Now the king of Ethiopia, Kikannos (Candacus) by name, was warring against his enemies; and when he left his capital city, Meroe, at the head of a mighty army, he left Balaam and his two sons regents during his absence.
Whilst the king was engaged in war, Balaam and his sons conspired against the king, and they bewitched the people with their enchantments, and led them from their allegiance, and persuaded them to submit to Balaam as their king. And Balaam strengthened the city on all sides. Sheba, or Meroe, was almost impregnable, as it was surrounded by the Nile and the Astopus. On two sides Balaam built walls, and on the third side, between the Nile and the city, he dug countless canals, into which he let the water run. And on the fourth side he assembled innumerable serpents. Thus he made the city wholly impregnable.
When King Kikannos returned from the war, he saw that his capital was fortified, and he wondered; but when he was refused admission, he knew that there was treason.
One day he endeavoured to surmount the walls, but was repulsed with great slaughter; and the next day he threw thirty pontoons across the river, but when his soldiers reached the other side, they were engulfed in the canals, of which the water was impelled with foaming fury by great mill-wheels. On the third day he assaulted the town on the fourth side, but his men were bitten by the serpents and died. Then King Kikannos saw that the only hope of reducing the city was by famine; so he invested it, that no provisions might be brought into it.
Whilst he sat down before the capital, Moses took refuge in his camp, and was treated by him with great honour and distinction.
As the siege protracted itself through nine years, Kikannos fell ill and died.
Then the chief captains of his army assembled, and determined to elect a king, who might carry on the siege with energy, and reduce the city with speed, for they were weary of the long investment. So they elected Moses to be their king, and they threw off their garments and folded them, and made thereof a throne, and set Moses thereon, and blew their trumpets, and cried “God save King Moses!”[[480]]
And they gave him the widow of Kikannos to wife, and costly gifts of gold and silver and precious stones were brought to him, but all these he laid aside in the treasury. This took place 157 years after Jacob and his sons came down into Egypt, when Moses was aged twenty-seven years.
On the seventh day after his coronation came the captains and officers before him, and besought of him counsel, how the city might be taken. Then said Moses, “Nine years have ye invested it, and it is not yet in your power. Follow my advice, and in nine days it shall be yours.”
They said, “Speak, and we will obey.”