Where Thebes, thy hundred gates lie unrepaired, Fish-gods you'll meet, with fins and scales o'ergrown; Her dogs have temples, but the goddess none! Each clove of garlic is a sacred power." The kindness shown by Amasis to Samos, says Herodotus, was owing to the friendship which subsisted between him and Polycrates, the son of Æaces; but he had no such motive of attachment to Lindus, and was only moved by the report of the temple of Minerva having been erected there by the daughters of Danaus, when they fled from the sons of Egyptus. The same author informs us that his affection for the Cyrenians arose from his having married Ladice, a native of that country, who was afterwards, when Cambyses conquered Egypt, sent back to her parents. The friendship of this monarch of Egypt and Polycrates commenced at the period of the war between the Lacedemonians and the latter, who had forcibly possessed himself of Samos. It had been cemented by various presents on both sides, and appeared to promise a long continuance. But Plutarch has well observed, that prosperity is no just scale, but adversity is the true balance to weigh friends. The ancient historian relates that the Egyptian monarch, offended with the tyrannical conduct of Polycrates, and foreseeing, from the feeling excited against him both among his subjects and foreigners, that his fate was inevitable, withdrew his friendship from him. The event justified his foresight; for the subjects of Polycrates revolted, and he was at length murdered by the treacherous Orastes. That Amasis was a great encourager of art we have ample testimony from the monuments which remain, as well as from the statements of ancient historians. He decorated the chief city of the nomos in which he was born (Sais) with numerous great works. There were magnificent propylæa to the temple of Athanæa, enormous colossi, and large androsphinxes. His great architectural achievement was a monolith, or one stone temple, which he brought from the granite This colossus or marble statue of Memnon held a harp in its hand, which uttered musical sounds when struck by the beams of the rising sun; which Strabo tells us that he both saw and heard, but confesses he is not able to assign a cause. VOL. A 14 quarries of Syene, down the river, a distance of about 600 miles. The exterior dimensions of this stone were 31 Greek feet long, 21 broad, and 12 high: a chamber was cut out in the interior, the dimensions of which were, 281 feet long, 18 broad, and 7 high. Amasis made also, a colossus 75 Greek feet long, flanked by two smaller figures, 30 feet high, which he placed in front of the great temples of Hephaestus, (Phtha,) at Memphis. He placed a similar one at Sais. The restoration of Egypt, says Dr. Hales, under Amasis, seems to have been foretold in Scripture: "At the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered," Ezek. xxix. 13. These forty years of captivity, counted from Nebuchadnezzar's invasion, B. C. 570, expired B. c. 530, when Cyrus, who had subverted the Babylonian empire, в. c. 538, and into whose power Egypt, as a province of that empire, had fallen, by a wise and liberal policy, released the Egyptians, as he had before the Jews. This act of grace occurred five years before the death of Amasis. The next year, B. C. 529, Cyrus died, and the Egyptians revolted, upon which, Cambyses, the successor of Cyrus, made it his first act, after he had settled the eastern provinces, to invade Egypt. Herodotus, however, assigns a different cause for the invasion. He says, that towards the latter end of the reign of this monarch, Cambyses sent to Egypt to demand his daughter in marriage, a step to which he had been prompted by a certain Egyptian, an enemy of Amasis. This man was a physician; and when Cyrus had requested of the Egyptian king the best medical advice he could procure for a disorder of his eyes, Amasis forced him to leave his wife and family and go into Persia.* Meditating The Egyptians paid great attention to health; and so wisely, says Herodotus, was medicine managed by them, that no doctor was permitted to practise any but his own particular branch. Some were oculists, who only studied diseases of the eye; others attended solely to the complaints of the head; others to those of the teeth; some again confined themselves to complaints of the intestines; and others to secret and internal maladies, accoucheurs being generally, if not always women. The physicians received salaries from the public treasury. After they had studied those precepts which were laid down from the experience of their predecessors, they were permitted to practise. In order to insure their attention to the prescribed rules, and to prevent experiments from being made upon patients, they were punished if their treatment was contrary to the established system; and the death of a person under such circumstances was deemed a capital offence. If, however, every remedy revenge for this treatment, he instigated his successor to require the daughter of Amasis, that he might either suffer affliction at the loss of his child, or, by refusing to send her, provoke the resentment of Cambyses. Amasis detested the character of the Persian monarch; and persuaded that his treatment of her would