The History of Antiquity Volume Vi Part 7

The speedy and great success which Cambyses achieved had effects beyond the borders of Egypt. Herodotus narrates that the Libyans in their anxiety about the fortune of Egypt submitted to Cambyses without a battle, promised to pay tribute, and sent presents. The Cyrenaeans also and Barcaeans from similar apprehensions had done the same. The presents of the Libyans were graciously accepted by Cambyses, but the 500 minae which the Cyrenaeans sent, he threw with his own hand among the people because "it was too little."[155] Diodorus explains the anxiety of the Libyans and Cyrenaeans, "after Cambyses had become lord of the whole of Egypt" and the voluntary submission which was the consequence of it, by the fact that the Libyans and Cyrenaeans had fought against Cambyses with the Egyptians. We know from other sources that the princes of Cyrene were in close and friendly connection with Amasis.[156] The subjugation of the Libyans cannot have extended farther than to the tribes adjacent to the Delta, and reaching towards the west perhaps as far as Cyrene. At that time Archelaus III. was the king of Cyrene. More than a century before, Greeks from the island of Thera had founded the city on the well-watered and gra.s.sy slopes which run from the table-land of Barca to the sea. Ever since that time the family of Battus and Archelaus had reigned over this settlement, which, owing to its favoured position and lively trade, rose quickly to power and wealth. The attack which Pharaoh-Hophra made upon it in the year 571 B.C. had been successfully repulsed by the Cyrenaeans (III. 405).

Subsequently, about the year 545 B.C., Battus III. had been compelled to submit to a const.i.tutional form of government which restricted the monarchy to a hereditary presidents.h.i.+p. Discontented with this position, Archelaus III. attempted to recover the old powers. The attempt failed, Archelaus fled, and found shelter with Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos.

When he had collected there an army of adventurers he returned at their head, subverted the const.i.tution, and set on foot a cruel persecution against all who had adhered to it. He may have felt the ground insecure under his feet in the city; the fall of Egypt deprived him of the support which he had had in that country, and if he had really sent a contingent to aid Psammenitus he had to fear the vengeance of Cambyses.

These were reasons enough for seeking the protection of the Persian king. He recognised the sovereignty of Cambyses, and sent that sum of money as the first proof of his submission.

"Cambyses now proposed to himself a threefold expedition," so Herodotus relates; "one against the Carthaginians, a second against the Ammonians, and a third against the long-lived Ethiopians, who inhabit Libya on the southern sea. It seemed best to send the fleet against the Carthaginians, and a part of the land army against the Ammonians, but to the Ethiopians envoys were first sent. When he had given this command he ordered fish-eaters to be brought from Elephantine (the island on the Nile on the border of Egypt) who were acquainted with the language of the Ethiopians. While these were being brought he ordered the fleet to set out against Carthage. But the Phenicians refused; they were bound by great oaths, and they would be guilty of a crime if they went against their own children. As the Phenicians refused, the rest (_i.e._ the Greeks) were not strong enough, and so the Carthaginians escaped slavery under the Persians. For Cambyses could not do violence to the Phenicians, because they had voluntarily submitted to the Persians (p.

90), and the whole naval power rested on the Phenicians. When the fish-eaters had come, they were told what they had to say to the Ethiopians, and received the presents which they had to take--a purple robe, a golden necklace and bracelets, a box of alabaster filled with ointment, and a jar of palm-wine. The Ethiopians to whom they were sent were said to be the tallest and most beautiful of men, and as they live under laws which are different from those of other men, they were said to regard the man who is the tallest and strongest among them as the most worthy of the throne."

