Perhaps the reputation of Cambyses was already evil and well known. At any rate, the proposal produced consternation rather than joy and satisfaction in the circle of the bride-elect. Possibly Amasis held with special tenderness the daughter in question. Be this as it may, he sent not the princess demanded, but one who was probably considered of inferior dignity. Doubtless she went adorned in regal splendor that the deception might not be suspected. Her finger tips would have been tinged with henna to look like branches of coral; she would perhaps wear the Persian head dress, composed of a light golden chain work set with small pearls, with a thin gold plate pendant about the size of a crown piece on which was impressed an Arabian prayer and which hung upon the cheek below the ear. The kohl’s jetty dye would give that “long, dark, languish to the eye.” A small coronet of jewels would be placed upon her head and over all a rosy veil. The veils the Eastern women wore over the head were coquettishly managed to add to their attractions. Says the poet in “Lalla Rooke”:
“Veiled by such a mask as shades
The features of young Arab maids,
A mask that leaves but one eye free
To do its best in witchery.”
The Arab women wear black masks prettily disposed, and Niebuhr mentions their showing but one eye in conversation, and again says Moore:
“And bright the glancing looks they hide
Beneath their litters roseate veils.”
So Nitetis, hardly a happy bride, was wedded to the Persian king, and “nightingales warbled their enchanting notes and rent the thin veils of the rosebud and the rose,” according to a favorite image of the Oriental poets. But not joy, peace and happiness resulted—rather wars and bloodshed. Perhaps in innocence, perhaps in malice, the new queen revealed the secret of her identity to the king. Since he did not put her to death we may believe that she herself had some attractions for him, but the deception he would not forgive and seized upon it, only too gladly, as a pretext for invading Egypt.
Across the desert which protected Egypt on the northeast marched Cambyses and his army, while his fleet, supplied by the Phoenician cities and the Greeks of Asia Minor, blockaded the Egyptian king (Psammetic III, only recently come to the throne) in Memphis. The herald was sent in a Greek vessel to demand surrender. The Egyptians, with mad and cruel folly, courting their own destruction, since such an act would be sure to infuriate the invader, seized the ship and tore the crew to pieces. If not before, from that moment their doom was sealed. Cambyses took Memphis, B. C. 525, on the pyramid plain, where later Napoleon bade his soldiers do their best, for the Centuries looked down upon them. It is said that Cambyses put cats and other sacred animals before his troops so that the Egyptians were afraid to attack. Be this as it may, the Persians obtained the mastery, and Cambyses took his revenge on Amasis for the affront offered him by causing his dead body to be burned.