[95] Jer. xlvi. 8, 9.
[96] Jer. xlvi. 5, 16.
[97] 2 Kings xxiv. 7.
[98] It was natural not to send Greeks against their fellow-countrymen, though the action was otherwise interpreted.
[99] The story of Herodotus is that an Egyptian oculist had been sent to Persia to cure the king, who was suffering from some complaint of the eyes. Cambyses heard so much from him of the beauty of the daughter of Amasis, that he desired to have her for his wife. Amasis, unwilling to send his own daughter, substituted the daughter of his predecessor Apries. Cambyses, on discovering the fraud, was so enraged that he undertook the invasion of Egypt to punish the perfidy of its king. Cambyses certainly was not the man to wait for a pretext, whether the story be true or not. The narratives of Herodotus are by no means to be relied on; all that he relates as an eye-witness is of the utmost value.
[100] Brugsch, History of Egypt.
[101] It was Uah-hor-penres, priest of Neith, of whom Cambyses inquired, and who seems to have won great respect from the king. Sais appears, through his influence and good offices, to have been ‘saved in the great calamity that fell upon the land.’
[102] Lord Derby’s translation.
[103] ‘All intellectual Greeks,’ says Grote, ‘were naturally attracted to go and visit the wonders on the banks of the Nile.’
[104] Grote.