"When the fish-eaters reached the Ethiopians and gave over their presents to the king, they said: 'Cambyses, the king of the Persians, wishes to be your friend and sends you as presents these things in which he takes most delight himself.' The Ethiopians answered: 'The Persian king has not sent you with these presents because he wishes to be my friend, and ye are not speaking the truth. You have been sent to spy out my kingdom, and he is not a righteous man. If he were righteous he would not have desired another land than his own, nor would he have reduced men to slavery from whom he had suffered no wrong. Give him this bow (the bows of the Ethiopians were of palm-wood and more than four cubits in length),[157] and say to the king of the Persians, that when his people can string a bow of that size he may march against the long-lived Ethiopians with an overwhelming army; till then, he may thank the G.o.ds that it has not occurred to the sons of the Ethiopians to conquer another land in addition to their own.' Then he gave them the bow, and he took the purple robe, and asked what it was and how it was made. And when the fish-eaters gave him a true account of the purple and the dyeing, he said that the men were deceivers and their garments deceptive. When he saw the necklace and bracelets, the king laughed, for he imagined that they were fetters; their fetters, he said, were stronger. Then he inquired about the ointment, and when the preparation and use of this were explained, he said the same as about the robes. The wine he drank and it pleased him greatly, and he asked what the king of Persia ate, and what was the greatest age to which the Persians lived.

They replied that he ate bread, and explained the nature of wheat; they also put the greatest age to which the Persians lived at eighty years.

The king replied that he did not wonder that their years were few, inasmuch as they ate dirt, and they would not live so long as they did, if the drink did not strengthen them--in that matter the Persians had the advantage. Of the Ethiopians most lived to 120 years, and some even longer; their food was cooked flesh, and their drink milk. When the envoys returned and Cambyses received their account, he fell into a pa.s.sion, and marched against the Ethiopians without taking measures for the supply of provisions or considering that he was about to march to the end of the world, but like one distraught and out of his mind, he set forth on his expedition as soon as he heard the account of the fish-eaters. No Persian was able to draw the bow of the Ethiopians; Smerdis alone, the brother of Cambyses, was able to draw it two finger-breadths.[158] Cambyses bade the Greeks who were with him (_i.e._ the crews of the Greek s.h.i.+ps) to remain in Egypt; but the whole of the rest of the army he took with him. When he came to Thebes, he sent 50,000 men away with orders to enslave the Ammonians and burn the oracle of Zeus; with the rest he marched against the Ethiopians. But before the army had traversed a fifth part of the way all their provisions were consumed, and not long after even the beasts of burden were eaten. If Cambyses when he saw this had given up his intention, and led the army back, he would have shown himself a wise man after his first mistake, but he went recklessly onward. So long as the soldiers found anything growing on the ground, they ate herbs and gra.s.s; but when they came to the sand, some of them did a horrid deed; they drew lots for the tenth man and ate him. When Cambyses heard of this, he was distressed that the soldiers should eat each other, abandoned the war against the Ethiopians, marched back, and reached Thebes after losing many men. This was the end of the expedition against the Ethiopians. But with regard to those who were sent against the Ammonians it is only known that they reached the city of Oasis where the Samians dwell, seven days' march distant from Thebes through the desert; in the Greek language this place is called the island of the blessed. To this place the army came; but beyond this no man knows anything except what the Ammonians say. They relate that when they marched from the oasis through the sand and were about midway between the oasis and the Ammonians, and were eating breakfast, a great wind from the south blew up a ma.s.s of sand and overwhelmed them, and in this way they perished." Diodorus represents Cambyses as making the attempt to subjugate the Ethiopians with a great host, in which he lost the whole of his army and was in the greatest danger.[159]

If the legend of the Greeks of the fortunes of Psammenitus after his defeat exhibits a.n.a.logous traits to the legend, also Greek, of the fate of Croesus after his capture, the account given by Herodotus of the march of Cambyses against the long-lived Ethiopians reminds us of his account of the march of Cyrus against the Ma.s.sagetae. In both cases the aim is directed against unknown foreign nations, against whom there is no reason to make war; in both cases good sense, moderation, wisdom, and love of peace are found in the chief of the barbarians; in both envoys are sent under false pretences; in both the conversation on either side is accurately known. In the first case it is a foolish resolution which brings ruin; in the second it is the vexation of Cambyses at the answer of the Ethiopians, and the inability to draw the bow, which causes him to lead his army without any hesitation into destruction. Along with other indications, the test of the bow here, like the bottle in the other legend, points to a poetical source.