neither be honourable nor worthy of a princess, he was unwilling to accept the overture; but fearing to give a positive refusal, he determined on sending the daughter of the late king. The name of this princess was Neitatis, or, as Herodotus calls her, Nitetis. She was possessed of great personal attractions; and Amasis, having dressed her in the most splendid attire, sent her into Persia as his own child. Not long after, Cambyses happening to address her as the daughter of Amasis, she explained the manner in which he had been deceived, by a man who had dethroned and put Apries her father to death, and had seized upon the throne through the assistance of a rebellious faction. Upon this, Cambyses was so enraged, that he resolved to make war upon the usurper, and immediately prepared to invade Egypt. This statement will not bear the test of examination. Nitetis is represented to have been sent to Persia towards the close of the reign of Amasis, which lasted forty four years; and allowing her to have been born immediately before Apries was dethroned, she would have been of an age which in Egypt and Persia is no longer a recommendation or the had been administered according to the sanatory law, they were absolved from all blame. According to Pliny, the Egyptians claimed the honor of having invented the art of curing diseases. The Bible, indeed, affords some sanction to this claim, by the fact that its first notice of physicians is to intimate their existence in Egypt. See Gen. 1. 2; Exod. xxi. 19. The employment of numerous drugs in Egypt is mentioned by sacred and profane writers; and the medical properties of many herbs which grow in the deserts are still known to the Arabs, although their application has been but imperfectly preserved. "O virgin, the daughter of Egypt," says Jeremiah: "in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured," Jer. xlvi. 11. Homer, in his Odyssey, describes the many valuable medicines given by Polydamna, the wife of Thonis, to Helen, when in Egypt; and Pliny makes frequent mention of the productions of that country, and their use in medicine. The same writer mentions, that the Egyptians examined the bodies after their death, to ascertain the nature of the disease of which they died. We learn from Herodotus, moreover, that Cyrus, as stated above, and Darius, both sent to Egypt for medical men. All this tends to prove the medical skill of the ancient Egyptians; but notwithstanding this, it is indicated only in the painting of Beni Hassan, where a doctor and a patient are twice represented. associate of beauty. It is more likely, that Amasis, who had submitted to Cyrus, refused, upon the death of that conqueror, to pay his successor the same homage and tribute. But whatever may have been the real motive of this war, it is certain that Cambyses was greatly enraged against Amasis; and that the Egyptians, when the country was invaded by the Persian monarch, were treated with unwonted cruelty. The death of Amasis, however, which happened six months before the arrival of the Persians, prevented Cambyses from satiating his meditated revenge on the Egyptian monarch: and judging from the savage rage which the Persian conqueror vented upon his lifeless body, it was fortunate for Amasis that he had not fallen alive into his hands. Herodotus mentions the situation of the tomb of Amasis. Like all those of the Saite monarchs, it stood within the precincts of the temple of Minerva, in the chief city of that nome, which, during the reign of the princes of the twenty-sixth dynasty, had become the royal residence of the monarchs, and the nominal metropolis of Egypt; Thebes and Memphis still retaining the titles of the capitals of Upper and Lower Egypt. CHAPTER VI. THE KINGDOM OF EGYPT. PERSIAN DOMINATION. CAMBYSES entered the country of Egypt, B. c. 525, when he found that Amasis was just dead, and that he was succeeded in his kingdom by his son PSAMMENITUS. The first operations of Cambyses were against Pelusium, which Ezekiel styled, "the strength of Egypt," and Suidas, the key of Egypt," or its strong barrier on the side of Syria and Arabia. This place he took by a singular stratagem. Finding it was garrisoned entirely by the Egyptian troops, he placed a great number of the sacred animals, cats, dogs, cows, sheep, etc., in front of the Persians when advancing to the walls; and the Egyptians, not daring to throw a dart, or shoot an arrow, for fear of killing some of their gods, the walls were scaled, and the city taken without difficulty. Conscious of the great danger to which Egypt was exposed by the invasion of the Persians, Psammenitus made great preparations for the defence of the frontier, and advancing with his Egyptian troops, and the Ionian and Carian auxiliaries, to Pelusium, he encamped in a plain near the mouth of the Nile. The Persians having passed the desert, took up a position opposite the Egyptian army, and both sides prepared for battle. The conflict soon commenced, and the battle was for a long time obstinately disputed; till at length, after a great slaughter had been made on both sides, the Egyptians gave way and fled. The way from Pelusium to Memphis was now open to the invader, and with rapid marches he hastened towards the |