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 Cassandane 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 succumbed to the arms of the Assyrians; 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 assigned 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 assume 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 vassals 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 ships of the Cyprian cities could assist 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 ships, 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 passed
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 Cassandane, 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
Halicarnassus, Phanes by name, of good understanding and mighty in war.
Injured by Amasis in some way, he fled by ship 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 pass 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 passage. 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 Halicarnassian, Cambyses sent messengers to the
Arabian, and received permission for the passage, 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 Hellenes 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, Hellenes 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 ship come into
Memphis they hastened down from the citadel, destroyed the ship, 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 passed 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 passed
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 ship 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 passed, 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, passed 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 compassion. 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 god; 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 passes 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 assisted 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 Cassandane. 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 ships for the king. The fleet was to support the
attack of the land army, and then, passing up the Nile, facilitate the
movements of the army in Egypt. The ships 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 assembling 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 ships 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 ships, and the vessels of Chios and
Lesbos steered towards the Syrian coast, he also offered to place ships
at the disposal of the Persian king for use in Egypt. Cambyses accepted
the submission of Polycrates, and he sent forty well-manned ships 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 ships 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 passage 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 assisted 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 assertion of Herodotus as it
concerns his own countryman of Halicarnassus. 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 substitutes 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 cousinship 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
analogous 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 ships
must have been forced to retire; the union of the Persian army with the
fleet was accomplished; one of these ships 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 ships 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 assertion to
supposition. When Cyrus commanded Croesus to be burned, he intended,
according to Herodotus, to prove whether a god 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 god, so
in this place, all the Persians who are present weep, and Croesus weeps,
and Cambyses himself is touched by compassion; 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 compassion 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 god 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 massacre of the crew of the ship 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 ship 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 governorship 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 substitute 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 worship of the Egyptians as Cyrus had shown it for the worship of
the Babylonians and the Hebrews. From the account of Herodotus, no less
than from the later circumstances 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 passed 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 assumes 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 participation 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.