We have seen that the ancient Pharaohs, the Sesurtesen and Amenemha, Tuthmosis and Amenophis, and after them Sethos and Ramses II., had extended the dominion of Egypt up the Nile to Semne and c.u.mne, and subsequently to Mount Barkal. The Egyptian language, wors.h.i.+p, and art spread in this direction, and with the decline of the Egyptian power after the time of the Ramessids (from the year 1100 B.C.), an independent state grew up, the metropolis of which was Napata, near the modern Meravi, on Mount Barkal. The princes of this state in their turn, from king Pianchi onwards, had forced their way down the Nile.[160]

Sabakon, Seb.i.+.c.hos, and Tirhaka had governed Napata and Egypt. After Sabakon had come into conflict with the a.s.syrians at Raphia in Syria (720 B.C.), and Tirhaka at Altaku (701 B.C.), Tirhaka succ.u.mbed in the year 672 B.C. to the arms of Esarhaddon. Repeated attempts of Tirhaka and his son Urdamane upon Egypt were wrecked; Esarhaddon calls himself king of Miluhhi and Cush. a.s.surbanipal boasts that he pursued Urdamane as far as the land of Cush. But the kingdom of Napata, which the inscriptions of Sargon, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and a.s.surbanipal call Miluhhi (Meroe[161])--in the inscriptions on Mount Barkal we find the names Meru and Merua--continued to exist, and maintained itself against the restoration of Egyptian power under Psammetichus and his successors.

We cannot doubt that Cambyses wished to penetrate up the Nile at least as far as the army of the a.s.syrians, that he felt it necessary to secure his dominion in Egypt against attacks from Napata, and to extend his dominion as far up the Nile as the army of the old Pharaohs had reached.

That the prince, who, as we saw, made the most careful preparations for the campaign against Egypt, should have thrown himself foolishly and recklessly into this undertaking, as Herodotus represents, is incredible, and the statement must be attributed to special tendencies in the sources used by the historian. So far as Meroe, Herodotus tells us from information collected at Elephantine on the southern border of Egypt, the way lay up and on the Nile. First there were four days'

journey from Elephantine (against the stream), then forty days' march along the river, since the rocks made navigation impossible, and then after twelve days' voyage the great city of Meroe was reached, the metropolis of the rest of the Ethiopians. The distance to the place where the Egyptians lived who had emigrated under Psammetichus (III.

307) was not less than the distance from Elephantine to Meroe, and it was a long journey for them to the long-lived Ethiopians. The total of 56 days' journey from the way from Elephantine to Meroe upon or along the Nile points to a place much higher up the river than Napata. The new Meroe is meant, which the princes of Napata, receding before the Persians, had founded before the time of Herodotus.[162] Herodotus'

statements that the Ethiopians wors.h.i.+pped Zeus and Dionysus alone among the G.o.ds, and wors.h.i.+pped them very zealously, that there was an oracle of Zeus in their country, and that it was only by its command that they went to war, are completely established by the monuments of Napata. They show that the wors.h.i.+p of Ammon, the G.o.d of Thebes and upper Egypt, and that of Osiris whom the Greeks, as we know, compared with their Dionysus, were zealously prosecuted. From inscriptions and intelligence of other kinds we have also ample information of the influence of the priests, and the importance of the oracle in the kingdom of Napata. The fame of the priesthood at Napata may be the basis of the "pious Ethiopians" of Homer; the same piety, though further removed, is shown in Herodotus' narrative of the long-lived Ethiopians.

