It would be rash to connect the heaps of bones which a traveller in our times saw in the neighbourhood of the oasis of Kasr with the destruction of the army of Cambyses,[173] and it is surprising that the Persians took the longer route from Thebes, when the shorter route which led from Memphis to Sivah was already frequented. Alexander of Macedon, in order to reach the Ammonians, marched from the Mareotic Lake along the coast westward to Paraetonium, then he turned directly to the south, and in eight marches reached the oasis. A modern traveller reached it in fifteen days from Fayum, in 1809, and the troops of Mahomet Ali who subjugated Sivah in 1820 to Egypt (2000 men and 500 camels with water) reached it in fourteen days. Most remarkable of all is the fact, that both campaigns of Cambyses were overtaken by the same disaster. The direction taken by each does not allow us to connect the two; the route to Sivah could not be past Pselchis and Premnis. Yet neither one nor the other disaster is in itself incredible, though 50,000 men cannot have perished. Some 70 years ago a caravan of about 2000 souls was buried in a sand-storm on the road from Darfur to Egypt.[174] But even if the division which was despatched against the oasis of Ammon succumbed to the storms of the desert, Cambyses maintained the oasis El Charigeh, which Herodotus calls the city Oasis and the Island of the Blessed. The magnificent remains of a temple which Darius the son of Hystaspes caused to be erected there to the god of the oasis, the ram-headed Ammon, prove that the oasis was conquered and held by Cambyses.[175]
Like the undertaking against the Ammonians, the intention of Cambyses to send the fleet against Carthage was evidence of his plan of extending his power to the west, and achieving in Africa what his father had done in Asia. Herodotus gives the account of the order commanding the fleet to sail, of the refusal of the Phenicians, and the abandonment of the project by Cambyses, according to the tradition of the Greeks, who together with the Phenicians made up the fleet of Cambyses and the Greeks in Egypt. There is no reason to doubt the statement. By the submission of the Cyrenaeans and Barcaeans Cambyses became the neighbour of Carthage, which had lately united the Phenician colonies of West Africa under her leadership and was eager to oppose the advance of the Greeks in the west of the Mediterranean, the settlement of their colonies to the west of the great Syrtis, and their progress in Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily. If the attempt to advance to the desert to the west of El Charigeh were already wrecked, if Cambyses had already returned from Napata when he commanded the fleet to sail against Carthage, new successes covered that disaster as well as the calamity of Premnis, and the gain of Carthage was of more importance than that of the oasis of Sivah. The old Phenicians of the East, in union with the navy of the Anatolian cities, was to conquer the new Phœnicia of the West. The Greeks no doubt were ready, but the Phenicians refused. By injuring their colonies in the West they would have rendered the greatest service to the rival naval power and trade of the Greeks; in Anatolia and on the coasts of Sicily they would probably have given a fatal blow to their own power by sea. Whether Cambyses saw this connection of affairs, and felt that the subjection of Carthage would liberate the independent Greeks from a dangerous neighbour, and the dependent Greeks from a rival in trade, or whether he simply gave way to the refusal of the Phenicians, we cannot decide: we only know that "as the fleet of the Phenicians refused,"—and it formed the preponderating part of the naval force,—it was impossible to compel it to go.
FOOTNOTES:
[155] Herod. 3, 13.
[156] Diod. "Exc. de legat." p. 619 = 10, 14.
[157] Herod. 7, 69. Cf. Strabo, p. 802.
[158] Herod. 3, 30.
[159] Herod. 3, 17-26; Diod. 3, 1.
[160] Vol. III. 63 ff. 159.
[161] The name Miluhhi is nevertheless used so often in the inscription of the kings, and in such close connection with Egypt, that the kingdom of Napata may merely be meant. Assurbanipal tells us that his brother seduced into rebellion "the princes of Miluhhi whom he subjugated." Vol. III. 170.