Amasis (Ahmes) was raised to the throne by the Egyptians against the Greeks, to break down the influence and favoured position of the foreigners. His victory over the Ionians had brought him to the throne. As soon as he had gained it, he returned back to the system which Psammetichus and his successors had followed, and established it yet more firmly. He made ancient Egypt an Egypto-Grecian state. His first care was to conclude peace and alliance with the Cyrenæans. To king Battus III. of Cyrene he sent a gilded image of the goddess of Sais and his own portrait. He took to wife a woman of the house of Battus, by name Laodice. The Ionians and Carians conquered by him he removed from the eastern border, from the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, into the interior to Memphis. They were no longer to protect the border of Egypt which was most threatened, but the person of the king. He made them his bodyguard.[755] The Greek merchants he allowed to live at Naucratis under their own overseers and their own system of justice. The settlers came in greater numbers than ever. Greek Hetæræe followed trade into the distant land and accumulated treasures in Egypt.[756] The Greeks were even allowed to erect altars and temples in the country; the king himself provided the necessary sites; a proceeding which must have filled with horror and dismay the priests of the land, and all Egyptians of the old way of thinking. Hence the four Ionian cities, Chios, Teos, Clazomenæ, Phocæa; and the four Dorian, Cnidus, Rhodes, Halicarnassus, Phaselis, and the Æolian Mytilene, built a common shrine for their deities at Naucratis. Miletus erected a special temple to her deity Apollo. Samos and Ægina also built special temples. Amasis went still further: he honoured the Greek gods by dedicatory gifts. Two statues of stone, portraits of himself, and a wonderful corslet, as Herodotus assures us, he dedicated at Cnidus in the temple of Athene; and when the Delphians made a collection among the settlers in Egypt in aid of their temple which had been burnt down, Amasis also sent them a contribution.[757]
If Amasis allowed such advantages to the Greeks, he also knew how to reckon with the old Egyptian feeling. Besides two Greek women, Laodice and Sebaste, he took to wife two Egyptians, of whom one was the daughter of Psammetichus II. The monuments of Egypt give us their names, Tentchet and Anchnas. The latter we see represented at Selsilis, beside Amasis, pouring libations to Ammon, Mut, and Chons; her sarcophagus is in existence: Tentchet is mentioned by the successor of Amasis on a monument as his mother; she must therefore have been the sister of Hophrah, the daughter of Psammetichus II.[758] By this union Amasis sought to legitimize his dominion and to connect himself with the race of Psammetichus: and with this view he also gave to the son whom Tentchet bore him the name of his grandfather, Psammetichus. Thus his rule seemed to be only the continuation of the dominion of the descendants of the liberator of the house of Sais.
He exhibited a proper reverence for the worship of Egypt. In the twelfth year of the reign of Hophrah an Apis had died, and had been buried in the customary manner at the expense of the king. In the fifth year of the reign of Amasis (566 B.C.) an Apis was again born, to which Amasis appears to have paid especial honour. To this bull while yet alive, he presented a large coffin of red granite. The inscription on the cover runs thus: "The king Amasis. He has caused this to be made for his memorial of the living Apis, this huge sarcophagus of red granite, for his majesty approved the custom that all the kings in all ages had had such made of costly stones. This did he, the bestower of life for ever."[759] When this Apis died in the year 548 B.C., he was buried with extraordinary pomp, and a memorial stone from the new sepulchres of the Apis (p. 312) informs us what part Psammetichus, the son of Amasis and heir to the throne, took in this burial, and in all the ceremonials observed during the days of lamentation.[760]
In the effort in which the rulers of Egypt resembled each other almost without exception—in the desire to erect great buildings—Amasis emulated his predecessors. His buildings began with his accession and ended with his life. Sais was adorned by him with the largest and most magnificent works, for which the stones were mostly brought from the quarries at Memphis, and the largest from the quarries at Elephantine. To the temple of Neith at Sais he added marvellous propylæa, which, as Herodotus says, surpassed all others by their height and size, as well as by the size and beauty of the stones of which they were constructed. Here Amasis also set up great colossi and sphinxes, and caused to be brought from Elephantine a chapel hewn out of a single stone 21 cubits in length, 14 cubits in breadth, and 8 cubits in height, which was set up at Sais before the temple of Neith. Two thousand seamen were occupied for three years in bringing this chapel from Elephantine to Sais. A similar memorial of Amasis lies on the site of the ancient Thmuis in the Delta. At Memphis Amasis built a temple to Isis; "a work large and worthy to be seen beyond all others," says Herodotus, and before the temple of Ptah he placed a colossus of 75 feet in height, and on either side of it two statues of Ethiopian stone of 20 feet in height. When