When Cambyses, so Strabo tells us, had made himself master of Egypt, he advanced to Meroe (Napata), and it is said that he gave the name to the city in honour of his wife, or his sister, as others say, who was buried there. Diodorus indeed tells us that Cambyses founded the famous city of Meroe, and gave it the name of Meroe after his mother.[163] Josephus also observes that Cambyses changed the name of the royal city of the Ethiopians and called it Meroe.[164] However unfounded may be the a.s.sertion that the name of Meroe proceeded from Cambyses--for we find it used two centuries previously by the a.s.syrians--it is quite clear from these statements that Cambyses did advance as far as the old metropolis of the Ethiopians and brought it into his power; that he conquered and maintained the kingdom of Napata. Indeed Herodotus tells us elsewhere himself that he advanced far beyond Napata to the south. "In his campaign against the long-lived Ethiopians," we are told in this pa.s.sage, "Cambyses subjugated the Ethiopians who dwell around the sacred Nysa, and hold festivals in honour of Dionysus." The position of the mythical Nysa, we cannot, it is true, define more precisely than that a Homeric hymn puts it above the fountains of the Nile,[165] and Herodotus himself places it above Egypt in Ethiopia;[166] but inasmuch as these Ethiopians of Nysa wore leopard and lion skins, according to Herodotus, and were armed with clubs; as their arrow-heads were made of sharp stones, and their lances of the horns of antelopes; as they painted themselves half red and half white in battle;[167] as they had to pay to the Persians every third year two hundred logs of ebony, twenty large tusks of elephants, five boys, and two choenixes of unrefined gold,[168]

Cambyses must have penetrated into the land of the negroes, the zone of ebony and the elephant. On the middle course of the Nile in Nubia, and above Napata, there were tribes akin to the Egyptians; the land of the negroes began about the union of the White and Blue Nile. The monuments of Egypt comprise both populations under the name Cush, the name of the land of the south, and they exhibit these southern nations as partly red and partly black. The Greeks call the red and black inhabitants of the land of the south, Ethiopians. According to the statements of Artemidorus of Ephesus and of Agatharchides, which have been preserved by Strabo and Diodorus, the land of the elephant-hunters and ostrich-eaters, who fought with the Ethiopians, men armed with the horns of the antelope, began south of the confluence of the Atbara and Bahr-el-Azrek or Blue River, and the Nile.[169] At the present time the region of the ebony-woods and elephants begins in the marsh at the foot of the Abyssinian Alps; elephants are not found elsewhere except in some more northern regions on the Red Sea; and that the Ethiopians did not acquire the elephants' tusks in the way of trade is proved by the small amount of gold which they had to pay as tribute. As we find in the reliefs of Persepolis and Naksh-i-Rustem, among the nations of the Persian kingdom, certain figures which are marked out as negroes by their short, curly hair, their snub nose, their bare breast and the animal's skin on the shoulders; as the Ethiopians of Nysa and their neighbours served, according to Herodotus, in the army of Xerxes, and paid the tribute mentioned, as Herodotus expressly tells us, even in his day, the march of Cambyses must have penetrated beyond the mouth of the Atbara, and Napata must have been permanently maintained, otherwise such distant tribes would not have furnished contingents in war fifty years later, and their tribute would have come to an end long before Herodotus.

Hence Cambyses did not, as the account of Herodotus represents, return to Egypt from the upper Nile without success. On the contrary, he penetrated much further than the a.s.syrians, and his campaign had more lasting results than the conquests of Tuthmosis III. and Ramses II. on the upper Nile. The account given by Herodotus of the distress into which the army fell, the statement that the soldiers ate each other (which is also told of the expedition of Cyrus to the Indus), and that the retreat to Egypt was thus brought about, is hardly compatible with such results and so firmly-established a supremacy. Yet we may suppose that Cambyses wished to penetrate even further than the junction of the White and Blue Nile, and there fell into difficulties. But it is probable that quite another incident lies at the base of the legend of the distress of Cambyses "in the sand." At Premnis on the Nile, Pliny mentions "the market of Cambyses;" in Ptolemy the same place is called "the Magazine of Cambyses." Strabo, when narrating the campaign which Petronius took in the year 24 B.C. against Napata, tells us, that after Petronius had taken Pselchis (140 miles above Elephantine) he came to Premnis (150 miles further up the Nile, below Abu Simbel and the falls of Wadi Halfa), "after he had marched through the sand-heaps in which the army of Cambyses was buried by a sudden wind." Thus, five hundred years after the campaign of Cambyses, the tradition was in existence, that his army had been buried there. Hence when Napata had been conquered, and the negro stems subjugated, when Mount Barkal and the falls of Wadi Halfa were already behind the army on the return journey, it was overtaken by a sand-storm in the neighbourhood of Egypt, and a part of the army, though not the whole, was buried.[170]

