaohs into that of the Achaemenids; and after repeated rebellions numbered more than 400,000 men in the middle of the fifth century B.C.

FOOTNOTES:

[139] The Babylonian tablets give dates from the first to the ninth year inclusive of "Kuras, king of Babylon," which entirely agree with the dates of the canon of Ptolemy, _i.e._ with the capture of Babylon by Cyrus 538 B.C., and the death of Cyrus in 529 B.C. On another tablet, No. 877, Br. Mus., we find the "year eleven of Cambyses king of Babylon"

(E. Schrader, "Z. Aegypt. Sprach." 1878, s. 40 ff.). It is a fact established by the canon of Ptolemy as well as by Herodotus that Cambyses did not sit on the throne for eight whole years. Tablet 906 explains this eleventh year; it runs as follows: "Babylon month Kislev, day 25, year 1 of Cambyses king of Babylon, at that time Cyrus king of the lands." Hence in Babylon dates were sometimes fixed by the years of Cyrus king of Babylon, and sometimes by the years of the viceroy. If the "year eleven" of Cambyses in Babylon was the year of Cambyses' death, Cyrus must have handed over the government of Babylonia to him in the year 532 B.C., _i.e._ three years before his own death. This view, which has been developed by E. Schrader, I feel able to adopt against the opinion of T. G. Pinches, who wrongly a.s.sumes an abdication of Cyrus.

That years were not dated from Cambyses after his death is proved by seventeen other tablets, which do not go beyond the eighth year of his reign, and two others of the 20 Elul and 1 Tisri from the first year of Barziya, _i.e._ of the Pseudo-Smerdis.

[140] Herod. 2, 182; Diod. 1, 68.

[141] Herod. 3, 1.

[142] Herodotus writes Kadytis after the Egyptian name Kazatu. Vol. I.

132.

[143] Herod. 2, 1; 3, 44.

[144] Bekker reads 7000.

[145] Ctesias, "Pers." 9; Athenaeus, p. 560.

[146] Strabo, p. 758.

[147] In Herod. (3, 19) the voluntary submission of the Cyprians stands in direct connection with their partic.i.p.ation in the campaign against Egypt; hence it cannot be placed earlier. If Xenophon ("Inst. Cyri," 1, 1) represents the Cyprians as already subjugated by Cyrus, he maintains the same of Egypt also. On the other hand, the statement of Xenophon that the Cyprians retained their native kings owing to their voluntary submission is amply confirmed by later events ("Inst. 2 Cyri." 7, 4, 2; 8, 6, 8).

[148] Herod. 3, 44.

[149] According to Lepsius, Amasis died in January 525, and hence Memphis fell in July of this year: "Monatsberichte Berl. Akademie,"

1854. The Psammenitus of Herodotus is called Psammecherites in Manetho; and Psamtik on the monuments. Rosell. "Monum. storici." 2, 153; 4, 105.

[150] Diod. "Exc. de virtute," p. 557; Polyaen. "Strateg." 7, 9. In regard to the campaign we may compare the march of Pharnabazus and Iphicrates against Nectanebos in the year 374 B.C., in Diod. 15, 41-43.

Aristot. "Rhet." 2, 8, 12.

[151] Herod. 2, 181. De Rouge, "Revue Archeol," 8, 3; Brugsch, "Hist. of Egypt," 2, 294.

[152] Aristot. "Rhet." 2, 8, 12.

[153] Herod. 2, 181.

[154] Herod. 3, 37.

CHAPTER XI.

THE MARCH TO MEROE.

More than two centuries before Cambyses set foot upon its soil, Egypt had experienced the rule of the stranger. The reign of the Ethiopic monarchs of Napata over Egypt (730-672 B.C.) was followed by the more severe dominion of the a.s.syrians. But Psammetichus had been able to restore the kingdom, and the sovereignty of his house; the reign of Amasis had called into existence a beautiful after-bloom of Egyptian art, had given a lively impulse to trade, and increased the welfare of the land. Now the day of Pelusium and the fall of Memphis had decided the fate of Egypt irrevocably and for all time. The kingdom had been founded from Memphis three thousand years previously, and at Memphis it was now overthrown. Egypt, in spite of repeated and stubborn attempts, was never able to recover from the dominion of the Persians, and even the fall of the Persian empire did not permit the rise of the Egypt of the Egyptians.