The queen mother, when the widow of the late king, took precedence of her daughter-in-law, the wife of the reigning monarch, had certain privileges, peculiar to herself, was attended by a band of eunuchs and dined with her son in the women’s apartment. Though not nominally in public life her influence was often very great and at times used or abused most cruelly.
As in the earlier times, certain cities in Egypt were assigned to furnish the revenues of the queen, and that of Anthylla was appointed to provide her with shoes. This must also, it would seem, have applied to the females of her household, as a single pair of feet, even though royal, could have been but a slight tax on the revenues of a town.
To return to the thread of history which we are following. King Apries was overthrown and succeeded by Amasis, who, usurper though he was, seems to have reigned long and well. The date given for the close of the reign of Apries is B. C. 579, and Amasis ruled for forty-five years; his son Psammetic III had been on the throne but a few months when Cambyses conquered Egypt.
Syria appears to have been held by Egypt during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, while later Egypt disputed its possession with Assyria, and lastly the Ptolemies and Califs ruled it from Egypt. But the Egypt of which we now make study was no longer a country united under one head and going forth to conquer and demand tribute from surrounding nations. She was alternately divided under the sovereignty of a number of petty kings or ground under the heel of some all-conquering but more or less temporary master. Wars and internal dissentions were constant, with now and then a longer period of comparative peace and tranquility, in which the country had breathing space to recover from the desolation and ruin that had preceded it.
The Persians, numbered as the Twenty-seventh Dynasty, came in as masters who desired rather to trample upon than conciliate their subjects. They outraged the sensibilities and prejudices of the people, and, it is said, that the arts, long in decline, received a severe blow from their invasion, while many of the finest buildings in Egypt were mutilated and destroyed by Cambyses, hence revolts against the new authority were frequent. Cambyses himself appears to have acted at times like a cruel madman, and whether the story of his stabbing the revered Apis bull be true or not, and, like all old stories, its authenticity is sometimes disputed, the incident is but an illustration of the general course which he pursued.
He was son of Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, said to be the grandson of the Median King Astyages, and his mother was said by Ctesias to be Amytias and, by Herodotus, to be Cassandane or Kassomdane, daughter of Pharnespes, a member of the royal family, who died before her husband. Cambyses was in every way inferior to his father. The children of this marriage were two sons and three daughters, the sons Cambyses and Smerdis, the daughters Atossa, Roxana and Artystone.
Cyrus left his kingdom to his elder son, but placed so much power also in the hands of the younger that Cambyses caused his brother to be secretly murdered that his rights might be undisputed. Following the Egyptian custom, or setting up a law for himself, since it does not seem to have been the habit of the Persian monarchs, he married his two sisters, Atossa and Roxana. The Persian judges said it was not lawful for a man to marry his sister, but the king could of course do as he pleased. The unfortunate Roxana excited the fury of this monster by mourning for her brother Smerdis, and is said also to have been killed by Cambyses with a kick. A Greek inscription at Behistan affirms that Smerdis was murdered before Cambyses started for Egypt; that the latter committed suicide in the end; that the rebellion was a religious one, and that the Magian was not Smerdis but Gomates, and the discovery of the imposture is not as generally given. Other authorities claim that Smerdis was murdered by Cambyses’ orders during his absence, but the affair seems much involved in mystery.
Cambyses adopted as his Horus name “Horus, the Unifier of Two Lands,” and styled himself “Born of Ra.” For a third wife he took Nitetis, daughter of the Previous Egyptian king, Apries, but sent to him as the daughter of Amasis, the reigning monarch. Upon this deception, it is asserted, hinged the invasion of Egypt. There seems to be a discrepancy in dates, some holding that Nitetis would have been too old a bride for Cambyses, and therefore it must have been Cyrus that took her to wife, and that Cambyses was her son rather than her husband. But this tale is believed to be of Egyptian origin, made up to remove from their shoulders the stigma of being merely a conquered people and set up a pretence that Cambyses had some legal right to the throne by descent from an Egyptian princess.
Another tale is thus given by Herodotus. A Persian woman visited the harem of King Cyrus, was struck with the beauty of the children of Cassadane and praised them greatly to their mother. “Yet would you believe it,” said Cassadane, “Cyrus neglects me, the mother of such children as these, to pay honor to an Egyptian interloper!” On this Cambyses, her eldest son, a boy of ten years of age, exclaimed: “Therefore, mother, when I am a man, I will turn Egypt upside down!” Which threat, if ever made by him, was most surely fulfilled.
Supposing Nitetis to have been the grand-daughter, rather than the daughter of Apries, the dates become more intelligible. It is this period of history that Ebers has selected for his romance of an “Egyptian Princess,” which, like all his historical novels, if lacking perhaps great vitality in the individual characters, has a carefully studied and interesting ground work of historical fact. The truth or the tradition, which ever it be, runs thus: Amassis, King of Egypt, sent by request to the King of Persia, suffering with some trouble of the eyes, his special oculist. The physician, resentful of long ostracism from home and friends, suggested to his patron that he should demand in marriage the daughter of the Egyptian king. The plan was proposed not in good faith, but with a desire to make trouble.