Herodotus told us above that Cambyses in his march against the Ethiopians sent a section of his army against the Ammonians, to reduce them to slavery, and burn the oracle of Ammon there. Diodorus repeats the statement of Herodotus almost in the same words. Justin observes, that Cambyses had sent an army for the conquest of the famous temple of Ammon, but it was overwhelmed by a storm and ma.s.ses of sand. Herodotus'

narrative of this campaign cannot have arisen from the source from which he took the striking traits of his account of the march against the long-lived Ethiopians. Had this treated of the march against the Ammonians it would have given some account of the issue of it; but Herodotus expressly tells us that only the Ammonians could give an account of this. His authority therefore was a Greek-Egyptian tradition.

The Ammonians inhabited the oasis of Sivah, which lies in the desert to the west of Egypt: the wors.h.i.+p of Ammon was carried there by Egyptian settlers and Egyptian influence.[171] We cannot doubt that Cambyses, after Cyrene and the tribes of the Libyans between Egypt and Cyrene had submitted, sent a part of his army to obtain possession of this oasis.

The oasis of Ammon was well adapted to keep the Libyans of the coast as well as the Cyrenaeans in subjection; and was at the same time an important station for trade, and a desirable point of support for further undertakings in the West. The command to enslave the inhabitants of the oasis and burn the temple, is part of the conception which represents Cambyses as setting out against the Ethiopians in a moment of reckless pa.s.sion. According to Herodotus, the expedition to Sivah came in seven days after leaving Thebes to "the Island of the Blest," _i.e._ to the oasis El Charigeh, which as a fact is seven good days' march from Thebes in the desert.[172] From this point the army had to proceed about 500 miles; at present the caravans go northward from El Charigeh, then to the west from the oasis of Kasr, to Sivah. What happened to the army on one of these routes, no one, Herodotus says, can tell; the Ammonians declared that it was buried half way between El Charigeh and Sivah.

It would be rash to connect the heaps of bones which a traveller in our times saw in the neighbourhood of the oasis of Kasr with the destruction of the army of Cambyses,[173] and it is surprising that the Persians took the longer route from Thebes, when the shorter route which led from Memphis to Sivah was already frequented. Alexander of Macedon, in order to reach the Ammonians, marched from the Mareotic Lake along the coast westward to Paraetonium, then he turned directly to the south, and in eight marches reached the oasis. A modern traveller reached it in fifteen days from Fayum, in 1809, and the troops of Mahomet Ali who subjugated Sivah in 1820 to Egypt (2000 men and 500 camels with water) reached it in fourteen days. Most remarkable of all is the fact, that both campaigns of Cambyses were overtaken by the same disaster. The direction taken by each does not allow us to connect the two; the route to Sivah could not be past Pselchis and Premnis. Yet neither one nor the other disaster is in itself incredible, though 50,000 men cannot have perished. Some 70 years ago a caravan of about 2000 souls was buried in a sand-storm on the road from Darfur to Egypt.[174] But even if the division which was despatched against the oasis of Ammon succ.u.mbed to the storms of the desert, Cambyses maintained the oasis El Charigeh, which Herodotus calls the city Oasis and the Island of the Blessed. The magnificent remains of a temple which Darius the son of Hystaspes caused to be erected there to the G.o.d of the oasis, the ram-headed Ammon, prove that the oasis was conquered and held by Cambyses.[175]