Herodotus visited Egypt this mighty colossus lay at Memphis thrown down on its back, and one of equal dimensions (no doubt they were portraits of Amasis) lay in a similar position at Sais. The other temples were not forgotten; Amasis caused restorations to be undertaken at Thebes, especially at the great temple of Karnak: other temples were also restored and adorned with new buildings and statues. His sepulchre Amasis built at Sais beside the tombs of the race of Psammetichus, whose dynasty he wished to continue, just as he continued and completed their system of government. It lies, says Herodotus, somewhat farther from the temple than the tomb of Hophrah and his forefathers, at the side of the colonnade before the temple. It was a separate colonnade, of which the portico was supported by pillars with capitals carved like palm-branches. In this portico lay the sepulchral chamber, a room of stone closed by double doors.[761] Of the eagerness with which Amasis built we have still evidence in the inscriptions found with his name in all the quarries of Egypt; in the limestone quarries of Memphis, in the granite quarries at Hamamat, and in the sandstone quarries at Selsilis, and in the quarries of red granite in the south of Egypt. The quarries of Hamamat also give us the name of the chief architect of Amasis, "the chief of all the buildings in Upper and Lower Egypt," and his forefathers to the twenty-fourth generation.[762]
Amid the cares of the throne Amasis did not forget the easy and cheerful enjoyment of life, which he loved. When he had finished his business in the morning he sat down to table with his friends, drank deeply, and made merry with them without any regard for the ancient ceremonial of the Egyptian court, or the remonstrances of his friends, who would recall him to more dignified behaviour. Nevertheless, in spite of the favour shown to the Greeks, he knew how to win the good-will of the Egyptians, by a just, moderate, and mild government, and by regard for the well-being of the land. The tradition of the Egyptians counts him among the lawgivers of the land. He is said to have regulated the economical relations and the duties of the nomarchs as well as their power.[763] With the Greeks too he passed as a ruler of extraordinary wisdom. In any case, under his long reign—he sat on the throne for 44 years—Egypt attained a high degree of prosperity. The freedom of trade brought in products: agriculture, manufactures, and trade were active. "Under Amasis," says Herodotus, "Egypt is said to have been most prosperous, both in regard to that which the river did for the land, and the soil gave to the inhabitants, and at that time there are said to have been 20,000 inhabited places in the land."[764]
But these were the last days of Egyptian splendour. If Babylon had hitherto been a dangerous neighbour, the position of affairs in the East changed in the reign of Amasis for the most decided disadvantage to Egypt. When Cyrus had brought the kingdom of the Medes into his power, he reduced the nations on the east and west of Persia. At length Babylon herself succumbed to the arms of Cyrus in the thirty-second year of the reign of Amasis. With the fall of Babylon Syria became subject to him, so that the youthful and mighty kingdom of the Persians already bordered on Egypt. Amasis avoided giving any support to the resistance offered by Babylon and Lydia to this new power. If he succeeded, after the fall of Babylon, in possessing himself of the island of Cyprus, and so obtaining a position opposite the Syrian coast, which might paralyse the possession of the Phenician cities, this success, as opposed to the supremacy of Persia, was only of importance in so far as it rendered the use of the Phenician fleet difficult for the Persians. The close connection also into which Amasis entered with Polycrates, who in the year 536 B.C. made himself master of the island of Samos, and got together a splendid fleet of 80 heavy and 100 light ships of war—for Polycrates was threatened more heavily by the neighbourhood of Persia than Egypt was—could only be of use to Egypt in defending her against an attack from the sea; it was useless against the attack of a far superior power by land. If in his last years Amasis could take breath for a moment owing to the death of the great conqueror, the anxiety for the future soon returned with double weight. When Amasis died (526 B.C.) Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, was already preparing a great armament against Egypt. To his son Psammetichus III. (Psammenitus) he bequeathed the difficult task of meeting the attack of the Persians.
FOOTNOTES:
[745] Vol I. 175.
[746] They are contemporaneous; if the reading Hamsabatichi (Psammetichus) is correct. The names of the mercenaries are said to be Pethah ben Jethar and Sillon ben Pethiach. Blau. "Z. D. M. G." 19, 522 ff.
[747] If A. Kirchhoff's supplement of inscription No. 9 is correct ("Studien z. G. d. Griechischen Alphabets," s. 353), "ὅκα βασιλεὺς ἤλασε τὸν στρατὸν τὸ πρᾶτον," the date of the expedition of the son of Theocles must be put earlier. Cp. Ross, "N. Jahrbücher f. Philolog." 1854, s. 528 ff. The name of the father of Theocles determines me in accepting Bergk's opinion that these inscriptions of the Ethiopian expedition of Psammetichus II. do not belong to the pursuit of the emigrant soldiers of Psammetichus I. (above, p. 307).