Like the undertaking against the Ammonians, the intention of Cambyses to send the fleet against Carthage was evidence of his plan of extending his power to the west, and achieving in Africa what his father had done in Asia. Herodotus gives the account of the order commanding the fleet to sail, of the refusal of the Phenicians, and the abandonment of the project by Cambyses, according to the tradition of the Greeks, who together with the Phenicians made up the fleet of Cambyses and the Greeks in Egypt. There is no reason to doubt the statement. By the submission of the Cyrenaeans and Barcaeans Cambyses became the neighbour of Carthage, which had lately united the Phenician colonies of West Africa under her leaders.h.i.+p and was eager to oppose the advance of the Greeks in the west of the Mediterranean, the settlement of their colonies to the west of the great Syrtis, and their progress in Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily. If the attempt to advance to the desert to the west of El Charigeh were already wrecked, if Cambyses had already returned from Napata when he commanded the fleet to sail against Carthage, new successes covered that disaster as well as the calamity of Premnis, and the gain of Carthage was of more importance than that of the oasis of Sivah. The old Phenicians of the East, in union with the navy of the Anatolian cities, was to conquer the new Phoenicia of the West. The Greeks no doubt were ready, but the Phenicians refused. By injuring their colonies in the West they would have rendered the greatest service to the rival naval power and trade of the Greeks; in Anatolia and on the coasts of Sicily they would probably have given a fatal blow to their own power by sea. Whether Cambyses saw this connection of affairs, and felt that the subjection of Carthage would liberate the independent Greeks from a dangerous neighbour, and the dependent Greeks from a rival in trade, or whether he simply gave way to the refusal of the Phenicians, we cannot decide: we only know that "as the fleet of the Phenicians refused,"--and it formed the preponderating part of the naval force,--it was impossible to compel it to go.

FOOTNOTES:

[155] Herod. 3, 13.

[156] Diod. "Exc. de legat." p. 619 = 10, 14.

[157] Herod. 7, 69. Cf. Strabo, p. 802.

[158] Herod. 3, 30.

[159] Herod. 3, 17-26; Diod. 3, 1.

[160] Vol. III. 63 ff. 159.

[161] The name Miluhhi is nevertheless used so often in the inscription of the kings, and in such close connection with Egypt, that the kingdom of Napata may merely be meant. a.s.surbanipal tells us that his brother seduced into rebellion "the princes of Miluhhi whom he subjugated." Vol.

III. 170.

[162] Herod. 2, 29; Strabo, p. 786. Herodotus' statements, like those of the later authorities from Eratosthenes to Strabo and Pliny, have the second, more southern, Meroe in view, the ruins of which were found at Begerauieh, above the mouth of the Atbara, some 150 miles as the crow flies to the south of Napata. They describe this Meroe as situated on an island, because the Atbara was regarded as an arm of the Nile. The ruins at Begerauieh are less important and artistic than those of Napata, the hieroglyphics are of another kind. As the Persians maintained their hold on Napata, a new metropolis of the Ethiopian kingdom obviously grew up at this place after the times of Cambyses and Darius, which adopted the name and civilization of the old.

[163] Strabo, p. 790; Diod. 1, 33.

[164] "Antiq." 2, 10.

[165] "Hymn." 26, 9.

[166] "Hymn." 2, 146.

[167] "Hymn." 7, 69.

[168] "Hymn." 3, 97.

[169] Diod. 3, 26, 33; Strabo, p. 772.

[170] Plin. "H. N." 6, 35; Strabo, p. 822.

[171] Herod. 2, 42.

[172] Parthey, "Die Oase des Jupiter Ammon, Abh. Berl. Akad." 1862, s.

159 ff.

[173] Belzoni, "Narrative," p. 398.

[174] Ritter, "Erdkunde," 2, 1, 397.

[175] Lepsius, "Trinuthis, Z. Aegypt. Sprache," 1874, s. 76 ff.

CHAPTER XII.

THE DEATH OF CAMBYSES.

"When Cambyses returned from Thebes to Memphis," so Herodotus narrates, "Apis appeared to the Egyptians. They put on their best clothes, and made holiday. Cambyses seeing this, formed the opinion that they held the festival because misfortune had happened to him. He summoned the governors of Memphis, and when they came into his presence asked them why the Egyptians had done nothing of this kind when he had been in Memphis before, but only now that he had lost the greater part of his army. They replied that their G.o.d had appeared to them, who for a long time had been wont to appear, and when he appeared all the Egyptians were delighted. When Cambyses heard this he said that they lied, and punished them with death. He then sent for the priests, and when they said the same, he said that he would soon ascertain whether a tame deity had appeared to the Egyptians, and commanded them to bring out Apis.

Apis was brought out, and Cambyses mad as he was drew his sword. He meant to stab Apis in the belly, but he hit the thigh and said with a laugh to the priests: 'Wretches, are these creatures G.o.ds, which have flesh and blood, and feel iron? Such a G.o.d is worthy of the Egyptians.

But you shall not mock me for nothing,' He gave command to scourge the priests and slay every Egyptian who was found making holiday. In this way the festival came to an end; the priests were punished, the Apis died in the temple of the wound in his thigh, and the priests buried him secretly unknown to Cambyses.[176] But the king remained in Memphis and raged against the Egyptians, the allies, and the Persians. He caused the old sepulchres to be opened and looked at the corpses; he went into the temple of Hephaestus (Ptah, I. 43), and desecrated the image of the G.o.d in various ways. He also entered the temple of the Cabiri (belonging to the Phenicians at Memphis, III. 310), which none but the priests may enter, and outraged the images and burned them."[177] Diodorus observes that Cambyses, as was said, took away the Golden Zone in the Ramesseum, which measured 365 cubits, one for each day in the year, and was a cubit thick.[178] Justin tells us quite generally that Cambyses, enraged at the superst.i.tion of the Egyptians, gave orders for the destruction of the temples of Apis and the other G.o.ds.[179]

In the narrative of Herodotus the best reason given for the wounding of Apis is the vexation of the king at the failure of his campaigns against the Ethiopians and Ammonians, and the refusal of the Phenicians; and the belief that the festival of Apis was merely an excuse for making merry over the blows which had fallen upon him. If Cambyses tells the priests, who exhibit Apis to him as a G.o.d who has recently appeared to them, that "they lied," it was very difficult for a wors.h.i.+pper of Auramazda to believe that a young bull was a G.o.d, and the highest G.o.d, and the "lie"

with which Cambyses charges them, seems to be an accurate trait corresponding to the conceptions of the Avesta about the "lying G.o.ds,"

and to the Zoroastrian respect for the truth. There could hardly be a more strongly-marked contrast than between the wors.h.i.+p of Auramazda, the creator of heaven and earth, and surrounded by the light spirits of the sky, in which no images were allowed, and the rites of the Egyptians, their wors.h.i.+p of numerous images of the most extraordinary form in splendid temples, their adoration of the sacred animals, in which these deities appeared, and were thought to be present,--between their anxious care for the preservation of the corpse, and the eagerness of the Iranians to remove the impure remains of man. Cambyses might in all honesty believe that he was in contact with a stupid wors.h.i.+p of idols, a senseless adoration of calves, crocodiles, and serpents, and a nation of "liars."

But if he held such opinions, he did not act on them. If he had outraged the wors.h.i.+p of Egypt in the manner represented by the legends of the Egyptians in Herodotus and Justin, the country could hardly have remained at rest after his death, when almost all the other lands rebelled against the Persians. Egyptian inscriptions prove that under Cambyses there was no sort of religious persecution, but quite the reverse. In the tombs of the Apis, on the plateau of Memphis, on the vestibule of the new gallery which Psammetichus had caused to be hollowed out for them, when the old gallery of Ramses II. was filled, we see on a pillar Cambyses adoring the Apis. The inscription tells us: "In the year four, in the month Epiphi, in the reign of Cambyses (Kambathet), the immortal, the G.o.d was brought here for the burial which the king ordained for him. A second Apis, the successor of that which was buried, was born, as the inscription of the Apis tombs tells us, on the 28th Tybi, in the fifth year of the reign of Cambyses.[180]